MAP Challenges AT&T/T-Mobile Transaction

AT&T seeks approval of a transaction which would effectively create a duopoly in the mobile wireless market. Removing T-Mobile, the most aggressive and feisty of the four nationwide carriers, as a competitor, would enable AT&T to stifle innovation, increase prices, and decrease choices for wireless customers – especially wireless broadband users. These negative impacts of the proposed acquisition would harm all consumers and harm the public interest in general.

Moreover, the merger likely would cause the most harm to traditionally unserved and underserved populations, including members of communities of color and rural residents, who rely to an even greater degree on affordable and innovative wireless broadband service offerings to access the Internet and partake in its benefits. It would also interfere with the development of new avenues for creative expression. This would be especially harmful to independent creators and others who use the Internet, and increasingly, use mobile wireless broadband access thereto, to create and distribute all manner of video programming and other types of artistic works and political expression.

T-Mobile is a classic example of a “maverick firm.” Its ads directly and forcefully challenge AT&T by name. It has been a technological innovator, introducing breakthrough products like the Sidekick. It was the first adopter of the Android operating system. It is, by far, the pricing leader among the four national wireless companies. Antitrust law recognizes that such “maverick firms” are disproportionately important in highly concentrated markets because they have strong incentives not to model their business practices on those of the dominant companies. Thus, eliminating T-Mobile would be particularly valuable to AT&T and Verizon.