C Spire's Meena: Collapse of Sprint/T-Mobile deal set back US wireless competition

The fact that Sprint abandoned a merger with T-Mobile US in the face of opposition from regulators, especially at the Federal Communications Commission, has set back the cause for competition in the US wireless market, according to C Spire Wireless CEO Hu Meena.

Speaking at the Competitive Carriers Association conference in conjunction with CTIA's Super Mobility Week, Meena said that "Sprint should have been able to move down the path toward acquiring T-Mobile" and that a combined company "would have provided an entity that wasn't a legacy Bell company, with enough scale, enough size and enough clout." He said working with that combined company would have allowed smaller carriers "to bring true competition to the marketplace as opposed to walking up to the FCC with a laundry list of items that we need to be competitive again."