Over the past twenty years, the Federal Communications Commission and the Department of Justice have reviewed many mergers in the communications sector. Without quantitative analyses, the federal agencies have consistently defined unchanging separate relevant markets for wireline and wireless services for antitrust reviews. The agencies have incentives not to change relevant market definitions, although both new technologies and aggregate data likely support new relevant market definitions. A contemporary relevant market definition may include both wireline and wireless services.

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A robot from AgiBot is seen during the Global Developer Conference, organized by the Shanghai AI Industry Association, in Shanghai on February 21, 2025. (Hector Retamal via Getty Images)