When T-Mobile agreed to purchase rival Sprint for $26.5 billion, executives brushed aside concerns that Trump administration regulators might view the deal no more favorably than their Obama-era predecessors.

The mobile phone market has changed so dramatically in four years that anti-competition standards are less threatening, according to T-Mobile Chief Executive Officer John Legere and his Sprint counterpart Marcelo Claure, and the combined firm’s prowess in upgrading the nation’s wireless networks would actually allow it to lower prices and add workers, rather than lay them off.