House E&C to Vet T-Mobile-Sprint

The House Energy & Commerce Committee will hold a joint subcommittee hearing on the T-Mobile-Sprint merger on Feb. 13.

The Judiciary and Communications Subcommittees will be hearing from T-Mobile CEO John Legere and Sprint executive chair Marcelo Claure, plus some players to be named later.

Legere tweeted about the hearing:

[embed]https://twitter.com/JohnLegere/status/1090036546281979907[/embed]

Related: T-Mobile Says Trump Hotel Stays Were About Proximity

Pallone's office says it will be the first merger hearing before the Energy & Commerce Committee in the past eight years, which means since Democrats lost the majority.

Last week, a quintet of Democratic senators have written the Republican leadership of the Senate Commerce Committee asking them to hold a hearing on the proposed.

The Dems said they would be looking at the deal "from the perspective of what is in the best interest of consumers and hardworking people."

“We applaud bipartisan House lawmakers for holding this rare joint hearing on the consequences of the T-Mobile-Sprint merger," said the 4Competition Coalition. "In the nine months since the proposed transaction was first announced, the evidence submitted in the public record clearly demonstrates that this merger will hurt consumers, competition, and jobs.  We look forward to lawmakers’ examination of these harms during next month’s hearing.”

John Eggerton

Contributing editor John Eggerton has been an editor and/or writer on media regulation, legislation and policy for over four decades, including covering the FCC, FTC, Congress, the major media trade associations, and the federal courts. In addition to Multichannel News and Broadcasting + Cable, his work has appeared in Radio World, TV Technology, TV Fax, This Week in Consumer Electronics, Variety and the Encyclopedia Britannica.