How Pro-competition Rules Can Benefit Consumers: A Look at the Wireless Industry

From Guy Rolnik at ProMarket:

How Pro-competition Rules Can Benefit Consumers: A Look at the Wireless Industry: During the summer of 2014, SoftBank-controlled Sprint abandoned its plans to merge with T-Mobile. The alleged reason was antitrust regulators who “would block a deal in an industry that is dominated by just a few large players.”

Following a meeting of SoftBank’s CEO Masayoshi Son with Donald Trump last December, both Sprint and T-Mobile signaled that the merger might still happen. ...

How would a T-Mobile-Sprint merger affect U.S. consumers?” A new Stigler Center working paper, “Political Determinants of Competition in the Mobile Telecommunication Industry,” by Mara Faccio and Luigi Zingales may help to answer this question. ...

The takeaway

... A lax antitrust enforcement can cost American consumers billions of dollars every year.