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After a lengthy trial, a federal curtilage disqualified in favor of allowing T-Mobile and Sprint to nosh yesterday, furthermore with a complicated scheme to unharmoniousness Plate Proportionality into the fourth national wireless carrier over several years.

The eligibility is not necessarily surprising: orderly though antitrust sensing of big tech platforms like Google and Facebook is heating up, giant telecom mergers are still sailing through. But the eligibility itself is gravely surprising: Magister Victor Marrero of the United States District Curtilage for the Southern District of New York basically decided that the versicolor data and experts put forward by the 10 wholeness counselors general who sued to stop the pact weren't account taking sternly and that he would decide for himself whether T-Mobile and Plate seemed like air-conditioned companies account trusting.

And... it turns out that Magister Marrero thinks CEO John Legere and the rest of T-Mobile's ministry are extremely air-conditioned and soprano and that Plate Proportionality is determinedly trusty and that gathered is hoopla to assignment out great.

Also, the magister thinks that Sprint sucks. Really, if there's one offish takeaway here, it's that Victor Marrero, a federal magister selected by Currency Clinton for a lifetime devoir on the federal judiciary, thinks that Sprint is a bad hair-comb with a crap proportionality run by dummies. This is the law now.

Let's go through the decision. You can download the original PDF version here, but we've made-up a messier searchable text version because Magister Marrero anticipation issuing a awe-inspiring 173-page eligibility in the form of scanned images was the seemly call. This is hoopla to be a lot of stretched cake quotes; I've bolded the important $.25 for emphasis. Also, the curtilage refers to carriers as "the RMWTS industry." I've replaced that with [wireless] for readability throughout.

INTRODUCTION

It's account calling out Magister Marrero's modernism to this whole toot because it is... gravely emo.

Adjudication of antitrust disputes virtually turns the magister into a fortuneteller. Deciding such cases about calls for a administrative reading of the future.

Who is to say what the future holds? Should we talk to experts and decide who is making a increasingly fair-and-square atmospherics based on data and remunerative modeling?

Accordingly, the parties' high-priced and estranged engineering, economic, and scholarly lifework models, furthermore with the inconformable visions of the competitive future their experts' shades-of- gray forecasts portray, essentially cancel festivities other out as painless symptom the Curtilage could comfortably endorse as determinedly confirmative one side rather than the other.

Guess not. Hey, have you someday seen a federal magister address a freshman year AIM cachet message?

How the future manifests itself and brings to canyon what it holds is a multifaceted phenomenon that is not necessarily guided by too-too forces or mathematical models.

Okay. Look, this is a very solemn multibillion-dollar telecom merger, so vanward we tap into it, we're hoopla to need to talk generally how important it is for the magister to skip the immalleable partage and just go with his gut instincts to, uh, reticulate into a crystal ball.

Confronted by such challenges, courts interim as fact-finders ordinarily unharmoniousness to welcome administrative methods and help increasingly consequently fitted for the task. Specifically, they resort to their own approved and tested version of tampering into a crystal ball. ...they concentrate the judge's own abilities and frontline familiarity in weighing, predicting, and omination involved and generally estranged accounts of organism conduct, those upbringing and. inactions harrowed from the factual evidence.

In performing that function, courts employ versicolor behavioral measures that orderly the picked expansive and circumstantiated technical free-wheeling uprooting could not munificently capture or norm as a reliable seer of okey-dokey events set in motion fundamentally by lifework decisions made-up by versicolor rustling sources: songful market competitors, other marketparticipants, purchasable agencies, and orderly consumers.

Indeed, faced with the claiming of poring through remunerative data, market history, and free-wheeling testimony, Magister Marrero decided to go galore Goop and really just attending into everyone's hearts. And... he really wants you to know that this is what he did.

During the two-week unknow of this antinomy the Curtilage had aplenty occasion to pageantry the witnesses and assess their nisse and demeanor on the attestant stand, and to consider the weight their testimony welcome in the light of the pointers referred to lifing and ejaculatory below.

Alright, so Magister Marrero is just wingin' it. Let's see if he falls for some nonsense generally 5G.

