Highly unlikely Net Neutrality is important and I've supported the idea since 1999. But I do not believe, "It will end the Internet as we know it," attributed to FCC Commissioner Michael Copps. No one is likely to show you The Washington Post when you ask for the NY Times. AT&T's DirecTV Now will not appeared when you thought you were going to Netflix. Ending Net Neutrality will raise costs for those sending video, disproportionately more for smaller companies and start-ups. Google YouTube & Facebook have enough clout to get a much lower rate. Much or most of the extra cost will be passed on to consumers. Most of the telcos' extra earnings will not go to better networks. CEOs and CFOs across the world have said most would go to shareholders. 

"If Net Neutrality Is Repealed, the Internet Will Die!” has been said many of my most progressive friends. They are almost certainly wrong. It would be bad business, bad politics, and unlikely engineering. Most issues will arise where large volumes of video are sent. Web surfing and most of Facebook use much less bandwidth and would be much harder to throttle.

Shelly Palmer printed the quote, but then went on to refute it. 

I found this chart from Bell Labs just before I went to print. The blue is 5G; the grey LTE. They are similar in size. Larger picture after the break.)

In fact, either may prove faster on T-Mobile's network, depending. The 500 megabits comes from using LTE/LAA to grab some Wi-Fi spectrum. I don't know if 5G can also soon do LAA. if not, T-Mobile's LTE will be faster. Tmo's problem is that Neville Ray has already pushed them to the state-of-the-art. The merger will give them more customers and more spectrum, but consumer results will be little changed.

The millimeter wave 5G is what delivers the performance. T-Mobile will test that but most of the next few years will be the slower 600 MHz. They want the longer reach for more coverage. Professor Ted Rappaport gave me this explanation.

"The low band (600 MHz) systems will always be limited in capacity and are not future proof no matter what special massive Mimo is used- the antennas will be too large and the bandwidths are too small, and simply can't carry the bandwidths of mmwave-- the RF channel allocations are simply too small. The wider bandwidth channels at mmwave is the only way to carry the multi Gbps data rates that will be seen in 5G. And to simultaneously also provide backhaul between cells in the same network."

4-3 mergers, according to the best available evidence, result in higher prices. See 4 To 3 Wireless Mergers Doubled Relative Prices: Rewheel Nearly everyone unbiased sees it that way. But two scholars brought to the discussion an irrelevant AT&T-sponsored paper. It was written by three economists, at least one excellent, who wouldn't have come to the same conclusion if they understood how wireless technology is improving. 

Verizon provided an estimate that wireless cost per bit delivered was going down 40%/year. 40% may be a little high, but the improvement in cost/bit is remarkable. That means that prices would go down even in a monopoly, much less 3-6 carriers. Rewheel compared Germany & Austria, which went from 4 to 3 with six countries without a merger. (2013-2018) Relative prices in Germany and Austria were much higher.

John Legere is telling falsehoods about the T-Mobile-Sprint merger. The New York Times may have killed the merger with “The Implausible Promises of a T-Mobile-Sprint Merger.” http://bit.ly/2Fz7geZ The Times makes some of the same points as my article. http://bit.ly/TmoSData It'a loaded with confirming data.

If D.C. believes the Times that the main claims of the partners are not supportable, the merger will have less than a 10% chance of surviving. The Times has it right, which may not be enough to overcome some officials’ confirmation bias. The psychologists have proven that most of us are unwilling to credit anything that contradicts what we believe. (I have a pro-consumer bias. I do my best to overcome it and report close to the truth.)

The heart of the justification is that with the merger, we would have much better 5G, sooner, and that it would produce $billions in social gains. But Legere and his CTO have already promised 30 cities with 5G in 2018 and the entire country by 2020. The only way the new T-Mobile could bring 5G faster is to build it in 2017. That would be difficult at this point. In addition, their "5G" is mostly 600 MHz, not millimeter wave, with a speed only slightly faster than LTE in 2018. Since it won't deliver much more to the consumer and won't come sooner, the claimed social benefits disappear.

