The T-Mobile/Sprint merger is still up in the air, after being stalled a few times already. A company that has for years primarily utilized only in-house lobbyists, T-Mobile (owned by Deutsche Telekom) just hired the Turnberry lobbying firm in January of this year. And the argument they'll be putting to regulators hinges on the “necessity” of the merger to allow the resulting larger entity the ability to compete with China in the race to implement 5G technology.
Why would the government care whether or not these American companies are first in 5G? An unknown Treasury department official communicated the following in a letter of the US Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States: “A shift to Chinese dominance in 5G would have substantial negative national security consequences for the United States.”
But 5G is about more than just data speed and latency issues. The US military has allegedly used “weaponized frequencies” of 5G, the same frequencies used to inflict pain in crowd control. And many believe it's a technology the government is keen to nationalize.
The most interesting person on the T-Mobile venn is probably Christine Kurth. She was put up for the spot of FCC Commissioner back in 2005, but withdrew her name from consideration because of the potential conflicts of interest that arise from the fact that her husband, Tim Kurth, is a telecom lobbyist. (Among his clients is Sprint.)
Her husband was also a lobbyist for the US Telecom Association. Its biggest members are Verizon and AT&T. Despite these conflicts of interest, Christine Kurth did join the FCC a few years later, both in Commissioner McDowell's office and then at the Enforcement Bureau, where she served as Special Counsel. Prior to her tenure at the FCC, Christine Kurth worked in the Senate Commerce Committee, where, according to an article by Ted Stevens in I Spy, she was responsible for “handling telecommunications policy.”
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