Is T-Mobile’s John Legere a dingo?

[Commentary] John Legere likes free stuff. He really likes free stuff. A lot. In its planned merger with Dish, T-Mobile (of which Legere is CEO) stands to benefit from Dish’s successful manipulation of the Federal Communications Commission’s AWS-3 auction rules to get over $3 billion in free spectrum. A few years ago, T-Mobile was given $4 billion in cash and spectrum break-up fees by AT&T when the FCC blocked the AT&T/T-Mobile merger. And recently, Legere has redoubled his efforts to secure substantial spectrum “set-asides” from the FCC that would benefit T-Mobile in the upcoming incentive auction, releasing an entertaining and profanity-laced video that falls just one step short of calling FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler a dingo. The problem is, that bad things can happen when regulators try to manipulate markets, even when that manipulation is based on pressure from market participants themselves.

No matter how well-intentioned Legere’s desire for more spectrum may be -- and I do think that he is both well intentioned and rather engaging in his advocacy -- efforts to weigh the scales in favor of preferred winners often yield unintended -- and undesired -- outcomes. One of the most obvious of these outcomes is that these efforts open the doors to the very lobbying efforts that Legere decries, and in which he himself is engaging as he rallies the public behind his demands for special treatment by the FCC.

[Gus Hurwitz is an assistant professor at the University of Nebraska College of Law]