About the only legitimate way to justify the deal is by proving Sprint is inevitably a failing company. That's hard to credit, given a $36B market cap. The Sprint CEO and CFO have been emphatically denying that possibility to Wall Street. IANAL but felony fraud charges and jail time might be the result.

Let me be specific about false claims:

Some facts and researched opinions. I've tried to be neutral but I have a pro-consumer bias. I've editorialized strongly against the deal.

Below: On the effects of 4-3; On whether 5G will come faster; "Combining is the only way they can fight back against the two industry leaders;" On whether Sprint could survive without the merger; On whether Sprint could survive without the merger; On whether the T-Mobile 5G is a "seismic shift;" 5G is not 5G: Much will not be the truly high speeds of millimeter wave; Is even the real 5G, millimeter wave, revolutionary?; "5G offers more reliability than 4G or LTE"; Is 5g required for autonomous cars?' Is 5G needed for telemedicine or IoT?

On the effects of 4-3 Tmo says prices will come down because of the deal. The best research is from Pal Zarandy at Rewheel, who just did a major study. He found prices were 40%-50% higher in Germany and Austria (4-3) than six others, including France. Gigabyte price development in 4 to 3 consolidated versus 4-MNO European markets – September 2013 to March 2018. Because France has so dramatically cut prices, my figure would be lower, "10%-20%, sometimes more." Canada & France went from 3 to 4 with large price drops, which are now happening in Italy. Dubious. Wireless prices will go down because the cost per bit is decreasing rapidly. They will probably be higher than without the deal.

Hu Xijin, editor of government-run Global Times, wrote "We are all ZTE tonight," echoing Jack Kennedy to support the 80,000 workers of ZTE. “Two thousand years ago, the proudest boast was ‘Civis Romanus sum.' Today, in the world of freedom, the proudest boast is ‘Ich bin ein Berliner!’ ” Lily Kou of the Guardian reports a strong backlash in China to the U.S. Government total ban on ZTE.

The ZTE ruling portends that the United States government could shut down at will virtually any phone or telecom supplier in the world. I confirmed with Commerce that the decree covers software and technology. Reuters reported that Google may have to cut off Android apps, destroying ZTE's phone business, which ships 40,000,000 units a year. Qualcomm & Broadcom can't sell chips to ZTE, probably a billion dollars a year. 

Every manufacturer outside the United States has to fear similar U.S. action, not just the Chinese. For example, Samsung could be affected if the U.S. wanted to punish South Korea for making a separate peace with the North. 

Any sensible company will immediately start researching how to design products without any U.S. content. The Chinese are already spending $100B to build memory chips. They've just promised to up the government spending on 5G. 

About 65% of 1.5B Internet "connections" are in the Global South, led by the BRICS. The actual number of users is probably twice that. Three quarters are not native English speakers. China has three times as many as the United States. India has more Facebook users than the United States. Vietnam has the fastest growth. See some figures below for why I'm confident Indonesia has more than 100M wireless only. The worldwide figure is > 1B wireless only data users, or about 500M "connections," a figure I use for comparisons. Across most of Africa, India, and Indonesia, there are remarkably few landlines.

In the early years of broadband, America & Europe strongly dominated. Then Korea and Japan boomed, passing the U.S. by some measures. By 2013, North and South were about even. China had close to twice as many connections as the U.S. Today, China has about three times as many as the U.S. India now has as many users as the U.S. has people, or soon will. The gap is growing because the growth is limited in the developed countries. It's predictable that 75% of Internet users will be in the South.

The FCC Broadband Committee recommendations are "Industry priorities without regard for a true public-private partnership. ... 75 percent of members represent large telecommunications and cable companies or interests aligned with those companies, ... These circumstances give me no choice but to step away."

Miguel Gamiño Jr., Chief Technology Officer of the City of New York, wrote the letter below to FCC Chairman Ajit Pai. Like San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo, he quit. He worked hard for 11 months but was overruled by the company people Pai put on the Broadband Deployment Advisory Committee.