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Compete how? Competition with the market leader will improve if this merger results in a more formidable opponent.

They should become more formidable without merging.

T-Mobile moght, Sprint won’t. They are a distressed company and no amount “shoulds” will change their trajectory. The question is whether T-Mobile deserves to grab all of Sprints customers in a “migrate by default” scheme, or their gonna have to fight for those customers when Sprint inevitably goes down.

Exactly. Sprint is tanking. Who else should be able to acquire it?

ATT nor Verizon would be able to acquire Sprint the company. But if the company goes down without being acquired by T-Mobile, let's say their customers would migrate to the remaining 3 carriers proportionally existing market shares. This outcome would be pretty great for AT&T and Verizon and strictly increase the market concentration.

Approve or not approve, regulators are sometimes forced into a position of "picking winners" :-(

Another thing that needs thinking through is what happens to Sprint's spectrum if the company goes under. What kind of rules will be placed on that auction? Would ATT and Verizon be likely winners of such an auction?

If either of them knew how to do that I think they would have by now. For real, if you can tell either of them how you'll be an overnight millionaire.

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