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The T-Mobile Sprint merger became official on April 1. Since we are in the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic, the country needs T-Mobile to keep a few of the promises it made that were contingent upon the merger.
First, T-Mobile promised to offer wireless home broadband immediately after the merger for 50% of the people in the US, including many rural subscribers. T-Mobile envisions packaging excess cellular capacity as home broadband, at a reasonable price. The company does not envision putting fixed wireless antennas on homes like the products of AT&T and Verizon. The T-Mobile home product just requires a billing change where people pay less for cellular data usage inside their home. T-Mobile could effectuate this product almost immediately. This product could immediately help millions of homes that are struggling without affordable broadband right now.
The other T-Mobile promise addressed the digital divide and the company promised to serve 10 million homes that don’t have broadband today. This offer came with a promise to provide free devices to homes to receive the broadband. This is a digital divide product and could bring relief to poor households struggling with students trying to work from home. The product had a catch, in that annual usage was limited to 100 GB for free – but that’s enough usage to get students through the rest of this school year. As cellular plans in general go that’s not bad, meaning a monthly data allowance of over 8 GB per month in data allowance.
If T-Mobile is brave enough to launch these products immediately, they will reap mountains of marketing goodwill, which is exactly what the newly merged company needs. They will have created millions of fans who likely would become loyal to the company for helping them during this pandemic.
If T-Mobile doesn’t step up, ideally the FCC would turn the screws hard to make the company meet these promises now, rather than years from now. However, these plans involve broadband data and the feckless FCC has written themselves out of the broadband business. The FCC can huff and puff, but they no longer have the power to blow anybody’s house down.
Unfortunately, the history of the telecom industry is full of broken promises made as part of mergers. One of the biggest wireless mergers in the past was the 2005 merger of Sprint with Nextel. The companies had promised that the merger would allow them to bring Nextel’s popular ‘push to talk’ technology everywhere. The companies also promised they would blanket the country with cellular data, including rural America, using the 2.5 GHz spectrum. None of those promises ever came to pass – which was perhaps the first of many broken promises made for rural broadband. Like with most mergers, this merger also promised a lot of new jobs, but instead cut jobs.
There are plenty of other failed mergers. Consider the 2011 merger of Comcast with NBC Universal. Comcast promised it would offer affordably-priced standalone Internet everywhere – a product that was created but never marketed. Comcast promised to not discriminate against other programmers, but immediately disadvantaged Bloomberg by moving it to an obscure part of the channel lineup since it competed against the newly acquired MSNBC and CNBC. Comcast also promised to not discriminate against rival streaming services, but soon after the merger implemented its data caps, which applied to everybody’s video except Comcast’s.
One of the most blatant examples of carriers that tossed away pre-merger promises came after the 2006 merger of AT&T and BellSouth. Almost none of the promises made were kept. For example, AT&T promised to bring affordable broadband to all rural customers in the 22 states served by the two companies. Ask the folks in Mississippi and Alabama if this promise was fulfilled. AT&T has promised to build wireline networks in at least 30 cities outside its footprint and compete for voice and data – but this never happened. The companies promised to spend $16.5 billion to upgrade broadband in California and instead shut down expansion soon after the merger. The company claimed it would spend $1 billion wiring schools and libraries – another promise never met.
T-Mobile has an opportunity right not to become a legend in the industry by aggressively bringing affordable broadband to the students and workers who were sent home without broadband. This would distinguish them for the next decade as the carrier that met its promises and would likely propel them into the number one position in the industry. Let’s all hope they step up and do what they promised and do it quickly. Unfortunately, history has shown us that pre-merger promises are often forgotten before the ink is dry. But it would be so refreshing to see a company do what it promised, so we can hope.