Retroactive vs. Radioactive Rule Making

If AT&T and T-Mobile successfully merge after the DOJ and FCC came out against the plan, I will send them a Boston Red Sox “Why Not Us” T-Shirt from when they defeated the Yankees in the AL championship and went on to win the World Series. 

Retroactive
I say this because the statements being made by people about the merger are somewhat like “The Curse of the Bambino” with decades of superstition being applied to AT&T’s Death Star Logo. One of the message boards I frequent compared AT&T to the Leave it Beaver character “Eddie Haskell” who would go from being a nice guy in front of the parents to being a schemer with his peers. That show ended in 1963 and through re-runs people from the 70s may have seen it, but clearly the metaphor is old. 

Radioactive
And old is the rationale for saying no to the merger. The fundamental belief by many is that AT&T which was broken up in 1982 has been rebuilt since then. That is a nice and simple yet wrong analysis. AT&T may be the second largest carrier today in the United States, but it is not the monopoly monster. The DOJ did not want the merger because T-Mobile was an innovator, ignoring the fact that it was AT&T that opened the door to iPhone. People talk about them having dominant market pricing ignoring the reality that wireless is becoming part of the broadband market and the pricing of services these days is cross elastic with your choice of Cable, Satelite, Wireline and Wireless.

No Halve Life in Sight
The problem here is the rules being applied that include such archaic terms as telephonic and telegraphic systems are clearly radioactive. The point is that old rules in old heads give us rules aimed at being “hard on the Beaver” (Animal House 1978).   They have nothing to do with the market realities and the reality is that AT&T sees the need to stay close to Verizon in size and infrastructure. 

Dan Hesse, CEO of Sprint, did a great job of talking about the merger as a “too big to fail” bad idea. At the same time we have to remember that T-Mobile was in talks to merge with Sprint. I like Sprint’s vision of its future and it has done a lot of things right including shedding the wireline residential business.

Bill Wilson and Dr. Robert Smith taught me that insanity is to do the same over and over and expect different results. If the DOJ can allow Mobile and Exxon to merge, force the merger of Nationwide with Bank of America, how is it that the old rules get to live in Telecom? (I would throw in a shameless plug for the show in Austin, but instead I will tell you ITEXPO now includes a Tuesday luncheon about the death of the PSTN).

The New Rules I want to see are not about the big guys it’s about the Internet and enabling small access providers to succeed. That should be the focus of regulation. Instead we have the stimulus monies going to satellite companies further detaching access from the community.

When you look at our national status in broadband deployments and ask “Why Not Us,” don’t blame it on the monopoly that no longer exists.

Want to learn more about 4G wireless technologies? Then be sure to attend the 4GWE Conference, collocated with TMC’s ITEXPO West 2011, taking place Sept. 13-15, 2011, in Austin, Texas. The 4GWE Conference provides unmatched networking opportunities and a robust conference program representing the wireless ecosystem. The conference not only brings together the best and brightest in the wireless industry, it actually spans the communications and technology industry. To register, click here.