Microsoft, Facebook, RIM, and others write to the FCC in support of AT&T-Mobile merger

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski has mail. It is only a page and a paragraph long, however the letter he’s received this week has much gravitas attached to it, coming because it does from a select group of the tech industry’s biggest companies, all of whom are lending their support to AT&T’s proposed acquisition of T-Mobile . Of the eight new proponents of the deal, Microsoft, Facebook and Yahoo form a sub-group of software / web pages distributors, whereas Qualcomm, RIM, Avaya, Brocade, and Oracle may have been motivated to chat up because they see the takeover as expanding opportunities to sell their mobile and networking hardware. Your complete octet agrees that the melding of AT&T and T-Mobile’s networks into one is a requisite move for broadening mobile broadband availability within the US and for keeping the rustic competitive with the remainder of the arena. Of their words, “an increasingly robust and efficient wireless network is a part of a virtuous innovation cycle.” Virtuous for them, perhaps, but what about consumers faced with an increasingly binary number of mobile carrier? Who shall protect their virtue?

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This post is tagged: binary choice, broadband availability, content distributors, fcc chairman, innovation cycle, networking hardware, software web