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Comment by pessimist | Hacker News Reader

I'm a happy T-mobile customer, and I hate AT&T, but IMHO the government has no business blocking this deal. Maybe the law allows it to block on nebulous competition grounds, but if it does then the law is an ass.

Business should be allowed to screw over customers as they see fit, customers can and must be allowed to walk away. And I can still walk away to join Sprint/Verizon.

Yes, neither of these companies may be offering me the best deal possible, but unless they are colluding, the government should not be involved.

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... and what of the fact that there will be one fewer major carrier and the cost of entry is significantly higher? Do you even have any idea how much it costs to start operating as a cell carrier, or how impractical it is in most regions, due to the lack of space to build new towers?

Blocking this deal makes sense, unless you truly believe that businesses should be allowed to screw over customers AND remove any choices they may have for competing products. Do you really want to defend a monopoly?

> Business should be allowed to screw over customers as they see fit, customers can and must be allowed to walk away. And I can still walk away to join Sprint/Verizon.

And when AT&T eats Sprint/Verizon?

I guess it's technically not a monopoly if one giant controls five nines of the market.

If you count GSM phones as a market, which anyone who does international travel would, then the deal would reduce the number of companies in the U.S. market from 2 to 1.

There's a number of "global phones" available on Verizon that are dual CDMA/GSM. http://b2b.vzw.com/international/Global_Phone/index.html

> Yes, neither of these companies may be offering me the best deal possible, but unless they are colluding, the government should not be involved.

It's interesting that you make a dichotomy between collusion - in which you think the government should intervene - and mergers - in which you think the government shouldn't intervene. What is the difference?

If you are such a free market proponent, why should the government intervene in collusion? Doesn't a merger just codify any such collusion?

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