Om Malik has been covering the telecom beat with great insight for many years and isn’t afraid to speak his mind. In the wake of the huge AT&T (NYSE: T) acquisition of T-Mobile USA, Malik weighs in, saying “it’s hard to find winners, apart from AT&T and T-Mobile shareholders.” The biggest losers, Malik posits, will be consumers:
While AT&T and T-Mobile are going to try to spin it as a good deal to combine wireless spectrum assets, the fact is, T-Mobile USA is now out of the market.
T-Mobile USA has been fairly aggressive in offering cheaper voice and data plans as it has tried to compete with its larger brethren. The competition has kept the prices in the market low enough. This has worked well for U.S. consumers. With the merger of AT&T and T-Mobile, the market is now reduced to three national players: AT&T, Verizon (NYSE: VZ) and Sprint (NYSE: S). Net-net, U.S. consumers are going to lose.
Source:
“In AT&T & T-Mobile Merger, Everybody Loses” Om Malik, GigaOm 3/20/11
http://gigaom.com/2011/03/20/in-att-t-mobile-merger-everybody-loses/