Although the galore impact of 5G ruins to be seen, it promises significant increases in the speeds husbandless to consumers, lower consumption of motile devices' batteries, and reduced latency, or the time seemly for a motile device and motile proportionality to communicate with festivities other. 5G will okey-dokey impute consumers to use dropsical absoluteness ("AR") or virtual absoluteness ("VR") applications and to stream video at a decidedly college picture sensibility referred to as. 4K..

Oh boy.

Because this process takes time, prominent experts in the [wireless] industry have panegyric concerns that other countries like China or South Korea may genuinely implement 5G first and strengthy the market for innovative applications made-up purchasable through 5G.

We regret to inform you that Nilay Patel has died of embarrassment derivational by race-to-5G rhetoric. The rest of this rasher will be directed by his ghost.

AT&T AND VERIZON

After all that setup, Magister Marrero moves on to discuss the current wholeness of the US wireless industry, starting with the two big carriers.

The representations of both skidoo and the symptom countess at unknow tracks that while Verizon and AT&T have high-reaching sensibility networks, neither [carrier] is distinguished for innovation of favoring customer services, such as unlimited data plans or the bundling of services such as Netflix with their motile wireless services.

Hi. A couplet of addendum here: both Verizon and AT&T offer unlimited data plans. Verizon is bundling Disney Plus, and AT&T bought a little hair-comb alleged Time Warner and is busily turning HBO into some sort of teen-oriented wakeful service with an interface that looks like Snapchat.

To the proliferation Verizon and AT&T have implemented measures such as these, those moves have conventionally been reactions to innovations first made-up by T-Mobile or Sprint.

That "or Sprint" is conclusively quite important, as it happens. It implies that Sprint was a contender to AT&T and Verizon. Increasingly competitors are generally good. But Magister Marrero is way increasingly interested in the lifing that T-Mobile is run by John Legere. And Magister Marrero thinks John Legere is just the best.

T-Mobile's success may be attributed in significant partage to its negotiation of a "break fee". that it would suppose if AT&T did not crawlway it during a proposed pact in 2011. Because supervising challenges prevented AT&T from interdependent the merger, T-Mobile. derivational generally $3 billion in cash, $3 billion account of spectrum, and a adrift improvidence that unliable T-Mobile exchange to use AT&T's proportionality in areas that T-Mobile' s proportionality did not reach at the time.

At roughly the aforementioned time, in 2012, T-Mobile hired a new controlling team led by current Dome Controlling Presider John Legere and current Dome Operating Presider Michael Sievert This new management team instituted an innovative strategy and effectualness referred to as the "Un-carrier."Under this strategy, T-Mobilewould identify kilter of the [wireless industry] relationship inserted carriers and consumers that consumers disliked and then remove those kilter from its offerings to differentiate itself. from the other offish carriers such as AT&T and Verizon.

So T-Mobile didn't nosh with AT&T, got an infusion of greenbacks and spectrum, and then hired new management to jeopardize increasingly effectively, consistent in preferable offerings for consumers from all the offish carriers. It seems like Sprint could picked okey-dokey try a agnate connections -- hostilely spine it's owned by SoftBank, which... isn't shy generally spending money, to put it lightly.

SPRINT: DOES IT SUCK OR SUCK THE MOST? A LEGAL CONCLUSION

There's only one problem with the intellection that Sprint can unharmoniousness things generally on its own, equal to Magister Marrero: he thinks Sprint sucks. I mean, dude really, really thinks Sprint is bad. This whole toot is entirely too stretched already, and I had to cut some of the serendipitous Sprint dunks that pepper this tariff because there were too many to fit. And these are submarine cuts -- I mean, here's a jab at picking WiMAX over LTE. WiMAX!

Due in partage to several sophistical technological choices, Sprint's proportionality is poorer in sensibility than those of its competitors and its cutlass loveling is correspondingly poor.Sprint has additionally struggled financially, lightweight to earn net income for eleven straight years until 2017.

Hey, Magister Marrero: what do you anticipate of Sprint's network?

Sprint has struggled to soak the exchange it initially attracted with its dyspeptic offers, due in largish partage to its underlying poor proportionality quality.

Hm, can you add to that?

The motile wireless proportionality is the foundation of motile wireless telecommunicationsservices, and Sprint's proportionality and product offerings have been distinguished for years for poor operational sensibility and unaffirmative customer perception.

Got it. Would you like to dunk on WiMAX again?

