![]() They bulldozed ahead with the national merger. That’s because the PUC hadn’t yet given its approval to merge the companies’ California operations.Ĭommissioner Clifford Rechtschaffen, who oversaw the PUC’s consideration of the merger, ordered the companies on April 1 not to do so until the PUC could issue its final decision. Yet the merger raised regulatory issues in California the moment it was completed April 1. Becerra approved the deal March 11 as part of a settlement of the state’s lawsuit to which T-Mobile agreed. That left California to carry the regulatory ball. He labeled the company an “undeniably successful … maverick that has spurred the two largest players in its industry to make numerous pro-consumer changes,” and waved the deal through. In his decision, he accepted T-Mobile at its own level of self-esteem. Marrero seemed wearied and exasperated by the burden of choosing between “competing crystal balls” foretelling what would happen if the merger were to go through - the companies predicting a boon for consumers, the opponents predicting higher prices and crummier service. What we can learn from a close look at Comcast’s troubling past District Judge Victor Marrero of New York in February. The Department of Justice and Federal Communications Commission both approved the deal in 2019, albeit with modest conditions including the sale of Sprint’s prepaid wireless business - chiefly Boost Mobile - to Dish Network.Ī lawsuit to block the merger filed last June by the District of Columbia and 13 states, including California and New York, was thrown out by U.S. The merger seemed to proceed along a well-greased path. That would mean higher prices for customers and an “absence of specific, measurable, and verifiable benefits attributable to the merger.” The deal was bound to do “irreparable damage to competition in the wireless market and the low-income customer markets,” the Public Advocates Office warned in its opposition brief in January 2019. because it involved reducing the number of major wireless carriers from four to three: Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile. The marriage of T-Mobile and Sprint was crucial for the future of wireless communications in the U.S. Yet the deals have rolled across the landscape like juggernauts. Similar claims have been made for all the media mega-mergers of the last two decades, involving Walt Disney Co., ABC, Viacom, CBS, Time, Warner Bros., CNN and AOL, among other companies. In 2011, for instance, what was then the biggest merger in the information and entertainment sectors - Comcast’s $30-billion takeover of NBCUniversal - was pitched as bringing such benefits to the public as improved cable TV and internet technology, more innovative TV programming and lower prices. Mega-mergers are invariably described by their promoters as heralds of a new age for customers. “Then they get what they want and try to change the rules. “We try to create conditions to make sure that consumers are not being left behind in the rush for the companies to satisfy their shareholders,” says Christine Mailloux, who participated in the PUC review of the merger as an attorney for the consumer organization Turn. To consumer advocates, this all comes out of the big company merger playbook. Giant Sutter Health says coronavirus crisis warrants renegotiating antitrust settlement. The public interest, she says, plainly includes issues such as employment.īusiness Column: Citing coronavirus, Sutter seeks to renege on ‘historic’ antitrust deal “The company’s continuing actions to undermine that oversight just shows that it doesn’t have the public interest in mind,” Johnson adds. “The PUC has broad authority over T-Mobile and it should continue to hold the company accountable,” says Ana Maria Johnson, program manager for communications policy at the Public Advocates Office, an independent body within the PUC charged with protecting utility customers’ interests. But it also stands by its position that the PUC has “no legal authority to require approval for a wireless merger” - and especially no authority to dictate its employment levels, a position with which the commission, obviously, disagrees. The company says that it “stands by all of its commitments” to state and federal regulators. ![]() In the aftermath of a federal judge’s approval Tuesday of the mega-merger between AT&T and Time Warner, you’ll be reading about how this deal will vastly remake the entertainment and information landscape, most likely at consumers’ expense. Column: The blueprint for the disastrous AT&T-Time Warner deal was written years ago by the Comcast-NBC merger
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