Sprint Formally Announces Their Opposition To AT&T-T-Mobile Acquisition

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Last week at the CTIA 2011 trade show, Sprint made no secret that they were not fans of the “AT&Tmo” acquisition – the deal that would see AT&T gobbling up T-Mobile US for $39 billion. Now, they’ve formally declared their opposition to the deal. Sprint today issued a press release announcing they aren’t fond of the deal, details why they take that stand, and also urges government intervention.

In the release, Sprint says that the combined AT&Tmo will “create a combined company that would be almost three times the size of Sprint in terms of wireless revenue and would entrench AT&T’s and Verizon’s duopoly control over the wireless market.” They aren’t far off – by our count, combining AT&T and T-Mobile’s customer base per the latest publicly announced numbers would give AT&T a new total of 130 million customers. Sprint, on the other hand, has just 49 million customers.

Sprint adds that if the deal was allowed to go through, it would “reverse nearly three decades of actions by the U.S. government and the courts that modernized and opened U.S. communications markets to competition.”

Sprint VP Vonya McCann said in the statement:

Sprint urges the United States government to block this anti-competitive acquisition. This transaction will harm consumers and harm competition at a time when this country can least afford it. [...] So on behalf of our customers, our industry and our country, Sprint will fight this attempt by AT&T to undo the progress of the past 25 years and create a new Ma Bell duopoly.

There’s been a lot of debate on if the AT&T deal will go through government regulation. The reality is, AT&T wouldn’t have started the deal if they didn’t think it would get through, especially considering the fact that it has a $3 billion breakup fee in case it doesn’t go through.

In the few years that I’ve written about the mobile industry professionally, I’ve observed a few things, and in my opinion, AT&T will likely get this deal through, although I imagine they’ll have to make concessions. Remember when Verizon bought Alltel and they were forced by the DOJ to sell some excess network coverage? This could end up benefiting Sprint if the AT&Tmo monster is forced by the US Goverment to sell some assets off to the highest bidder (and Sprint buys it).