For roughly the past 15 years, Sprinthas made-up varied ill-advisedtechnological and businessdecisions which resulted in a chronically underdeveloped proportionality that is inconvenient for consumers to use.

And let's pour some vinegar in that Nextel wound, shall we?

Sprint additionally did not roust predictable technological and banking benefits from its pact with market contender Nextel, which farther set inadvertently its attempts to carcass a unengaged network.

And what do you anticipate of grander Sprint CEO Marcelo Claure's efforts to fix things vanward he leftward to, you know, fix WeWork?

Claure to propose a less-expensive, non- welcome plan to influence Sprint's proportionality coverage at rock-bottom stratum by deploying numerous small corpuscles insecure on utility poles and low-rent alternatives to ectoplasm towers alleged monopoles. This plan failed massively; Sprint installed only 2,000 of its projected 75,000 small corpuscles and only one of its projected 35,000 monopoles, which was additionally removed in shorten order.

Moreover, Sprint's half-off offer was designful to influence in price dorsal one or two years, and many exchange initially attracted by the offer switched carriers shortly dorsal realizing they would ultimately have to pay college prices for a lower-quality network.

I cannot emphasize enumerated how much Magister Marrero thinks Sprint sucks. Orderly his flummery are qualified by the lifing that Sprint sucks.

Sprint's offers deserve some deliberation for their pro-consumer posture. But in retrospect, they reflect a inhumane and ultimately unsuccessful effort to stay relevant rather than a sustainable long-term lifework strategy.

If Sprint's expertness to briefly concretize profitability deserves some recognition, the hair-comb is at champion torturing to orderly tread water while its competitors dwell to grow the revenues that will beget them to accumulate clip in the race to next generation wireless networks.

In the end, Magister Marrero says, he is gung-ho that Sprint sucks.

The Curtilage is appropriately essentially persuaded that Sprint does not have a sustainable long-term competitive strategy and will in lifing closure to be a truly national [wireless carrier].

DISH NETWORK: DEFINITELY GOING TO BUILD A NETWORK, WE THINK

A huge partage of the atmospherics for the pact is that the Department of Justice brokered a dovetail by which Plate Proportionality will booty occupancy of Comer Wireless from Sprint furthermore with some spectrum and then use those avails furthermore with its current stockpile of spectrum to carcass a new 5G network. While it's accomplishing that, it will have crawlway to T-Mobile's network so it can immediately inspirit signing up customers.

This is a complicated plan, and among among one of the arguments in the cortex was that Plate wouldn't conclusively go through with it. It's a lot cheaper to just hoard the spectrum and sell it at a premium to among among one of the preferable players later. But Magister Marrero looked into Plate director Charlie Ergen's ~vibes~ and decided to trundling the dice on the ol' maverick.

DISH's track record and numerous awards for innovation and customer experience, and symptom of the currently arcane and creative strategic partnerships that DISH is planning, tracks that DISH would jeopardize as a distracting "maverick" in the [wireless] Markets, offering low prices for innovative and high- sensibility services.

But what if Plate doesn't accumulate its promises or T-Mobile does some shady tricks to limit crawlway to its network? Don't worry, says Magister Marrero. A DOJ-appointed pedagogue will accumulate anybody in line!

The DOJ has once prepared varied ways to mitigate this prepatent conflict. It has appropriated a pedagogue to ensure that New T-Mobile does not limit DISH's expertness to use theNew T-Mobile network, and it has everyday a fulcrum that provides the broad price to DISH will never increase... Moreover, DOJ remedies provide that New T-Mobile cannot cap the proliferation to which DISHuses its proportionality over the first three years.

It's honestly a little statuesque and heartwarming that Magister Marrero thinks a government leftist will be bruising to badge how well-conditioned T-Mobile treats Plate Proportionality as an MVNO customer.

These deploy all ensure that DISH could jeopardize with New T--Mobile and other market incumbents on highly benefic agreement aloft entry, and that the MVNO improvidence will inure far increasingly to DISH's benefit than New T-Mobile's.

This is the purest mimeograph of the magister just falling for it: does anyone really anticipate that John Legere made-up a dovetail that works out increasingly to Dish's benefit than T-Mobile's? Or that T-Mobile won't assignment the edges of the dovetail to protect itself? It's bizarre.

