As the wireless industry awaits an announcement that T-Mobile and Sprint have an agreement to merge, some on Wall Street are skeptical the merger deal will win approval, especially if Republicans lose their majority in the House and Senate in the 2018 mid-term elections.

Matthew Niknam of Deutsche Bank has warned his clients any merger deal not approved by next November is more likely to fall apart if  Democrats take back control of Congress:

“There also may be greater incentive for both sides to evaluate a potential deal sooner rather than later, given the risk that deal approval may slip beyond mid-term elections in late 2018 (with the risk that more populist/less corporate-friendly sentiment may become more pervasive in D.C.) In fact, we note that the Democrats’ ‘Better Deal’ agenda (unveiled in July 2017, targeted towards 2018 elections) highlights ongoing corporate consolidation as a threat to U.S. consumers, and proposes sharper scrutiny of potential deals.”

Nikram writes there has not been a lot of interest by cable operators to acquire Softbank’s Sprint, which has been effectively up for sale or merger for at least a year.

Fierce Wireless notes Cowen & Company Equity Research last month suggested the chance of a merger between T-Mobile and Sprint was now 60-70%, down from 80-90% originally. The reason for the pessimism is their estimate that any deal’s chance of winning approval was only about 50%. The odds get even worse if the Democrats start to check the Trump Administration’s power.

Public policy groups and well-compensated industry opinion leaders are already preparing to wage a PR war over a deal that would reduce America’s major wireless carriers to just three.

Professor Daniel Lyons, well-known for writing pro-industry research reports defending almost anything on their corporate policy wish list, is hinting at a possible strategy by the merging carriers by suggesting neither could survive without a merger.

Good analysis but incomplete. This assumes #Sprint and #TMobile would both remain viable w/o merger. I’m not convinced (either way yet). https://t.co/8WaZ2b8iJT

— Daniel Lyons (@ProfDanielLyons) October 10, 2017

Most analysts predict that with just three national wireless carriers, the U.S. wireless marketplace would more closely resemble Canada — widely seen as more carrier-friendly and expensive.

Wall Street analysts are debating exactly how many tens of thousands of jobs will be lost in a merger, and the numbers are staggering.

Jonathan Chaplin of New Street Research predicts the merger would cost the country more jobs than now exist at Sprint.

He predicts “approximately 30,000 American jobs” will be permanently lost in a merger. Together the two companies currently employ 78,000 — 28,000 at Sprint and 50,000 at T-Mobile.

Craig Moffett of MoffettNathanson Research was more conservative, predicting 20,000 job losses would come from a merger. But the impact would not be limited to just direct hire employees.

“We conservatively estimate that a total of 3,000 of Sprint and T-Mobile’s branded stores (or branded-equivalent stores) would eventually close,” Moffett’s report said.

Golden parachutes will make some executives at Sprint and T-Mobile very wealthy if a merger succeeds.

Many T-Mobile and Sprint stores are located in malls and retail “power centers” where maintaining both stores would be unnecessary. Also hard hit would be wireless tower owners and those employed to care for them. Most believe Sprint’s CDMA wireless network would eventually be decommissioned in a merger, and many of its cell sites would be mothballed. Sprint’s biggest asset is its currently unused trove of high frequency wireless spectrum it could use to deploy future 5G services, but those services would likely be provided from small cells mounted on utility poles and street lights.

The biggest winners in any deal will likely be top executives at Softbank, Sprint, and T-Mobile, Wall Street banks providing deal advisory services and financing, and shareholders, who can expect higher earnings from a less competitive marketplace. Fierce competition from T-Mobile and Sprint were both directly implicated for threatening revenues for all four wireless companies, who have had to respond to aggressive promotions by cutting prices and offering more services for less money.

The Trump Administration’s choices of Ajit Pai for Chairman of the FCC and Makan Delrahim as United States Assistant Attorney General for the Antitrust Division of the Justice Department are both widely seen as signals the White House is not going to crack down on competition-threatening merger deals. Mr. Pai has recently improved the foundation for a T-Mobile/Sprint merger by declaring the wireless industry to be suitably competitive, something required before seriously contemplating reducing the number of competitors.

