Last week, the Chicago-based 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected T-Mobile’s appeal to dismiss a class action suit over its Sprint merger. As reported by Reuters, customers of AT&T and Verizon Wireless filed the lawsuit, who argued that the $26 billion merger led to the increase in prices. It was also revealed that the carriers were not involved in the suit. Instead, a total of seven subscribers filed the class-action suit in behalf of the millions of AT&T and Verizon subscribers affected by the merger. 

A Finnish research firm released data supporting the claim last week, which showed the T-Mobile-Sprint merger leading to the increase in prices. Even though this issue was raised back when the merger was still being proposed, it was not blocked successfully. Four years since the merger in April 2020 and this is still a major concern. 

When the issue was first raised, Dish Network was presented as the fourth carrier and would replace Sprint to even out the competition. Unfortunately, Dish has been struggling to maintain mobile customers and still needs more capital and buildout requirements by next year. 

Unfortunately, New Street Research believes that T-Mobile “will win the litigation and not be forced to pay damages.” This is because “the court is likely to find that there are too many events independent of the merger to explain the price increases.”

As of this writing, we’ll have to wait for further developments of this case.

Source: Fierce Network