T-Mobile's Merger Trial Has Been All About Dish

The future of the American mobile broadband industry has hinged on a small courtroom in lower Manhattan, where carriers and regulators are squaring off over a plan to reshape the wireless business as we know it. The last hurdle to T-Mobile's purchase of Sprint is a federal lawsuit, filed by ten state attorneys general in the Southern District of New York, accusing the merger of being anti-competitive. This is regulators’ last chance to stop the merger from going through, by proving that a merged T-Mobile will mean higher prices and worse service for wireless customers. Judging by the scene at the courtroom, the people watching the trial most closely were investors. But while T-Mobile is the company on the docket, much of the proceeding has centered on Dish, an ambitious satellite television provider that would emerge from the deal as a slapdash fourth carrier.

Both the US Justice Department and Federal Communications Commission have told the court that their respective approvals of the T-Mobile-Sprint deal, with attendant conditions to drive rural 5G deployment and competition, should add legal weight on the judicial scale in favor of that merger.