With Dish Network owner EchoStar selling $23 billion in valuable spectrum to AT&T, any pretense that the TV provider wil...

With Dish Network owner EchoStar selling $23 billion in valuable spectrum to AT&T, any pretense that the TV provider will become a serious wireless competitor is dead. But the project was always doomed to fail, and despite plenty of assurances by the Trump administration and other companies involved, the very obvious writing was always on the wall.
Back in 2020, the first Trump administration rubber-stamped T-Mobile’s $26 billion merger with Sprint. There were endless warnings from unions, economists, and consumer groups that the consolidation would harm US wireless competition, resulting in layoffs, worse service, and higher prices — warnings that quickly came true.
More than 9,000 T-Mobile employees lost their jobs, the wireless sector stopped seriously competing on price, and T-Mobile increasingly began to behave exactly like the competitors it once promised to disrupt.
The first Trump administration approved the deal without even reading the proposal. Trump’s “antitrust enforcer” at the Department of Justice at the time, Makan Delrahim, was criticized for using his free time and personal devices to help the companies gain approval. T-Mobile also found itself under fire for ramping up patronage of Trump hotels to try and seal the deal. (It’s the kind of pay-to-play arrangements that have become decidedly uglier during Trump’s second term.)
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