What’s up with the rumors that Sprint and T-Mobile who
happen to be No.2 and No.3 on the US mobile communi-
cation market want to merge? As per November 6th, 2019
the U.S. Federal Communication Commission FCC said yes…

…but not without any rules the new formed alliance will have to obey.

While several states have joined a lawsuit to block the merger, the FCC committee where also 3 Republicans and 2 democrats are voting ruled 3-2 for the merger. So theoretically the merger could start now.

But the democrats fear that with the merger there could be disadvantages for the customers as the number of U.S. wide cariiers would reduce from four to three while the republicans see an advantage to improve statewide fast-speed coverage of mobile network.

And this is where the rules begin: Should T-Mobile USA and Sprint complete the merger, they will oblige themselves to gurantee a 96% 100-MBit/s coverage in city areas and 50-Mbit/s coverage in rural areas. Quite a lot to do then as the current situation is rather mediocre when it comes to high speed mobile connection in the USA. Only city centres offer the best speeds and usually it’s mostly Verizon or AT&T who can provide fast speeds.

So is the objection rectified? If speeds for a majority of the U.S. customers would improve with the merger, why being against it?

For what we can say is that Verizon and AT&T are currently dominating the market for high-speed mobile connections. But these are quite expensive. With Sprint and T-Mobile being merged, this could probably change. Also the extension of 4G and 5G would speed up as the third competitor would most likely invest more into the infrastructure to fulfill the rules. Otherwise not only a loss in customers could follow but also high penalties to pay for disobeying the rules set from the FCC.

Later they stated taht even a 97% 5G-coverage in city areas and 80% 5G-coverage in rural areas should be realized within 3 years. and three more years later, the coverage of 5G should be at 99% and 90% respectively. These are quite high targets to reach.

We will see…