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the communications workers of america share their differing views on the impact of the proposed merger of at&t and t-mobile from the wireless industry on the jobs of communications workers and on consumers. our guests are sprint vice president for government affairs vonya mccann. islamic this week on the commission does we have two guests to talk about the proposed at&t, t-mobile merger. vonya mccann is the senior vice president at sprint nextel and she is our first guest. ms. mccann, why did this plant filed its own lawsuit against the merger even after doj filed its suit?

>> thank you. the department of justice is very capable and we have every confidence they will prevail in court what harm consumers and competition, and we filed suit to contribute our expertise and resources to prove that the transaction is illegal. >> also joining on the communicators this week is juliana gruenwald of the national journal. >> your decision to file a lawsuit does that reflect any concerns with the justice lawsuit? >> as i said, the doj coming and if you take a look at the complaint we have a very strong case and we have full confidence in its ability to prevail. >> you mentioned some of the concerns you and other critics have raised about setting competition, possible raising of

prices, impact on innovation but what impact do you think it would have on sprint, on your company? >> the main concern that we have raised those with the department of justice and with the federal communications commission is if the transaction were allowed to go forward there would be to companies, at&t -- at&t, t-mobile and verizon and the companies that are former bell companies would create a duopoly which could use its influence to damage sprint's business control, critical inputs over which sprint and other wireless companies, not just sprint but other independent wireless carriers, these are inputs we need to compete against them in the spectrum by the price of the services they raise the cost and

cost to consumers and that would damage our ability to compete against them and we raise this as a big issue in the litigation. >> ms. mccann, you set out for your ability to compete is sprint competitive now to the larger at&t advertising company? >> sprint goes out and competes every day. i mean, it is -- we are an independent and aggressive competitor, but there are certain things that prevent us from being able to be as competitive as we would like to be, and one of those things for mize and at&t's control over the critical inputs. they are able to increase those costs even today. so yes, we compete. we are able to succeed in the marketplace and we have been

doing so with increasing success over the last few years. >> about 55 million subscribers to the services. >> 52. >> 52 million. is the marketplace voluble for more than two or three -- >> we believe so come and we believe that the department believes it can support more than just two companies. look, in the beginning there was a duopoly. when the fcc ruled out wireless services in the beginning it was a duopoly. and congress and the fcc concluded that a duopoly did not serve the interest of consumers, that consumers were not getting choice, the innovation case was slow and prices remained high. only business people could afford cellular services in the

beginning. so congress and the fcc decided to make more spectrum available, and provided to the independent companies that houseplant was able to enter the business, and after sprint and other companies enter the business, you begin to see the lowering of prices, greater variety of handsets, more innovative services and before there was just a plan. dupage basically the same thing no matter which carrier you got under the duopoly. nobody wants to go back to those days. >> t-mobile and at&t said they would have a difficult time competing on their own if the merger does not go through. t-mobile would have a difficult time, you know, competing on its own if they don't merge with somebody. do you have a comment on that? >> t-mobile is profitable today. if you look at the 10k, some

2010, they are enjoying healthy profit margins. i certainly believe that t-mobile is able to compete. so do other carriers. that's called competition. we are taking competitors from each other but as sprint has been able to turn that around certainly t-mobile can do the same. >> vonya mccann would they be interested in combining with the third and fourth largest mobile carriers? >> i don't have a comment on that kind of speculative future activity. >> i can't tell you what would be in the mind of the regulators. >> i want to ask about the study that sprint commissioned on job

with what you consider to be job loss. one of the reason the communication workers of america we are going to talk to next support at of the at&t mobil merger because they say that it will increase jobs particularly the cwa jobs. sprint says no, that's not true. >> of sprint says know that's not true, lots of parties -- we had a consultant to a study that proves that the underpinning of the claim at&t has picked up and repeated are totally specious. the study is faulty and if you look at the history of at&t and t-mobile the last eight or nine years, t-mobile has been creating jobs while at&t has been eliminating jobs. so, the study proves the basis for the claim is just wrong and

then if you look at past transactions and what each company has been doing over the last eight or nine years you will see that at&t has been shedding jobs while t-mobile has actually been adding them, and if the merger were approved, we would anticipate that at&t would continue its shedding of jobs. >> vonya mccann, in the lawsuits filed, one of the issues you bring up is back call. what is bad call and why is that a factor in your view? >> most people don't know that the only part that's actually wireless is from your hand sent to the tower. everything from the tower on to pretty much the delivery is

turnover wireline facilities and a portion of those facilities are called back calls because you are calling the call back to the switching centers of that is the back call. services provided by the local telephone company which include at&t and verizon. they are the two largest one-year line telephone companies in the united states as well as the two largest wireless. so the control of the back-office of these -- facilities affects the price of the wireless service because they can increase the cost by saying you have to pay more for these services and then we are able to -- we are not able to be as competitive as we like with our services to consumers. >> what if the justice department were to would say you can't risk the falls on the services you must make deals,