Eight Democrats sent a letter to the FCC chairman last week calling on both the FCC and the Justice Department to begin an investigation into the possible merger as soon as possible, citing possible antitrust concerns.

The text of the letter:

Dear Chairman Pai and Assistant Attorney General Delrahim:

We write to ask you to begin investigating the impact of a merger between T-Mobile International and Sprint Corporation. According to Pew Research, over three-quarters of Americans now own smartphones, driven by a 12 percent increase in smartphone ownership among adults over age 65 and a 12 percent increase in smartphone ownership in households earning less than $30,000 a year since 2015. Today, smartphones are not really just phones at all. For many, they are the primary connection to the internet. An anticompetitive acquisition would increase prices, burdening American consumers, many of whom are struggling to make ends meet, or forcing them to forego their internet connection altogether. Neither outcome is acceptable.

We believe that an investigation is appropriate for three reasons. First, aggressive antitrust enforcement benefits consumers and competition in the wireless market. Second, a combination of T-Mobile and Sprint would raise significant antitrust issues and could dramatically harm consumers. Third, although a deal has not been announced, the two parties have made repeated attempts to merge, and current reports suggest they are close to an agreement. Your agencies should be in a position to fully – but expeditiously – investigate and analyze this deal should it occur.

Competition among wireless carriers has lowered prices, increased quality, and driven innovation

Consumers have benefited from competition among the four national carriers, and we have effective antitrust enforcement to thank for that competition. In the summer of 2011, the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) Antitrust Division filed suit to block AT&T’s proposed acquisition of T-Mobile despite claims that T-Mobile was a weak competitor and, without the deal, remaining options “won’t be pretty.”  The FCC likewise outlined its opposition to the deal that fall. The deal collapsed, but T-Mobile did not. It competed. It spent billions improving its network, and it offered better terms; for example, it eliminated two-year contracts and data overages. It enticed customers to switch providers by paying their termination fees. And, its competitors had to respond in kind. As William Baer, former head of DOJ’s Antitrust Division, has explained, consumers have enjoyed “much more favorable competitive conditions” since that transaction was blocked.  In May 2017, the Wall Street Journal reported that cellphone plan prices were down 12.9 percent since April 2016, the largest decline in 16 years, and attributed the drop to “intense competition” among the top cell service providers: Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile, and AT&T.  Paul Ashworth, chief U.S. economist at Capital Economics, specifically suggested that it was caused by the “price war that has broken out among cell-phone service providers, with all the big providers now offering unlimited data plans at cheaper rates.”

Further, the fact that T-Mobile and Sprint appear to be each other’s primary competitor raises additional concerns about this potential horizontal merger. That direct competition has particularly benefited lower-income families and communities of color, many of whom rely on mobile broadband as their primary or only internet connection.  Sprint and T-Mobile have offered products and service options that are more appealing to lower-income consumers. For example, T-Mobile was the first major carrier to offer a no contract plan,  and both Sprint and T-Mobile have been leaders in offering prepaid and no credit check plans, which allow people who may have poor credit to obtain a cell plan and ultimately access the internet.

A combination of T-Mobile and Sprint would raise significant antitrust concerns

Not surprisingly, when T-Mobile and Sprint first discussed a merger in 2014, both of your predecessors expressed skepticism. William Baer stated that “[I]t’s going to be hard for someone to make a persuasive case that reducing four firms to three is actually going to improve competition for the benefit of American consumers.”  Similarly, former FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler simply explained, “[f]our national wireless providers are good for American consumers.”

What is surprising, however, is that a few years later the two companies have revived their merger talks. Whether one looks at cellphone competition as a national market or as numerous local markets, T-Mobile’s acquisition of Sprint would very likely be presumptively anticompetitive. We are concerned that this consolidation would increase prices, reduce incentives to offer new plans, and allow the remaining carriers to curtail their investment in their networks. Further, given both companies’ focus on competing for lower-income customers, the combination of Sprint and T-Mobile could disproportionately harm those consumers. In addition to potentially raising retail prices, the remaining carriers are also likely to increase prices to companies like Straight Talk, which buys bulk access to one or more of the four national carriers and advertises almost exclusively to lower-income communities.

