The Smartphone Wars: Alarums and Mergers
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<p>This graphic is a bit behind today&#8217;s news; the Feds have <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904583204576542450266408050.html">sued to block the AT&#038;T/T-Mobile merger</a>.  As a T-Mobile customer I wasn&#8217;t looking forward to it;  as a staunch advocate of free markets, I&#8217;m not happy that the Feds have the power to stop it.</p>
<p>My preferences aside, the interesting question is whether blocking this merger can actually prevent further consolidation.   I&#8217;m not very optimistic about this; the economics are what the economics are, and the <a href="http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=2839">real rates of ROI on wireless networks are negative</a>. There is, sadly, every likelihood that smaller carriers like T-Mobile that don&#8217;t merge with larger ones will simply go under, leaving their assets to be snapped up by the remaining incumbents at the going-out-of-business sales.</p>
<p>What we need to fix this situation isn&#8217;t antitrust law but some sort of technological break that changes the economics of the business so it favors capital concentration less. Perhaps <a href="http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=2115">stealth mesh networking</a> would do it?</p>
