NEW YORK (AP) — A federal judge has removed a major obstacle to T-Mobile's $26.5 billion takeover of Sprint, as he rejected claims by a group of states that the deal would mean less competition and higher phone bills. After the deal closes, the number of major U.S. wireless companies would shrink from four to three. T-Mobile says the deal would benefit consumers as it becomes a fiercer competitor to the larger Verizon and AT&T.
But a group of state attorneys general tried to block the deal, arguing that having one fewer phone company would cost Americans billions of dollars in higher bills. Consumer Reports said the three remaining carriers would have fewer incentives to compete on prices and quality. Judge Victor Marrero ruled Tuesday that most antitrust litigation ends in a "competing crystal balls" that "shed little light on a clear path to resolving the dispute." Ultimately, Marrero said he wasn't convinced the deal would lead to higher prices or lower quality for the industry, as the states insist.
Marrero's decision comes after the Justice Department already approved the deal. As part of a settlement with the Justice Department, T-Mobile agreed to help create a new, but smaller wireless competitor in satellite-TV company Dish.
Another judge still needs to approve that settlement, a process that is usually straightforward but has taken longer than expected. A utility board in California also has to approve the deal. New York Attorney General Letitia James, one of the leading attorneys general in the case, said her office was considering an appeal.
Gigi Sohn, a fellow at the Georgetown Law Institute for Technology Law & Policy, said that while consumers are often promised benefits from mergers, "what they are left with each time are corporate behemoths who can raise prices at will, use their gatekeeper power to destroy competition and new voices and hijack regulatory and legislative processes."
T-Mobile launched its bid for Sprint in 2018, after having been rebuffed by Obama-era regulators. T-Mobile CEO John Legere had seen President Donald Trump's election and his appointed regulators as a good opportunity to try again to combine, according to evidence during the trial.
T-Mobile, which promised not to raise prices for three years, defended its deal as good for competition. It repeated previous arguments that the combined T-Mobile and Sprint will be able to build a better next-generation, 5G cellular network — a priority for the Trump administration — than either company could alone.
The deal got the nod from both the Justice Department and the Federal Communications Commission, thanks to an unusual commitment to create a new wireless player in Dish. T-Mobile agreed to sell millions of Sprint's prepaid customers to Dish, a satellite TV company with a shrinking customer base. T-Mobile also has to rent its network to Dish while the fledgling rival built its own. Dish is also required to build a 5G network over the next several years.
DISH co-founder Charlie Ergen said in a statement Tuesday that the ruling will accelerate its ability to deploy 5G and that its growth as a new competitor will bring "lower prices, greater choice and more innovation to consumers." The states had said that Dish wasn't certain to succeed as a wireless company and was far smaller than Sprint, and the resulting wireless market would still be worse for consumers.
Dish has spent about $21 billion over a decade buying wireless spectrum, the airwaves for transmitting data and calls, although Dish hasn't done much with it. Analysts have long been skeptical of whether Dish intends to build its own network or sell the spectrum to others. Now Dish faces up to $2.2 billion in fines if it fails to create a 5G network that serves 70 percent of the country by 2023.
Some analysts have said that Dish has potential as a viable competitor, but a big question is when. Even if it meets the 2023 government-imposed deadline, it still won't reach as many potential customers as Sprint's current-generation 4G network does today.
In the ruling, Marrero said he didn't think Sprint would be a "strong competitor" as an independent company. And he disagreed that Dish wouldn't be a viable competitor or live up to its commitments to build a national wireless network.
AP Technology Writer Matt O'Brien in Providence, Rhode Island, contributed to this story.
