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Getting the mainstream media to cover issues in the telecommunications sphere usually means wading into the “business news” sections of newspapers or watching business cable news channels.  Unfortunately, too often these outlets cater to the whims and preconceived notions of the audience — big business.  In the case of the AT&T/T-Mobile merger, Wall Street loves the idea, but consumers do not.  Watch as Free Press’ Joel Kelsey handily deals with the gang at Bloomberg News, who are convinced mergers and acquisitions never result in price increases for consumers.  Has your cell phone bill gone up or down in the last three years?  (4 minutes)

Genachowski

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski spent this morning in Orlando delivering a keynote address opening the wireless industry’s annual trade show.

Stop the Cap! spent part of the morning following the event over a live stream that most wireless customers would never dare to watch — fearing they’d blow past their monthly usage limits.  Genachowski steered well clear of commenting on yesterday’s merger announcement between AT&T and T-Mobile.  But then AT&T must have hacked their way into the tablet the FCC chairman was reading from, because he suddenly launched into a series of talking points that could have come right off of AT&T’s government affairs website.

“Mobile broadband is being adopted faster than any technology in history, but there’s a catch,” Genachowski said. The chairman said the demand for wireless broadband is overwhelming the country’s wireless infrastructure. “The coming spectrum crunch threatens America’s leadership in mobile,” Genachowski said.

It appears Julius has been listening to AT&T executives who have made the spectrum crunch and “America’s leadership in wireless broadband” bullet points a hallmark of their argument for a merger with T-Mobile.

In fact, although T-Mobile delivers AT&T additional mobile broadband capacity in selected major cities, the company is likely to find many of T-Mobile’s cell sites redundant, and some of T-Mobile’s spectrum is incompatible with AT&T’s network unless customers are handed new devices.

America’s “leadership in mobile broadband” can be judged in many different ways.  For example, we feel many in Washington are helping AT&T lead the way to a mobile duopoly.  We are also leading with some of the most expensive mobile broadband service in the world, a fact of life that will never change in America’s shrinking competitive landscape.

Spectrum issues are solvable by the FCC without destroying competition with yet another colossal merger.  The chairman’s telegraphing of AT&T’s talking points can only be seen as an encouraging road map by which the huge telecom company can sell its deal to regulators by selling out consumers.

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Gizmodo’s Matt Buchanan helped educate viewers of CNN’s American Morning about the implications of AT&T’s merger with T-Mobile.  While Ali Velshi tried to deliver AT&T talking points about “decreased” wireless pricing, Buchanan took him to school with the fact an increasing number of wireless customers are paying higher bills because of indefensible SMS text message charges, mandatory data plans, and other extras that pad today’s cell phone bills.  Additionally, the one company that challenged the nearly-identical prices and plans from AT&T and Verizon like none other was T-Mobile.  Now, with T-Mobile out of the way, every American faces paying the same high prices for cell service.  (5 minutes)

And then there were three?

Deutsche Telekom has held talks about a possible merger with Sprint in exchange for a major stake in the combined entity, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

The German phone company, owner of T-Mobile, America’s fourth-largest cell phone company, has been pounded by analysts after revealing its earnings for 2011 were likely to be below expectations.  T-Mobile, DT’s American brand, has faced harsh criticism for its stagnant performance, declining earnings, and bleak future.

Michael Kovacocy, director of Equity Evolution Securities, told CNBC T-Mobile is essentially in last place among America’s major national carriers and is going to stay there so long as it targets value-conscious customers who care more about a lower bill than a robust network.

“We think in the long term, perhaps, their position is unsustainable,” Kovacocy said.

Deutsche Telekom, the German phone company, does considerably better in Europe than in the United States.

The analyst predicts T-Mobile will always be relegated to #4 status in an American market dominated by Verizon and AT&T, with Sprint behind in third place.  T-Mobile is further back than that and has stagnated.  Unless they make radical changes — changes Kovacocy feels will be destructive to shareholder value — such as price cuts or major infrastructure improvements, T-Mobile will remain an also-ran.

“They have the wrong customers, the wrong network, and we think their spectrum is very difficult because it’s uncompetitive versus some of the spectrum AT&T and Verizon has,” Kovacocy said.

T-Mobile saw the departure of at least 150,000 customers during the last quarter — most heading for other carriers.

Talks between the two companies have reportedly been difficult, however, over Sprint’s willingness to meet DT’s price.  Sprint has seen losses erode the value of its competitor, and may want to pay less than the $25 billion estimated value of T-Mobile’s network and operations.

Sprint has experience trying to integrate customers from two incompatible networks together, with less than spectacular results.

Another problem:  the two networks rely on different and incompatible standards — CDMA for Sprint and GSM for T-Mobile.  Sprint experienced major integration problems once before, when it acquired Nextel from Craig McCaw in 2005.  Nextel’s iDEN network enabled the popular “push-to-talk” feature beloved by construction workers and contractors, but made integrating the Nextel family into Sprint a hellish nightmare.  After initially promising to phase out the iDEN network by 2009, Sprint recently announced it had pushed back the date of decommissioning to 2013.

A buyout of T-Mobile could leave Sprint serving customers on three different networks — its own customers, those still on Nextel’s network, and T-Mobile.

Although predictions are already being made the merger would pass muster in Washington, public policy groups concerned about the ongoing loss of competition in the wireless marketplace will have a major example to show this practice at work.  Americans continue to face some of the most expensive cell phone service in the world, and T-Mobile’s aggressive pricing helped keep other carriers from raising prices much further.

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Bloomberg News covers the possible sale of T-Mobile to Sprint.  (6 minutes)

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Back on Feb. 25, CNBC  interviewed one of several analysts who were upset with T-Mobile’s likely performance in 2011.  (4 minutes)

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Liz Lemon and Jack Donaghy greet Kabletown — an oblique reference to Comcast — in this clip from NBC’s ’30 Rock.’  (Adult Language) (1 minute)