Many of you probably already know how I feel about the T-Mobile and Sprint merger, that might be happening this year. Especially if you follow me on Google+ or Twitter. As a T-Mobile customer, and someone who wants to see more competition, I really don’t want to see T-Mobile and Sprint merge. That would take us from 4 to 3 national carriers. And combining T-Mobile and Sprint wouldn’t even be enough to bring adequate competition to Verizon and AT&T, as they have so many customers. Almost double what Sprint and T-Mobile have combined.
The CWA, Communications Workers of America, who is the nation’s largest labor union for communications workers with around 700,000 members, issued a statement today regarding the merge. Bascially condemning the possible merger. “The Department of Justice and the Federal Communications Commission insisted that four national wireless carriers were necessary for competition when they opposed AT&T’s proposed bid for T-Mobile back in 2011.” Said the CWA in a statement on Monday. “At that time, the Justice Department called T-Mobile an “aggressive competitor” that benefits consumers by ensuring that the other three carriers would be forced to compete on price. Since that time T-Mobile has been strengthened by spectrum from AT&T and Verizon, as well as its acquisition of Metro PCS.” Their statement continued, by saying “It would be irresponsible now for regulators to endorse the bid by Softbank, a company that brings much less to the table for consumers and workers than the AT&T bid.”
They didn’t stop there, the CWA also went on to point out that Sprint has already outsourced the management of their network to Ericsson, which says offshores much of their work to India. Sprint has also offershored about 70% of their call center jobs, according to the statement from the CWA. The CWA union officials also made it clear that their belief for such a deal would benefit big businesses and harm US workers. “The financial sector will benefit from this deal, bu tit would result in job loss for American workers, and likely higher prices and fewer choices for consumers.”
It’s clear that many are against Sprint looking to buy out T-Mobile. I mean, why do they really need T-Mobile? Sprint has a ton of spectrum already, and they have Softbank behind them which will pump in a ton of money into their network. I’d much rather see both Sprint and T-Mobile continue to operate the way they are right now, but of course improving their network. Which T-Mobile is doing pretty quickly. Heck, they just purchased a big chunk of low-spectrum from Verizon a few weeks ago, which will bring more T-Mobile coverage to about 100 million more people. How many of you are hoping this deal falls through? Let us know in the comments below.
Source: BGR
Image Credit: RetailByRyan – Flickr