Surprising nobody, the Ajit Pai FCC last week approved T-Mobile’s $26 billion merger with Sprint. The approval comes despite that fact that antitrust experts, consumer advocates, and a long list of others have pointed out the deal will reduce wireless sector competition by 25%, inevitably driving up costs and reducing the quality of service (40 years of US telecom history suggests as much). And while T-Mobile and Sprint insists the deal will create jobs, both union reps and Wall Street predict the deal could kill anywhere between 10,000 and 30,000 jobs.

Granted last week’s vote of approval was really just a formality. The FCC’s majority commissioners had already made it clear they’d be signing off on the deal. Troubling but unsurprising is the repeated allegations that the Trump FCC majority signed off on the deals before seeing most of the actual details, something FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel was quick to point out in a statement: “…the process that got us here is equally troubling. Three of my colleagues agreed to this transaction months ago without having any legal, engineering, or economic analysis from the agency before us. Consumers deserve better from the Washington authorities charged with reviewing this transaction.“

Yeah, who needs to see the actual details on a transaction that will dramatically alter the US wireless landscape before voting?

Former FCC lawyer Gigi Sohn shared a similar observation in a statement circulated to the media: “Today’s decision is the culmination of one of the most irregular and opaque processes in FCC history. The FCC majority prejudged the merits of this merger two months before the Justice Department found the combination of T-Mobile and Sprint to be anticompetitive and required the creation of a new fourth competitor to pass legal muster. Despite this radical change in the merger, Chairman Pai has refused to put the new arrangement out for public comment.”

More at Tech Dirt.