Trusting T-Mobile and Sprint with American jobs requires a leap of faith akin to trusting a vampire in a blood bank, a union representative told Congress during the first hearing controlled by Democrats on a $26.5 billion merger between the two companies.
The transaction “would drive down wages for all wireless retail market workers ,” said Chris Shelton, president of the Communications Workers of America. “Employers compete for that skilled labor with pay and benefits. Take away competition, and the remaining companies can throttle down employees’ compensation while jacking up prices on consumers. Both are symptoms of the same disease: too much market concentration.
Shelton’s testimony before the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s technology panel was among the most spirited segments of only the second congressional hearing on the deal, which would combine the third- and fourth-largest wireless companies in the U.S. The first was by the Senate antitrust subcommittee, controlled by Republicans, in June, and critics had urged House Democrats to re-examine the deal after the party regained the majority in November’s midterm elections.
“The last time a merger hearing was held before this subcommittee was almost nine years ago,” said Chairman Michael Doyle, D-Pa. “Since that time, there have been numerous mergers within this subcommittee’s jurisdiction that have gone without a hearing.”
T-Mobile’s deal, its second attempt at combining with Sprint, spurred skepticism almost from its initial announcement last year. To counter it, Sprint and T-Mobile are heavily emphasizing a combined company’s ability to more rapidly develop and deploy a 5G wireless network, with higher-powered transmission capabilities.
[Related: Progressive groups urge FCC to block Sprint, T-Mobile merger]
That will change the way Americans live, work, and play, T-Mobile CEO John Legere said Wednesday, enabling wireless customers to download movies in seconds and employ instantaneous language translation.
“My management team and I believe in delivering on our promises,” he added. “We know if we do not, we will lose the credibility and trust of our customers and our employees.”
AT&T had a base of 156.7 million subscribers as of mid-2018, while Verizon had 116.3 million. T-Mobile came in third, with 72.6 million subscribers, while Sprint had 59.7 million.