roaming in accordance with the new rule, but if we were to impose those conditions? i know you said before you think any conditions can satisfy this, but have you revised your thinking on that? >> more important i don't think the justice department has revised its thinking. i think the acting head of the antitrust division said recently that the department doesn't file lawsuits to settle. so we are not looking for any conditions, and if you take justice at its word, and we certainly do, they are not looking to impose conditions. they are looking to block the transaction. with the antitrust law -- >> can i just make a follow-up? >> if you were to reach a settlement with at&t would something like the condition

ensuring that you have access at a regional rate would lessen the blow for you a little bit on this and make less? >> in the antitrust world, what you need to do is try to replace the competition in the transaction to eliminate, and just decreasing the price of that call for sprint and other wireless independent companies would not replace the competition taking the market and creating a duopoly really is the creation of a duopoly to companies with 80% controls of the market it's that kind of duopoly that's going to harm consumers and competition. >> vonya mccann distance received her law degree from uc-berkeley and has worked the

fcc, the state department and was a partner with aaron fox for awhile. vonya mccann, when will you know about the judge who was assigned here in the d.c. district court, is that a good, bad? >> she's a very good judge, very smart, very efficient, and we look forward to bringing our case in front of her. >> and will the case become by and with the justice department? >> we filed on the related case and we hope and expect that the two cases will be tried together. >> vonya mccann, does congress have a role if this merger were to go through, could converse prevent this? >> well the case is in litigation right now in court and i think most lawmakers believe once something has particularly a law enforcement investigation that's what this

is. the department of justice is rightfully enforcing the nation's antitrust law used to protect consumers. most lawmakers believe that once in the stage in the process that is for the courts for the courts to decide and that the judicial process tickets course. >> would splinter the okay of three major companies existed from at&t, verizon and sprint? >> that is a new word. [laughter] >> you know, we obviously think that a monopoly is the worst, duopoly is very close to it. not familiar with the term try awfully deacons -- triopoly the number three is good for consumers and good for competition and good for the

economy. >> finally from me, and you also include spectrum and the lawsuit, the issue of spectrum. how does it figure into your lawsuit against at&t and t-mobile merger? >> one of the reasons at&t said that it sought to fire t-mobile was because of the need of the spectrum to provide improved services to its customers. but we demonstrated that the fcc and we think compelling of the net justice department that at&t already has all the spectrum it needs to provide services to the vast majority of americans. it does not need to merge with t-mobile to do that. they're paying $39 billion sending that offshore out of the country to require t-mobile when their own documents reveal they

could have paid one tenth of that amount. one tenth of that amount to rollout services on existing spectrum to 97% of the u.s. population. the documents prove they don't need to acquire t-mobile. >> juliana gruenwald from last question. >> cwa, they've been critical of sprint, they launched their new web site critical of sprint and they say that sprint has been hostile to the unionization effort. so i just want to get your comment on some of the claims about the labor record. >> this transaction does not involve sprint. we are not seeking to acquire another company. now, our labour record is very good and i very comfortable with it. we respect their right, we respected law and the right of

workers to choose with, but the cwa is looking out for members as you would expect it to do and not jobs as a whole. if you look at the jobs study, the jobs study shows that the number of workers that could lose their job if the transaction were approved is far greater than any benefit that cwa is a union might receive. >> is that available on your website? >> i believe it is but if it is and we will make it available. >> and at our website, c-span.org/communicators, is the spread of lawsuit against the at&t t-mobile merger if you want to read that, again, c-span.org c-span.org/communicators. vonya mccann of sprint, thank you very much. >> thank you. my pleasure. >> [inaudible] gruenwald of national journal, what did you hear of vonya mccann from sprint?

>> she and other critics have said they've never seen a merger that doesn't the job loss for workers so my question for you is how does as a major union, why are you supporting the steel? >> welcome a first of all commands you may have talked about, i am not sure, at&t committed all work on the level of employment at the call centers at both companies would continue the post merger this is a huge commitment have contracts out in the offshore. second, at&t said to the extent of the synergies for example call centers which is the biggest employment center and wireless, they would cut the offshore work first. we can only cut the offshore work between t-mobile which is big offshore and some at&t workers of sure that work would go and then in addition they would cut enough offshore work

to bring 5,000 net jobs back to the u.s. call centers which in this industry is huge. so again, the trend in the organized party industry is every job that moves. spread his contract in its engineering work on its plant work and very few stores to the other companies, so for starters we have 5,000 net jobs and for starters, we stop the contracting out and of shoring of the t-mobile customer service work so these are too gigantic things right from the beginning in terms of jobs in this merger. >> how much, what percentage of workers our call center workers. >> so, larry cohen how would a merger benefit consumers? wouldn't competition beat listened? >> yeah, number one this is the fcc job as you put and we support the merger with

conditions to the question. with conditions. so, in terms of the consumers, number one, is the bill act to america which the president talked of it in the state of the union which the fcc had in their broadband plan. the main way you're going to get high-speed internet which is 10 megahertz downstream or more that's the way we would call high-speed, right now you get 1 megahertz, wider line or wireless, but the only we were going to get it is wireless, building out other countries are. in this country nobody is building out why airline and so at&t was prepared as a condition in writing not some kind of promise to say we will reach and again with the fcc 97, 98% of all households with ten meg service downstream with and i think by 2014 it might be 2015

