AT&T To Acquire Leap Wireless (Cricket) For Around $1.2B

I know that people don't like large carriers getting larger. However, this is a pretty small deal. Leap has spectrum covering only 137M POPs and not in a lot of the top markets. Verizon was recently approved to gain 20MHz nearly nationwide. This is way less than half that spectrum - probably less than a third of the spectrum Verizon was allowed to buy. Leap does come with 5M customers, but Verizon will still be the largest so it's hard to see it getting rejected on customer grounds.

I know that there's a lot of anti-deal sentiment in this thread, but this isn't a significant deal that would undermine competition in the way that the AT&T/T-Mobile deal would have merged together a lot of spectrum and customers and given AT&T more power. In fact, this deal won't even bring AT&T up to the level of customers and spectrum that authorities allowed Verizon to buy. As such, on what grounds should the FCC or DOJ disapprove of this merger?

That's the key question and those grounds have to be consistently applied. Sprint was just allowed to bring nearly 200MHz under its roof. This deal would bring AT&T to around 100MHz. Verizon was allowed to buy Alltel with loads more customers and spectrum and then buy more spectrum from SpectrumCo. The deal would leave AT&T in second place in terms of number of customers and third place in terms of spectrum.

If we really want competition in the wireless industry, I think we should contact the FCC about making sure that sub-1GHz spectrum is spread out to more companies. Sub-1GHz spectrum travels (in the real world) significantly farther than higher frequency spectrum and that's essential for more suburban and rural coverage. I think capping sub-1GHz spectrum at 45MHz (or 40MHz or 50MHz) would be pretty reasonable and ensure that we have many companies with the resources necessary to build out a good network. There's going to be an auction in the future for 600MHz spectrum and I think that's the best place to ensure competition - by making sure that AT&T and Verizon don't grab that spectrum. AT&T and Verizon currently own most of the sub-1GHz spectrum and it's allowed them to build out coverage faster and broader. In fact, Verizon's early focus on sub-1GHz spectrum certainly enabled it to become the carrier it is today (a lot of AT&T's holdings sub-1GHz are a lot newer).

How long until they're declared a monopoly for the 2nd time?

Whenever I read things like this, I remember charts like these:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870447190457622...

http://www.wikinvest.com/image/Att_history.jpg

So, progress...

For once, AT&T acquiring another company might actually result in improved service for the customers.

I say this as a 2-time former Cricket customer (once with a phone, once with a 3G hotspot) in a major metropolitan area.

Wonder if they're going to merge Cricket and Aio...

Good. I don't have to answer the question of why I don't use cricket. I don't know why it came up so often but it did. Also I feel vindicated. They are the Opera of no-contract cell service providers.

Mobile phone prices per minute for non-unlimited plans have been going up ever since the Sprint/Nextel merger and thanks to this will continue to do so.

I wish they'd spend a bit of that money on improving there coverage/service around the country...