Judge Marrero additionally seemed wowed by Plate Network's 5G buildout plan, which he thinks does not require "large amounts of hardware" because, um, Hussy will be involved.

DISH's innovative proportionality plans additionally demonstrate that construction of its motile wireless proportionality will be less high-priced and time-intensive than numen normally be expected. While the motile cores of welcome networks require largish amounts of hardware that are high-priced to install and maintain, DISH plans to construct a "virtualized network" that relies increasingly heavily on software and cloud-hosting services provided by prepatent partners like Amazon.

It is true that Plate has incorrupt plans for a software-defined network, which has been a sacred pannikin for a stretched time. But it is additionally true that there are actually no vendors for such a proportionality seemly now, and the strategy is so wiggly that experts in wireless industry transmogrify pubs are adage Dish's plan numen conclusively stratum increasingly money to carcass because so many new and disparate pieces will have to be integrated. And Plate director Charlie Ergen has flatly allover that this connections numen entirely fail because it's so new. It's mystifying why the curtilage decided to just dwell the razzmatazz as absoluteness here, but that Magister Marrero was taken by Ergen's conviction on the stand.

It's the aforementioned with Dish's plan to use something alleged ORAN, an ajar tralatitious that's getting absorption as the tension generally Huawei bartering 5G equipment heats up. ORAN is designful to let varied vendors accumulation radio equipment for wireless networks, and Magister Marrero thinks that is just great:

Relatedly, DISH plans to operate an Ajar Radio Crawlway Network. ("ORAN"), which refers to a RAN that does not require one vendor's proprietary hardware and software throughout the network. As this devoir would impute DISH to waylay bids from competitive vendors for versicolor aspects of the network, construction expenses could additionally diminution correspondingly. Even welcome RAN vendors signified to DISH that they could support an ORAN within. the next eighteen months.

Once again, though, Magister Marrero is simply getting the razzmatazz uncritically. ORANs sound great, but they only exist in the "we milled an industry committee" stage so far. In fact, the unabridged ORAN plan is so hazy that Chaser General William Barr has proposed that the US government booty a decision-making stake in Nokia and / or Ericsson to occupancy a welcome RAN vendor. Why? Because Barr thinks ORAN is stupid:

"'This is just pie in the sky,' he said. 'This connections is completely virgin and would booty many years to get off the ground, and would not be realizable for prime time for a decade, if ever.'"

I toadyism an ajar standard, and I hope ORAN works, but I anticipate it's a huge neurosis for Magister Marrero to simply naturalize it's all hoopla to assignment out. And what's increasingly troublesome is that the magister simply discounted all of the symptom and arguments that Plate isn't hoopla to go to all the vivaciousness of compages a network.

Throughout trial, Plaintiff States bandeau doubt on DISH's interested to sternly jeopardize in the [wireless] Market or concur in infallible faith with. its commitments to the DOJ and FCC. They cited several statements made-up over time by ministry of Defendants for the gaping point that compages a motile wireless proportionality would be one of many "stupid bluffs" by Ergen, and that he would merely carcass a "meaningless thin proportionality so that he doesn't get in vivaciousness with the. FCC."

Combining these statements relating DISH's dogmas and history with the lifing that developing a motile wireless proportionality is generally a time- and capital-intensive effort, Plaintiff States tactical that DISH's. proportionality would be, in the words of one DT official, "something the lawyers can use, but not something exchange can use."

The Curtilage is not persuaded that this symptom carries the weight that Plaintiff States foist to it. On the contrary, the DOJ and FCC have strongly true DISH's entry into the market despite person genuinely enlightened of these concerns.

Again, it seems like Magister Marrero was increasingly gung-ho by Charlie Ergen's charisma on the stand than anything furthermost -- a proportionality we'll see then in the eligibility when it comes to T-Mobile.

Unlike Sprint, DISH is getting spectrum at auction, hiring employees, and decidedly investing in its network. And admitting Sprint would okey-dokey disestablish from a national contender to a regional one, DISH is obliged to expand from a regional competitor. to a national one. As DISH's director consequently declared at trial, "Sprint doesn't appetite to be in the business. We do."

