Reuters Insider - Breakingviews TV: 5G signal
11/02/2019 19:19
Click the following link to watch video: https://share.insider.thomsonreuters.com/link?entryId=0_4kpa2nuh&referenceId=0_4kpa2nuh&pageId=ReutersNews Source: Reuters Insider Description: Feb 11 - T-Mobile US and Sprint tried to merge five years ago, but were knocked back by U.S. antitrust watchdogs. The latest attempt may have better luck thanks to America’s rivalry with China – but at the expense of domestic cellphone competition, as Jen Saba explains. Short Link: https://reut.rs/2GADoDf Video Transcript: So T-Mobile US, and Sprint, Jen, the number three and four cell phone carriers in the US are having their second go to merge. We knew this. They announced this last year. The first time around, though, combining those two, add two of the top four, was just too much for US anti-trust authorities. Right. Maybe not so much this time. Tell us about that. So, yeah. So they pulled the plug on it the first time. That was in 2014. And now, we're looking at a very different scenario and situation, whereas it seems like the big concern right now are international interests particularly a race to build up 5G against China. Right. So 5G is supposed to be the new super fast mobile technology that will also help power connected cars and your fridge and your toaster and everything like that. Everything. There's a huge reason to build this out. Right. And basically, Sprint and T-Mobile are making the case that a combined company will help with this build out. And that's probably true because it could probably do more together than they can separately. Right. But the anti-trust authorities here in the US is supposed to be looking at US competition, right? Yes. So what we have here is kind of will a competition with another power, Trump, sort of domestic competition, so to speak. So to speak. Yes. This was the column that I wrote with my colleague, Gina Chon, is that it looks like that that's probably a good case to make right now. Because that is a big concern for this administration. One, they scotched the deal with Broadcom and Qualcomm and- Right which was also had something to do with 5G R&D chips and stuff like that. Right. On concerns of that. This whole thing with Huawei that's happening right now, on concerns that they're using the equipment for various things, for various methods or whatever. This is a Chinese company which the US national security establishment is not very comfortable with. Yeah. So basically, right now, the administration is just looking at China saying, okay, we need to make sure that we're ahead of the race with 5G and other initiatives, and we don't want them to get ahead of us. And maybe this is one way that we can help that to happen. So you read about this now because we have hearings this week in Congress where the T-Mobile CEO will appear, John Legere. That will start to shed some light on these issues maybe on how some people, at least in the government, are thinking. When will he hear about this merger approval, do we think? I'm not entirely sure partially because there was like a stop clock because of the government shutdown. Right. So we could be craning into another government shutdown. So I guess this is a very long way of say, like, who knows? Right. But hopefully by the summer that they'll make some sort of like a green stamp or not, rescind it back. But right now the FCC seems to be on board with it, and there are other states that have kind of sign off on it. So we'll see. Alright. Well, it's an interesting story. We'll see how that plays out in Congress later in the week. And we'll have more Breakingviews for you tomorrow