with consumers the people in rural america those that live on wall street and have 99 choices and the trees is right now are like west virginia the broadband maps we've been doing for years as we talked of here on the communicators in the past now the fcc is doing them so they are more complete in the states like west virginia that state is almost nothing in terms of high-speed internet. verizon dumped all its fire lines to what they call frontier and on the wireless side, it's there's no real high-speed internet and west virginia. the idea that at&t would have to make commitments like that as a condition of the merger is absolutely critical for consumers. price issues that is the job of the fcc and they've done it on the other orders, wireless and winder line where they say for example of the wireline side merge with bellsouth that was commitments in terms of price and in terms of wireline build

off in the rural southeast u.s.. so this is the fcc part of the deal. in terms of what actually happens to consumers as opposed to the antitrust issues the justice department is focused on. >> if we could let's go back and clarify again with the promises they've made regarding jobs and are those in writing? what are the guarantees that you have? >> we have lots of faith and what they say that these are written commitments they've made in writing it on the call center side the biggest single place where in terms of front-line jobs across america and in the wireless industry these can be call centers like the t-mobile center in may and with 500 jobs people studying for their jobs right now in fact the workers

themselves were outside yesterday in a press release about jobs. at&t is saying no jobs cut in any of the centers, none it stopped the of shoring and in addition they will bring back 5,000 by cutting the will probably cut more than 5,000 jobs in asia but there will be the gain of 5,000 call center jobs in the u.s. in the centers. that's a huge shift in terms of what's happened in the industry and what sprint has done and what t-mobile was doing in this industry, which is competing by cutting cost and this is the reason why the u.s. economy is in the toilet. big companies profitable compete by cutting cost not by raising revenues. how do they do it? the cut workers, they cut jobs, they cut the pay by contracting out and eliminate health care and then we wonder why people don't buy anything. well they are not buying anything because they are not working or they see the standard of living fall so they are going to buy less of it is one of the benefits of the merger from the

point of view of working americans as well as the bill dealt to for america. >> conditions on mergers in the last few years, four or five but what you expect as far as these conditions, how long have they said would the offshore call center work? >> i think that's key and one of the keys that you hit on in my point of view is that we need to, you know, do checking on the mergers, not just this one but all mergers. what has happened with the commitment. said the communications sector what's happened in puerto rico since the telephone company was sold. a lot of commitments. what's happened since verizon started off the wireline and vermont and new hampshire and maine and they went bankrupt. what's happening with the commitments that were made? you are absolutely right it

needs to be checked. they should be done regularly and whether it is the fcc or a different agency depends on what kind of merger is i couldn't agree more their needs to be checking otherwise would is the point of doing regulation. >> how long the what the conditions to be enforced? five years, ten years? >> i would be talking about how is the customer service work going to be done, and in terms of jobs and get those commitments in terms of the percentage of the work on an ongoing basis. we don't have an ability and cwa to do that on this case or similarly on the broadband built out and on the price it's a question of what they ask for for the merger to be approved. >> larry cohen of communication workers of america if the merger doesn't go through and the doj prevails, what happens to t-mobile? >> that is a critical question. first of all i am not sure if

she discussed this or not sprint was in the process of their own deal with t-mobile so again nothing against dan, but a piece of this is that justice souter and the at&t deal because it was priced higher because the synergies are greater. the of the same technology. sprint has other technologies they are trying to deal with now and this would be the fifth one said the at&t deal is a better one and the interrupted that deal. the way the justice department has written in the press releases, whatever, they've talked about keeping for companies. that is not going to happen, and i think a trip in those t-mobile as success, the chairman of the congressional hearing the chairman was 100% of the company and said we don't have the next 10 billion for the fourth generation buildup. we don't have it, we are not to

do it, we are based in germany. our first priority is to repatriate capital and to the fiber build in germany and t-mobile is 41% owned by the german government and one of the largest owners and so as it should be that is where their priorities are. here we have a chance to bring back spectrum to the vessel owner and again in our view the justice department has taken a narrow view. this isn't a static industry. the value goes to zero if you don't go to the next technology. so imagine for example now if there is no data service there are some customers will pay just for voice but it's the same thing. if you don't go to the 4g and have genuine high-speed wireless where people can download big chunks of data relatively quickly you may as well not have a company. and so, they can't mandate that kind of investment from telecom. that's the contradiction of this. the other piece would be the voice stream which is ten years

ago there's a big light up so how do you put a light up to invest here and then say you can't sell. you have to sensor what they are doing because of the goal is to keep the company's, that means sprint would be dead as well. so what is telecom supposed to do when they don't want to invest in the $10 billion? big problem. sprigg by the way the communication workers of america has written quite a bit on their web site about the proposed merger and their support of it. you can find that at cwa --.org. spent the day the justice department filed lawsuit which was the same day that at&t announced a 5,000 job commitment you guys said the lawsuit was simply wrong. can you explain what was wrong in the lawsuit? >> some of them are the ones you already raised its the too of the