On August 1, 2025, T-Mobile closed its acquisition of UScellular, after receiving antitrust clearances from the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). The FCC found that “the proposed transaction is likely to result in substantial public interest benefits, due in large part to increased network efficiencies and spectrum utilization, which will result in additional capacity and coverage benefits, including in rural areas.”
Econic Partners Founding Partners Jonathan Orszag and Bryan Keating served as the economic experts for UScellular. Mr. Orszag and Dr. Keating were primarily supported by Dr. Josephine Xu and Rob Oandasan. In addition, Econic Partners’ Professor Michael Katz, Ian MacSwain, and David Fenichel, as well as Theresa Sullivan of Compass Lexecon provided economic support to T-Mobile. Mr. Orszag submitted an economic declaration to the FCC; the FCC’s Opinion and Order relied extensively on the economic analysis undertaken by Mr. Orszag and the team at Econic Partners.
The Econic Partners team worked closely with internal counsel at both UScellular (Adriana Welton) and T-Mobile (Heather Johnson), as well as outside counsel. UScellular was represented by Sharis Pozen, Leigh Oliver, Michael VanArsdall, Danielle Morello, Megan Hackett and Timothy Lyons of Clifford Chance, and by Christine Crowe and Bryan Tramont of Wilkinson Barker Knauer. T-Mobile was represented by David Gelfand, Daniel Culley, Elsbeth Bennett, Mark Poston and Urjita Sudula of Cleary Gottlieb, and by Nancy Victory and Michael Senkowski of DLA Piper.
The economic team that supported the work on this merger also included Ka Hei Tse, Tongtong Shi, Arela Haluci, Carlos Paez, Alex Collison, Ruchika Roy, Andres Strauss, Holly Bourque, Jeffrey Tan, Jaewon Lee, Lauren Lau, Megan Sullivan, Rebecca Felix, Sarah Dumaresq, and Yulu Gu of Econic Partners and Mike Matelis, Allan Zhang, Junru Wu, Niya Dai, and Mark Heymann of Compass Lexecon.