T-Mobile and Sprint will no doubt claim that the merger will leave sufficient competition, increase cost savings, and spur investment. The agencies will need to examine these issues in depth and make the ultimate determination as to whether the effect of such a deal would be to undermine or promote competition. The very complexity of the issues only further justifies the need for the agencies to begin examining the markets and investigating the competitive dynamics sooner rather than later.

Initiating an investigation is appropriate

Although the antitrust agencies often wait for an official filing before opening an investigation, nothing requires this delay. For example, in May, the Antitrust Division announced an investigation of the possible acquisition of the Chicago Sun-Times by the owner of the Chicago Tribune.  The two companies in question here have had a longstanding interest in combining, and, according to reports, an agreement between Sprint and T-Mobile may be weeks away.

Beginning an investigation into a merger of T-Mobile and Sprint now will allow your agencies to quickly, but fully, review the agreement if it is announced. Indeed, multiple news sources are reporting that the two parties are close to a deal in principle. The likelihood of the transaction occurring combined with the serious issues that it raises provide compelling reason for DOJ and the Federal Communication Commission to begin investigating the potential transaction.

For the reasons stated above, we urge you to begin to examine this potential transaction now. Competition among four major cell phone carriers has benefited consumers with lower prices, better service, and more innovation. We are concerned that consolidation will thwart those goals. Thank you for your prompt attention to this matter.

Sincerely,

Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.)
Al Franken (D-Minn.)
Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.)
Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.)
Ron Wyden (D-Ore.)
Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.)
Ed Markey (D-Mass.)
Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.)

The Federal Communications Commission announced Friday it will postpone an important spectrum auction until 2016 after broadcasters filed suit against the regulator challenging its proposed format.

The FCC wants your free, over-the-air television dial to be a lot smaller with a deal that will pay broadcasters to sign-off their channels for good to benefit the wireless industry. Remaining stations will be moved to VHF channels 2-13 and UHF channels 14-30. The spectrum covering UHF channels 31-51 would likely then be sold in pieces to major wireless carriers including AT&T, Verizon Wireless, Sprint, and/or T-Mobile.

To entice broadcasters to voluntarily switch off their transmitters, the FCC has designed a spectrum auction that would provide tens of millions in proceeds to smaller stations and up to $570 million for a UHF station in Los Angeles to get off the air. Technically, stations giving up their channels don’t have to sign-off — they can move to low/lower-powered broadcasting, share channel space with another television station on a digital subchannel, or move to cable television exclusively.

To sell stations on the deal, FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler hired Greenhill, a Wall Street investment bank, to prepare a presentation sent to every eligible television station in the country, encouraging them to sell their channels for some eye-popping proceeds:

(These numbers refer to full-power stations; in some markets there are also Class A stations, low-power stations that meet certain programming requirements. The estimated value of their spectrum is lower.)

Source: The FCC

There is so much money to be made buying and selling the public airwaves — at least twice as much as broadcasters originally anticipated– spectrum speculators have also jumped on board, snapping up low power television station construction permits and existing stations with hopes of selling them off the air in return for millions in compensation. Wireless customers are effectively footing the bill for the auction as wireless companies bid for the additional spectrum. Television stations will receive 85% of the proceeds, the FCC will keep 15%.

Major network-affiliated or owned stations in major cities are unlikely to take the deal. But in medium and smaller-sized markets where conglomerates own and operate most television stations, there is a greater chance some will be closed down, moved to a lower channel, or transferred to a digital sub-channel of a co-owned-and-operated station in the same city. The most  likely targets for shutdown will be independent, CW and MyNetworkTV affiliates. In smaller cities, multiple network affiliates owned by one company could be combined, relinquishing one or more channels in return for tens of millions in cash compensation.

In Los Angeles, the stakes are especially high with auction prices estimated at up to $570 million for a high-powered UHF station like KDOC-TV.

“There is some real money to be had,” Bert Ellis, chief executive of Ellis Communications, which owns KDOC-TV, told the Wall Street Journal. “I think every broadcaster should take a very close look at this.”

Estimates show at least 80 significant U.S. cities will likely lose one or more channels, especially when the bid price well exceeds the value of an independent, ethnic or religious station. Many of these will go dark, move to cable or a less desirable lower power VHF channel, or sign an agreement with a remaining station to carry its programming on a sub-channel.

