12/24/2023 0 Comments Att quick tunes![]() ![]() As Josh has pointed out in his Congressional testimony, a maverick is a term of art in antitrust, and it’s just not enough that a firm may be offering products at a lower price–there is nothing “maverick-y” about a firm that offers a different, less valuable product at a lower price. On coordinated effects, I think the claim that T-Mobile is a maverick is pretty easily refuted, and not only in the Enterprise realm.The reality is that Enterprise was not a key part of T-Mobile’s business model–if it occupied any cognizable part of it at all– and it can hardly be considered a maverick in a market in which it doesn’t actually operate. Of course, the DOJ claims this was all about to change, but that’s not a very convincing story coupled with the fact that DT, T-Mobile’s parent, was reducing its investment in the company anyway. But–and this is, of course an empirical matter I will have to look in to–I highly doubt that T-Mobile plays anything like this role in the Enterprise market, at least for those enterprises that fit the DOJ’s overly-broad description. But it has one significant problem: The DOJ also seems to be stressing a coordinated effects story, making T-Mobile out to be a disruptive maverick disciplining the bigger carriers. ![]() I would question how common this actually is, however, given that, I’m sure, most businesses that buy group cell plans are not IBM but are instead pretty small and pretty local, but still, it’s a good ploy. This is actually a good play on their part, on the one hand, because it is more sensible to claim a national market for business customers who may be purchasing plans for widely-geographically-dispersed employees. The DOJ distinguishes between the business (“Enterprise”) market and the consumer market.I’m sure we’ll have much, much more to say on the topic, but here are a few things that jump out at me from perusing the complaint: As Josh noted, the DOJ filed a complaint today to block the merger.
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