(Sven Hoppe/picture alliance via Getty Images)
T-Mobile now has government approval for its planned purchase of the regional carrier UScellular’s wireless operations and 30% of its spectrum. The Department of Justice and the Federal Communications Commission didn’t require T-Mobile to make any binding promises about coverage or rate plans.
The DOJ delivered its okay first, announcing Thursday that its investigation into the $4.4 billion transaction, announced by the two companies in May 2024, found no need for the department to intervene.
In the announcement, antitrust assistant attorney general Gail Slater commended UScellular’s focus “on the unmet needs of customers whom they identified as ‘Heartland Families’ or ‘Farmtown Frugals,’” as well as the Chicago company's “strong emphasis on transparency, integrity, and localized customer service.”
But the DOJ concluded that what worked for UScellular in a 4G market could not in today’s 5G world: “[D]ue in part to its limited regional footprint and unique structural limitations, UScellular simply could not keep up with the escalating cost of capital investments in technology required to compete vigorously in the relevant market.”
Slater’s statement did not mention one commitment T-Mobile did make to the government: In a Tuesday letter to Federal Communications Commission chair Brendan Carr, it said it would cease diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies, positions, and vocabulary.
“We have conducted a comprehensive review of T-Mobile’s policies, programs, and activities, and pursuant to this review, T-Mobile is ending its DEI-related policies as described below, not just in name, but in substance,” wrote Mark W. Nelson, executive vice president and general counsel. The four-page document (PDF) details T-Mobile’s actions toward that goal:
- Reassigning “the handful of T-Mobile employees who focused on diversity and inclusion” to other human-resources roles focused on “employee culture and engagement.”
- Scrubbing “any references to DEI” from T-Mobile’s sites.
- Continuing existing hiring policies in which the company aims to “cast a wide net to attract the best people based on their skills, aptitude, and growth mindset” without involving “hiring quotas, goals, or percentages based on race, sex, sexual orientation, or other protected characteristics.”
- Wiping out any references to DEI in employee training materials and opening “any training or mentorship programs” that were once open only to “employees of a particular protected characteristic” to all employees.
- Changing procurement policies to get rid of “specific targets or goals for diverse spend” and instead focusing those policies on small businesses in general.
Carr approvingly shared the letter in a post on X Wednesday, writing, “Another good step forward for equal opportunity, nondiscrimination, and the public interest.”
Friday afternoon, the FCC approved the deal along with two other telecom transactions: the European satellite operator SES’s purchase of its US competitor Intelsat and T-Mobile’s purchase of the fiber provider MetroNet.
The commission declined to impose any conditions on T-Mobile’s business practices after concluding the UScellular transaction. Its 124-page evaluation (PDF) emphasizes how T-Mobile could leverage those new assets to expand its popular fixed-wireless broadband.
“In addition, T-Mobile will have the ability to offer improved fixed wireless access (FWA) service to current and new FWA users with higher speeds and capacity than was possible with either of the standalone companies,” that report says. “In an economy increasingly dependent upon access to broadband services for innovation in a wide variety of sectors and services, these network deployment synergies will yield significant public interest benefits.”
The Rural Wireless Association, a small Washington, D.C.-based trade group, said it was “astonished by the FCC staff’s failure to place any guardrails on the T-Mobile/UScellular transaction” in a statement on Monday. RWA warned that this unconditional approval “will leave rural consumers with fewer choices and higher prices” and would allow T-Mobile to drop “UScellular’s existing roaming agreements with rural carriers.”
Carr has been bullish about the potential for fixed wireless to provide competition for home broadband, but the DOJ statement included a warning that further consolidation among the big three carriers could cut into the choices available to wireless customers. “This transaction, and two other deals contingent on its closing, will consolidate yet more spectrum in the Big 3’s oligopoly, which controls more than 80% of the mobile wireless spectrum in the country,” Slater said.