Last week, I covered the technical side of the AT&T – T-Mobile merger, endeavoring to explain why it’s a good deal for the companies. This week, I’ve written a blog post on the policy implications at the Innovation Policy blog: Spectrum: The Capital that Drives Wireless Competition.

There’s no doubt that this merger has the potential to reduce mobile competition in the US down to the level of continental Europe, but if policy makers want to preserve a four national networks scenario, they need to act on the National Broadband Plan’s recommendation to release 500 MHz of new spectrum for mobile networks, and promptly. As the merger tells us, the spectrum crunch is real and it’s also urgent.