It was a sight to see with Sprint and AT&T sitting at the CEO roundtable discussion early yesterday morning at CTIA 2011. Can anyone guess what some of the conversation was about? Well, perhaps the good news (depending on how you view the deal with AT&T) for some T-Mobile faithful is that Sprint seems prepared to fight the proposed merger with the belief it will hurt the consumer through increased pricing and less competition.
“When one competitor has that much buying power they can determine the fate of different products,” Fared Adib, a Sprint executive in charge of handsets, said on the sidelines of the CTIA conference in Orlando, Florida.
Dan Hesse, Sprint CEO also expressed his concerns during the keynote panel of CEO’s in no uncertain terms. “I am concerned about it.” Perhaps with some level of humor Hesse also stated that the deal had ruined his Sunday.
It remains to be seen what lengths Sprint will go to oppose the merger although it’s clear they’ll submit a list of concerns to the FCC and DOJ. The real question is will Sprint be able to block the merger or is that their real goal? It’s hard to know exactly what Sprint’s endgame is but they might force AT&T to make more divestures than they would have if the deal ran unopposed.