The recent round of quarterly earnings reports for mobile service providers doesn't bear directly on prospects for approval or rejection of the AT&T bid to buy T-Mobile USA, despite the fact that T-Mobile became the fifth smaller carrier to post disappointing results in the last two weeks.Sprint, MetroPCS, Leap Wireless and Clearwire all reported subscriber losses, as did T-Mobile USA. The reason the quarterly results do not necessarily lend credence to either the argument to approve or deny the transaction is that the results can be seen as support for either position.
Most observers have been expecting consolidation in the market, simply because of the competitive pressures. That might tend to support the argument for a consolidation, even though there will be room for legitimate concern about market structure.
The other argument is that smaller competitors already are finding it difficult to compete with AT&T and Verizon, and that the market is in danger of being dangerously concentrated. That argument will be clearer if (when) Verizon Wireless itself grows by acquiring Sprint.
No comments:
Post a Comment