The National Association of Broadcasters filed suit against the FCC’s auction in August. The NAB wants the FCC to guarantee that stations that wish to stay on the air will not have their coverage area reduced or forced to pay to move to a new channel number assigned by the FCC as the regulator “repacks” a much smaller UHF band.

“We’ve said from day one, if stations want to volunteer to go out of business, that’s their prerogative. But for those stations that choose to remain in business, they should be held harmless,” NAB spokesman Dennis Wharton said.

The spectrum auction is designed to address the wireless industry’s claim of a spectrum crisis, warning that if more frequencies are not found, wireless users will eventually see their service degraded.

Prominent law enforcement, public safety, and emergency response organizations held a press event outside the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on Monday, November 18th at the opening of a Commission workshop on e911 location accuracy.

Up to two-thirds of emergency calls made over a cell phone lack critical information about the caller’s location, prompting an advocacy group to call the current situation a crisis.

“If you use a cell phone, you probably think that a 9-1-1 operator can find you if you call in an emergency. Unfortunately, that assumption could be fatally flawed,” said Jamie Barnett, former Chief of the FCC’s Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau and director of the Find Me 911 Coalition. “For two-thirds of wireless callers in some counties, the emergency call arrived without accurate information on the caller’s location, putting lives at risk when callers don’t know or can’t share their location. The FCC should take immediate action to ensure that all 9-1-1 callers can be immediately located in a crisis, whether indoors or outside, in a rural or urban setting.”

The wireless industry’s lobbying group says the problem is complicated and overblown, and the nation’s biggest cell phone companies are placing the responsibility for the problem on poorly trained 9-1-1 operators. But while the issue is debated, lives are being lost. It’s a growing problem, says the Coalition, because 70 percent of all calls to 9-1-1 now come from cellphones. High-powered smartphones with the latest technology can support thousands of apps, streaming video, help travelers find their way home, and access data at megabit speeds, but when you are in a car or building, your wireless carrier might not be able to pinpoint your exact location and share it with emergency personnel until it is too late.

Deanna Cook of Rylie, Tex is just one victim who might still be alive today if 9-1-1 operators could have tracked her precise location. Last August, Cook called 9-1-1 from her home but was too badly injured in a domestic violence incident to provide her address. Operators relied on the current system to access her location. It took just a few seconds to find the cell tower Cook was accessing to place the call. Shortly after that, Cook’s street and general location became available in about a block-wide circumference, part of what the industry calls “Phase One” data. But the operator had to wait nine minutes for Cook’s wireless provider to finally pinpoint what they believed to be her exact address, the critical “Phase Two” data that can bring help to the right door.

The call location problem is growing worse in this Pennsylvania county.

The Dallas Morning News discovered while Cook was pleading for her life on 9-1-1 tapes, responding officers didn’t arrive until 50 minutes after the call was placed and then left when no one answered the door, perhaps uncertain about the veracity of the address given to them. Cook’s body was found two days later by relatives. Her ex-husband was eventually arrested and faces murder charges.

It isn’t an isolated incident, Lt. Midge Boyle of the Dallas police told the newspaper.

Dallas’ emergency call center, like many around the country, has seen an increase in the number of calls in which 911 call takers have to spend precious time trying to get the caller’s location, and what operators do receive from cell phone providers isn’t always correct.

“It’s time-consuming,” Boyle said. “In an emergency when minutes count, it’s a challenge.”

In Delaware County, Penn., new data from the Federal Communications Commission shows despite all the wireless network improvements taking place, problems locating callers are actually getting worse.

The Coalition notes the FCC’s data shows an alarming drop in more accurate “Phase Two” data from 75 percent of all wireless calls placed during March 2011 to just 35% in September of this year.

Countywide data released by the FCC found that 489,726 of the wireless calls received since April 2011 lacked accurate “Phase Two” location information, despite FCC regulations requiring accurate location data be provided with all calls.  In most cases, the 9-1-1 call center only received basic “Phase One” data showing the location of the cell tower from which the call originated, information of little use to emergency responders given the large area covered by each tower.

