Federal Communications Commission chair undecisive on potential Sprint, T-Mobile merger

On Monday, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler said he was skeptical about a potential consolidation between the top three and four mobile companies in the US during a meeting with Softbank Corp Masayoshi Son. According to an FCC official who has been briefed about the meeting, Son, who is also the chairman of Sprint, met with the head of the telecommunications regulator together with Sprint Chief Executive Dan Hesse..

The FCC official said Wheeler expressed his skepticism about the merger between the two US wireless providers, Sprint Corp and T-Mobile US. Wheeler reportedly also said that he will be keeping an open mind about the transaction that could happen in the near future, and echoed comments made by chief William Baer in general. It could be recalled that Baer gave long odds that a regulatory approval will be handed out to a future Sprint-T-Mobile consolidation, obviously due to competition concerns.

Reuters said Sprint has redoubled their efforts in persuading regulators in the US to see the benefits of consolidation smaller mobile companies, and that potential mergers demand a fair review, according to a source who was familiar with the proceedings. The source said Sprint's argument was that the current US markets is not serving its customers well due to the fact that the two top players, Verizon Communications Inc and AT&T Inc, are currently dominating the market. Moreover, the source said Sprint reasoned that the companies' dominance had made the US market a challenge for smaller players.

Although Reuters was able to obtain official comments from FCC, Sprint or Softbank, a person close to Softbank said, "I'm not unduly surprised by the FCC chairman's skepticism. I feel it's a rather typical reaction."

Sources disclosed to the news agency that Softbank has been engaging with T-Mobile, which is controlled by Deutsche Telekom, to acquire T-Mobile. The potential deal has been doubted upon due to the fact that merger plans could halt or could be discarded due to failure of securing approval from both the US Justice Department and the FCC, the sources added.

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Federal Communications Commission, Masayoshi Son, Softbank Corp, Sprint Corp, T-Mobile US

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