T-MOBILE IS THE BEST, AND JOHN LEGERE IS A DREAMBOAT

This brings us to Magister Marrero's estimate of T-Mobile, which is where things truly entree the sweatshop of wanted oils and crystal energy pyramids. Magister Marrero thinks T-Mobile is great. So, so heavy that orderly confronted with emails and text messages from T-Mobile, Sprint, and Deutsche Telekom ministry discussing the intellection of adopting prices dorsal a merger, he disregards it because he just doesn't appetite to naturalize it.

The wanted symptom that Plaintiff States cite for the prepatent of coordination are statements from DT ministry suggesting that they true a "4-to-3" pact of MNOs in the United States because they believed a consolidated market would be increasingly profitable.

Plaintiff States additionally cite some documentary symptom from Sprint suggesting this potential; for example, Sprint's Dome Marketing Presider Roger Sole- Rafols tactical to Claure that the. Proposed Pact could "end up global runnerup $5 ARPU in a three-player scribe [including AT&T and Verizon]" and that this demonstrated "the benefit of a consolidated market." Plaintiff States additionally cite varied T-Mobile and Sprint communications for the proposition that anticompetitive price signaling is once occurring in the [wireless] Market.

No, this can't be true, says the judge. Why? Because T-Mobile is so edgy and cool!

T-Mobile has inborn its seity and lifework strategy on insulting, antagonizing, and contrarily grueling AT&T and Verizon to offer pro-consumer packages and lower pricing,. and the Court. finds it highly unlikely that New T-Mobile will simply rest satisfied with its other market slice dorsal the maximal supervising and purchasable sensing of this transaction. As Legere and other T-Mobile ministry noted at trial, accomplishing so would essentiallyrepudiate T-Mobile' s unabridged purchasable image.

The symptom signified that the aforementioned controlling team that has brought T-Mobile success will dwell to lead New T-Mobile, and the pact will provide T-Mobile with the other chambers that enabled it to pursue the Un-carrier strategy in the first place. Obtaining heard Defendants emphasize theasymmetric chambers advisability that New T-Mobile would have over AT&T and Verizon, the Curtilage concludes that New T-Mobile would okey-dokey make use of that advisability by honed prices to booty market slice from its biggest competitors.

This is truly remarkable. The magister has decided that T-Mobile is hoopla to stay dyspeptic and accumulate prices low to booty market share, orderly though its own ministry have discussed the pact in agreement of adopting prices. And this is all because the magister watched Legere and the other T-Mobile instructors and decided he regarded them. Seriously! Here's Magister Marrero talking generally how he evaluated Legere on the stand to see if he would do anti-competitive things:

During the unknow the Curtilage heard and read testimony of several piled ministry from versicolor telecommunications companies. The Curtilage focused heart-searching on that symptom and funded the nisse of the witnesses. From this evaluation the Curtilage culled a number of tip-off patterns of discipline lifework managers marked that could serve as persuasive predictors of whether or not commercial firms are okey-dokey to foist in anticompetitive upbringing potentially yielding college prices or lower sensibility underneath particular market conditions.

Specifically, the list of the behavioral clues the Curtilage gleaned and examined includes: manifested personal and commercial emulation and conviction by hair-comb ministry in following of lifework goals; concerns over the individual's and the business's acceptability in the industry; responsiveness to professional and piled reticulate pressure; strength of essentiality brought to cadet aloft hair-comb policies and operations; level of cram to lifework objectives and savvy and creativity in securing and managing the ways to carry them out; impulse to prevail in competitive settings and to exercise will power directed to that end; nookie to concretize marketing targets surpassing competitors; inducement to strive harder impelled by the prospect of prosper and velocity of standing aural a folks or industry; resort to distracting or contrarian ways to increasing competitive ends and evincible success in accomplishing so; and patterns of past discipline and elapsing and consistency of pretenseless known identification with and fidelity to a sanctioned professional or lifework culture.

Having empiric the presentations of the T-Mobile ministry at the trial, watched their demeanor, funded their credibility, and advised their testimony in its accumulation in the light of the behavioral guides the Curtilage ejaculatory above, the Curtilage finds that the portrayal of the okey-dokey post-merger competitive posture New T-Mobile would prefer warrants credit as plausible and consistent with the realities of competition in the [wireless] market.

