Sprint Follows DoJ’s Lead, Sues AT&T and T-Mobile Over Antitrust Concerns

And the dog pile’s on. Less than a week after the Department of Justice moved to block AT&T’s proposed merger with T-Mobile, Sprint has sued both carriers to help ensure the deal doesn’t go through.

Arguing that the merger would violate Section 7 in the Clayton Antitrust Act, Sprint says that a merger would “entrench the duopoly control” of AT&T and Verizon, giving them collective control of over three quarters of the cellphone market.

Sprint also argues that, despite AT&T’s fanciful notions to the contrary, removing T-Mobile as a strong player from the market would skyrocket prices.

AT&T on their part have claimed that the merger would allow them to provide 4G LTE service to a greater number of customers than possible under current arrangements, but that doesn’t hold water, as AT&T has also admitted that even without buying T-Mobile, they’d only need to spend $3.8 billion to get LTE access to 95% of the country… less than a tenth of what they are trying to buy T-Mobile for.

Keep those cannons firing, Sprint. We agree with you: this is totally bogus. Here’s the press release.

Sprint opposes AT&T’s proposed takeover of T-Mobile,” said Susan Z. Haller, vice president-Litigation, Sprint. “With today’s legal action, we are continuing that advocacy on behalf of consumers and competition, and expect to contribute our expertise and resources in proving that the proposed transaction is illegal.”

Sprint’s lawsuit focuses on the competitive and consumer harms which would result from a takeover of T-Mobile by AT&T. The proposed takeover would:

– Harm retail consumers and corporate customers by causing higher prices and less innovation.

– Entrench the duopoly control of AT&T and Verizon, the two “Ma Bell” descendants, of the almost one-quarter of a trillion dollar wireless market. As a result of the transaction, AT&T and Verizon would control more than three-quarters of that market and 90 percent of the profits.

– Harm Sprint and the other independent wireless carriers. If the transaction were to be allowed, a combined AT&T and T-Mobile would have the ability to use its control over backhaul, roaming and spectrum, and its increased market position to exclude competitors, raise their costs, restrict their access to handsets, damage their businesses and ultimately to lessen competition.

John Brownlee

John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.