Dish Eyes T-Mobile Takeover, And That Could Be A Very Good Thing For Wireless Competition

from the bigger-sometimes-is-better dept

Ever since regulators blocked AT&T's acquisition of T-Mobile, T-Mobile has responded by lighting a fire under the wireless industry. With an amusing CEO and consumer-friendly policies, the company is currently adding more new subscribers per quarter than any of the other big four carriers, once again shockingly highlighting how not treating your customers like the enemy can pay notable dividends. But no matter how well T-Mobile has been doing, German owner Deutsche Telekom has made it repeatedly clear that it wants out of the U.S. market.

However, getting a sale done has proven harder than the company expected. After the AT&T deal was blocked by regulators, they also indicated they wouldn't approve a sale to Sprint, in order to keep four large, viable competitors in the market. Rumored for a while, indications now are that satellite TV provider Dish Network is in talks to acquire T-Mobile in a deal worth more than thirty billion:

"The two sides are in close agreement about what the combined company would look like, with Dish Chief Executive Charlie Ergen becoming the company’s chairman and his T-Mobile counterpart, John Legere, serving as the combined company’s CEO, the people said. Tougher questions about a purchase price and the mix of cash and stock that would be used to pay for a deal remain unresolved, the people said. One of the people characterized the talks as at “the formative stage,” and said an agreement might not ultimately be hammered out."

The deal would join a wave of consolidation in the telecom sector, including Frontier's acquisition of Verizon's California, Texas, and Florida fixed-line assets, Verizon's acquisition of AOL, Charter's acquisition of Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks, and AT&T's acquisition of DirecTV. And while Dish is rumored to be a horrible place to work and boss Charlie Ergen has a reputation for being a pain in the ass to work with, the deal makes quite a bit of sense and should probably have no problems getting past regulators.

Whereas T-Mobile has been a thorn in the side of AT&T and Verizon, Dish has been similarly disruptive on the TV front, whether that's via its ad-skipping Hopper DVR, or the launch of its new Sling TV Internet video service. Dish has also been slowly accumulating a ton of spectrum over the last few years, insisting it was pondering a solo or joint wireless play. And while combined it's believed that the new T-Mobile under Dish would have even more spectrum than AT&T or Verizon, it wouldn't be enough to trip the FCC's "spectrum screen" used to determine competitive harm:

$DISH/$TMUS would fit under @FCC spectrum screen and have more spectrum than $T and $VZ http://t.co/cRH87kaWMg pic.twitter.com/vEv3r1Fqxb

— Walt Piecyk (@WaltBTIG) June 4, 2015

There had been some worry that Dish was just acquiring spectrum in order to sit on it, flipping it down the road for additional cash to AT&T and Verizon. Instead, a Dish buy could result in an even stronger T-Mobile with the spectrum and resources to shore up the one area where it still lags behind AT&T and Verizon: total network coverage. Telecom writers everywhere also win under this deal, as entertaining f-bomb dropping T-Mobile CEO John Legere is expected to remain at the helm of the new, tougher company. Should Sprint finally be able to get things together under new owner SoftBank, we might actually start seeing something vaguely resembling real, sustained price competition in the wireless sector.

Filed Under: competition, mergers, spectrum, wireless
Companies: at&t, comcast, directv, dish, t-mobile, verizon