FCC Not to Approve AT&T & T-Mobile Marriage?

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One of the most surprising recent events in the U.S. mobile environment was AT&T’s and T-Mobile’s marriage announcement. AT&T is really interested in becoming the number one carrier in the USA and T-Mobile, currently the fourth mobile operator in the U.S. with its almost $50 million subscribers, could be the easier path to that absolute number one spot.

But is this acquisition in favor of the consumer? Should the FCC approve the purchase, then the U.S. mobile business will have just three important carriers, AT&T-mobile, Verizon and Sprint. More competition, in any business, leads to innovation, better offers for the consumers, and, naturally, lower prices. In order to have more competition you’d need more horses in a race, so, naturally, this unholy matrimony between AT&T and T-Mobile is not necessarily the best thing that could occur in the U.S. mobile environment.

In a recent WSJ article an anonymous FCC official said that this T-Mobile buyout will not be as smooth as some people expect it to be. In fact the whole process should be a “steep climb for both companies” and we might just see the FCC shoot down AT&T’s growth plans. That would be a great thing for that competition I mentioned, but will T-Mobile actually be able to fight against Verizon and AT&T by itself?

We’re yet to see the fat lady sing, as, despite having anonymous FCC officials claim the FCC to let AT&T buy T-Mobile, nothing has been decided yet. In fact the WSJ mentions the whole XM – Sirius merger, which was also deemed impossible a few years back but still happened with FCC’s blessing. We could witness the same thing again in a year or so, should the FCC let AT&T acquire T-Mobile.

In fact we have already seen something like this happen in the UK, albeit we’re looking at a much smaller country there. Orange and T-Mobile UK merged into Everything Everywhere thus becoming the largest UK carrier. And everyone went on with their lives undisturbed by the merger.

On a different note we can’t but wonder what would AT&T be able to do with $39 billion when it comes to upgrading its whole infrastructure in preparation of the inevitable LTE deployment. Wouldn’t that be a better way to spend that much money?