After meeting with regulators in an attempt to persuade them that a Sprint T-Mobile merger would be the best way to compete against AT&T and Verizon, FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler expressed a willingness to consider the possibilities of a merger when speaking to both Dan Hesse and SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son, though he still maintained the same general feelings of doubt also expressed by the Department of Justice regarding the effectiveness of such a merger in order to maintain a competitive marketplace.
Being that a result of the blocked AT&T/T-Mobile merger led to an increase in competitive activity over the past year, including AT&T’s most recent realignment of its Mobile Share Value plans that dropped the cost of data even further, regulators have even less incentive to consider such a merger as beneficial, especially so soon after approving the majority purchase of Sprint by Japanese carrier SoftBank which totaled 80% of the company.
With the focus on the competitive landscape of the US wireless market under such scrutiny in recent months, regulators will be hearing from more executives as the year goes on while the battle for marketshare and spectrum grows more intense. T-Mobile is preparing for a rollout of low band spectrum it purchased from Verizon to address its longstanding suburban coverage gap in the middle of buyout rumors, while Sprint is still sorting out its Network Vision initiative with SoftBank’s help.
