More Sprint Merger ‘Synergies’ As T-Mobile Raises Wireless Rates | Karl Bode writing in Techdirt

Granted this is how telecom industry mergers always go. The two merging companies will promise the sun, sea, and sky in exchange for regulatory approval, insisting consolidation will somehow result in amazing new synergies, robust competition (?), new jobs, and various other benefits. The business-centric press, focused largely on quarterly returns, will parrot these claims fairly mindlessly.
But after a few years of pretending nothing was going to change, prices inevitably climb, layoffs arrive, and overall product quality always deteriorates. 

At which point everybody in the process — from the revolving door regulators keen on getting future lobbying or think tank gigs to a lazy media disincentivized to follow up on whether pre-merger promises were true — repeat the process all over again having quite intentionally learned absolutely nothing from the experience.

Filed Under: consumers, mergers, price hikes, sprint t-mobile merger, telecom

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More Sprint Merger ‘Synergies’ As T-Mobile Raises Wireless Rates

from the history-repeats-itself dept

Wireless

Tue, May 28th 2024 05:26am - Karl Bode

Just recently we discussed a new report showing how U.S. wireless price competition effectively ground to a halt immediately in the wake of the Sprint and T-Mobile merger. Consolidating the U.S. wireless sector from four to three major providers immediately muted price competition, much like every credible academic, consumer group, and deal critic predicted. It also resulted in 9,000 layoffs.

As if on cue, T-Mobile last week announced it would, again, be raising prices on many legacy wireless plans, by as much as $2 to $5 a month. Like most American companies exploiting regulatory capture and muted competition to jack up quarterly revenues, T-Mobile tried to blame “inflation”:

“Costs and inflation have risen over the past decade; even with this small increase we still offer the lowest price versus AT&T and Verizon. Customers will still retain all their benefits and perks.”

But the merger didn’t just result in higher prices. T-Mobile’s uncarrier “benefits and perks” have gotten increasingly worse over time. And the company has nickel-and-dimed users in other ways as well, including various obnoxious new fees on postpaid and prepaid customers.

Employees I’ve spoken to also say the company is a shell of its former self under trash-taking CEO John Legere, something confirmed by spending all of five minutes on Reddit.. . .