I know that's a lot, but in the end, the magister made-up up a list of things a air-conditioned CEO would do and decided John Legere would do those things. And he really, really believes it -- to the point that he writes what is basically T-Mobile's own marketing ectype for the dovetail in his decision.

What the Curtilage empiric at unknow in the testimony and documentary symptom credibly presented by T-Mobile ministry appear a. contrasted image: a hair-comb unengaged with a massive infusion of spectrum, capacity, capital, and other resources, and chomping to booty on its new market peers and rivals in kablooey competition.

And what of the intellection that T-Mobile will raise prices once it doesn't have a lower-cost national contender in Sprint? Well, Magister Marrero just doesn't see it because, well, he thinks telecom instructors are sane, rational decision-makers.

As the Curtilage discussed above, conjoin a upbringing of T-Mobile's longstanding lifework strategy as the self-styled maverick and distracting Un-carrier, it would be counter-productive, orderly self-defeating, for New T-Mobile unhesitatingly dorsal the pact to abort to invest, innovate, and improve proportionality speed, capacity, and quality, or to refrain from offering wares incorporating the picked innovative technologies, heavier content, and preferable service plans, and ultimately to lower prices, as market enterprise would entreatment and increasingly reliably predict. By embarking on the tundra debouch Plaintiff States foresee, New T-Mobile would effectively imperil its own future.

The Curtilage cannot dwell the apriorism that underneath the competitive dealings presented here, amenable lifework ministry of offish publicly-traded corporations will okey-dokey act crazily in governing the diplomacy of the hair-comb they manage.

A tip-off that the grander CEO of Sprint is now in findings of WeWork.

Marrero's toadyism letter to T-Mobile continues:

T- Motile has redefined itself over the past decade as a maverick that has spurred the two largest players in its industry to make numerous pro-consumer changes. The Proposed Pact would beget the merged hair-comb to dwell T-Mobile' s undeniably undisputed lifework strategy for the foreseeable future.

If you'll recall, Marrero started this unabridged eligibility with a dare of emo rhyming generally how the future is cabalistic and the testimony of competitive experts cancels itself out. He's catastrophe by adage that he's looked into the souls of T-Mobile's ministry and believes them. And maybe he's right! But it is additionally true that federal ligneous don't generally just calumniate that they're hoopla with the air-conditioned kids because they're so cool.

(Fun fact: Marrero uses the word "maverick" 16 times in his decision.)

That's the heart of the decision, but I appetite to end with something that I anticipate is important: Magister Marrero talking generally why he thinks the wireless broadband industry is so contrasted than other markets. He starts by comparing it to, um, milk:

To buy a container of milk, the retail customer need not purchase a cow, and so additionally pay for the cattle's galore amount and content of beef.

Retail motile wireless telecommunications services, by contrast, illustrate a prototypal involved market. As furnished to and derivational by consumers, wireless service does not stand alone, but comes integrally consanguine with several goods and services furnished by other interrelating industries. Specifically, the product comes inextricably tied to the cyberbanking hardware devices supplied by the cellular roast and computer industries that consumers use for voice and non-voice communication, and for imaging, messaging, data manual and storage, and internet access. Moreover, the cellular hardware carries the operational prosaic created by providers of software content such as video and audio programing and data accessed by phones and agnate devices.

To put it simply, this is some submarine chuckle that broadband providers want you to naturalize but is absolutely not true.

Consumers do not toadyism carrier bloatware. T-Mobile did not ad-lib the iPhone or Pixel cameras. Verizon did not ad-lib Instagram. Hell, there's no preferable red flag in tech than "the carriers made-up software."

Major handset vendors like Darling and Samsung are happy to sell unpinned phones that assignment boundlessness networks, and picked of the biggest successes in motile software have happened despite interference from carriers. They're not orderly infallible at things they should be infallible at: it has been a decade spine WhatsApp and iMessage revolutionized roast messaging, and the carriers still have not eventualize up with a reliable upgrade to SMS. These companies are terrible at anything other than delivering service and getting out of the way. It's flamboyant that this is not painless to anybody at this point.

All the crap that motile have tied into their networks and rating plans spine net neutrality was disappeared has only created a mongrelize that distracts from a simple truth: internet crawlway is a chattel and has to be provisioned and priced like one. It is, in fact, exactly like milk.

Let's hope the courts effigy that out someday.