California regulators named names of providers deficient in providing reliable location data in that state:

• AT&T provided Phase Two location data 20 percent of the time;
• Sprint managed to deliver accurate data 21 percent of the time;
• T-Mobile USA only managed to offer correct information 10 percent of the time;
• and Verizon Wireless scored the highest, but only to the extent it delivered Phase Two location data 37 percent of the time in California.

The Coalition wants the FCC to require more advanced and accurate location technology. A whole range of solutions exist that could pinpoint a 9-1-1 caller even within a downtown office building 70 floors high. Among them:

• Advanced Forward Link Trilateration (AFLT);
• Observed Time Difference of Arrival (O-TDOA);
• RF Pattern Matching;
• Terrestrial Beacon Transmitters;
• and Uplink Time Difference of Arrival (U-TDOA)

The CTIA – The Wireless Association said it was willing to sit down with public safety organizations to discuss the problem, but little more. Barnett hopes the FCC will act more quickly. The Coalition is hoping public support will help nudge the FCC to give the issue priority attention. The group has set up a webpage to help the public draft letters to members of Congress.

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/ABC GMA Murder Victims Husband Fights to Improve 911 System 11-13.flv[/flv]

ABC’s “Good Morning America” talked with Nathan Lee, husband of Denise Amber, who was kidnapped and murdered in 2008. Lee advocates an overhaul of the cell phone network after law enforcement failed to find Denise even after she covertly used her attacker’s cell phone to call 9-1-1 for help. “Denise should be alive today had the Local 9-1-1 system performed to every citizen’s expectation.” (1:59)

Powell

You and I may think America can do better providing fast and inexpensive broadband service. But a former chairman of the FCC now representing industry interests waved shiny keys of distraction to explain away why cable companies are still delivering Internet speeds slower than those found in Romania, Latvia, South Korea and Japan.

Michael Powell, the poster child of D.C.’s “revolving door” problem gave a well-compensated, rousing (yet fact-lacking) defense of an industry he was supposed to oversee in the public interest as the Bush Administration’s FCC chairman from 2001-2005.

“America is home to the world’s very best Internet companies,” said Michael Powell, chief executive of the National Cable and Telecommunications Assn. at the annual Cable Show in Washington, D.C. “We have worked hard to reach everyone, and now offer service to 93% of American homes. Despite our success, many people like to denigrate U.S. broadband by painting false comparisons to other countries. There are some nations doing very well, but it is foolish to compare countries like Latvia and France to the United States of America.”

Powell’s response is hardly a fact-filled defense for cable company broadband that still delivers slow speeds at high prices. Instead of attempting to call the statistics inaccurate, he tried to explain away the discrepancy by complaining people are ignoring the size of the country and its population.

In denial

Powell’s arguments might have some merit if the cable industry did not make a point of bypassing vast rural areas that do not meet Return on Investment tests. It is difficult to claim cable companies cannot deliver comparatively fast service in rural Iowa when they don’t offer any service at all.

The People’s Republic of China’s population is far larger than our own and is now a vital market for fiber optics manufacturers and suppliers. While some of America’s cable industry CEOs repeatedly argue America does not need fiber broadband or gigabit broadband speeds, the Chinese government has insisted that every new housing development be pre-wired with fiber that will easily and inexpensively supply those speeds in the near future.

Powell is correct to say speeds are improving in the United States, but there is growing evidence they are improving even faster overseas, especially in countries that are basing their primary telecommunication infrastructure on fiber optics, which can support enormously fast Internet speeds. As those fiber networks are lit, America will fall even faster in broadband rankings as long as cable operators continue to insist there is no demand or interest in the next generation of high-speed service. At the prices they charge, they may just prove their own “no demand”-argument, at least in this country.

Powell himself helped lay the foundation for America’s broadband duopoly by deregulating the industry with one hand while ignoring the need for competitive checks and balances with the other. At the end of Powell’s tenure, his greatest achievement was constructing an industry-friendly personal resumé to win lucrative employment as a telecommunications lobbyist.

Who better to speak with “authority” on telecommunications matters than a well-connected former FCC chairman that does the industry’s bidding? The NCTA hired him to deliver just the kind of defense cable operators hope Americans will believe.

Those that are aware of what broadband is like abroad don’t.