Sources: DOJ has sent subpoenas to the top 4 US mobile carriers and GSMA association over alleged collusion to impede eSIM features for easier carrier switching
AT&T, Verizon at center of probe into whether major carriers are making it harder for subscribers to switch providers
Context & Ripple Effects
The DOJ's subpoenas to AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, Sprint and the GSMA land while the agency is already squeezing the wireless market from a second direction: it is reportedly demanding concessions in the T-Mobile/Sprint merger review specifically so a fourth national carrier can survive the merger approval talks. Both moves treat carrier-controlled switching friction as an antitrust problem rather than a consumer-inconvenience one.
The arc matters because the probe did not end in charges — the DOJ quietly closed the eSIM collusion investigation in late 2019 without action against AT&T, Verizon, or GSMA — yet the underlying theory resurfaced years later in the DOJ's 2024 lawsuit accusing Apple of blocking competitors from iPhone features and in the carriers' own escalating customer-poaching lawsuits over tools like T-Mobile's Easy Switch.
First-order effects
- AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, Sprint and the GSMA each face document demands and legal exposure over whether they coordinated to slow eSIM-based switching, with AT&T and Verizon named as the center of the probe.
- Subscribers' ability to change carriers without swapping physical SIM cards is the immediate stake: any conduct found to impede eSIM features directly raises the cost of leaving a carrier.
Second-order effects
- T-Mobile stands to gain most if switching friction falls, since a smaller challenger benefits disproportionately when porting between networks gets easier — which is why the DOJ's eSIM probe and its fourth-carrier condition on the Sprint merger point at the same problem.
- A credible federal probe pressures the GSMA, as the industry's standards body, to keep eSIM remote-provisioning rules open rather than carrier-gated, or risk being cast as the coordination venue.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, US antitrust enforcement treats switching costs and interoperability as core competition issues — a template that reappears in the Apple case and in regulators scrutinizing carrier poaching tools rather than just prices.
- Carriers respond by competing on acquisition tactics instead of lock-in mechanics, shifting rivalry toward explicit poaching, port-out incentives, and litigation over switching software.
The trend: US antitrust authorities are increasingly attacking switching-cost lock-in — first in carrier eSIM practices, then in device ecosystems — making customer mobility a regulatory battleground for wireless and hardware alike.