FCC Transaction Policy Discriminates Against Some Market Players, Campbell Says
FCC transaction policy is often built on discrimination, said Fred Campbell, executive director of the Center for Boundless Innovation in Technology, Thursday in an opinion piece in Forbes. Campbell compared the orders on T-Mobile’s acquisition of MetroPCS in 2013 and…
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AT&T’s buy of Leap a year later. Both deals involved the buy of “relatively small regional wireless companies who served value-conscious consumers in the mobile market … by large nationwide providers,” he said. MetroPCS had almost twice as many subscribers as Leap, 43 percent more revenue and a larger, faster wireless network, Campbell wrote. The FCC approved T-Mobile’s deal “with an enthusiastic thumbs up,” he said. Meanwhile, the agency imposed conditions on AT&T that included nationwide price regulation, spectrum divestiture, network coverage requirements and quarterly reporting obligations, he said. “The FCC’s bias is not limited to these two transactions. FCC merger proceedings over the last several years indicate that the agency is guilty of invidious discrimination against disfavored companies.”