A recent report prepared for NATE: The Communications Infrastructure Contractors Association by the Brattle Group paints a troubling picture of the U.S. wireless-infrastructure industry. But a closer look at the report’s narrative demonstrates that it is built on faulty premises, misapplied economics, and a failure to connect the dots.
While the report serves as a powerful piece of advocacy for contractors and will no doubt catch some policymakers’ attention, its core arguments collapse under basic law & economics analysis.
Brattle’s central claim is that the “Big 3” mobile-network operators (MNOs)—AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon—wield “monopsony” power to squeeze the small contractors who build and maintain cell towers. The report argues that this is driving skilled labor from the field, creating a risk to national security. While the report does not allege collusion or any other violation of antitrust law, it leaves it to the casual reader to infer some sort of antitrust shenanigans.
Oligopsony vs Monopsony: Words Matter
The Brattle report begins with a bold allegation: The wireless-communications infrastructure-services industry is a “classic monopsony.” I’m not sure what a “classic monopsony” is, but the actually existing industry appears to be neither classic nor a monopsony.
A monopsony is a market with only one buyer for a good or service. In contrast, the report repeatedly refers to the “Big 3” MNOs. A market with a few dominant buyers is not a monopsony; it’s an oligopsony. To say this is a semantic quibble misses a fundamental distinction: a monopsonist faces no competing buyers, while a firm in an oligopsony market competes against several.
Semantics and fundamentals aside, antitrust law does not prohibit a market from having only a few large players. There’s a sizable body of empirical evidence that a market with three major MNOs is no less (or not much less) competitive than one with four or more MNOs.
Antitrust law targets anticompetitive conduct, such as price-fixing cartels or using dominance to illegally exclude rivals from the market. Simply operating in a concentrated market, whether as one of a few sellers (oligopoly) or one of a few buyers (oligopsony), is not against the law.
By mislabeling the industry as a monopsony, the report creates the impression of an inherently illegal market structure. The key question is not how many buyers there are, but whether they are behaving in a way that illegally harms competition. The report asserts a monopsony but then fails to connect the dots from the alleged monopsony to seller harm.
Alleging Monopsony Power Isn’t the Same as Proving It
The Brattle report’s central piece of evidence for its monopsony claim is that the “Big 3” MNOs control more than 97% of the U.S. wireless-subscriber market. While this is true, none of those three individually has a market share of greater than 36%. And even still, alluding to concentration in the wireless-subscriber market amounts to a misleading metric used to make a flawed point. A company’s market share in its consumer-facing business does not automatically translate into buyer power in its supply chain.
As my colleagues Geoffrey Manne, Brian Albrecht, & Dirk Auer note, applying antitrust analysis to labor and input markets is not a simple mirror image of how we analyze consumer markets. To prove an illegal monopsony, a plaintiff must define the relevant input market and show the buyer has overwhelming power in that specific market. The market for tower-construction services is not the same as the market for mobile plans.
The report makes no serious attempt to define the tower-services market or to calculate the MNOs’ share of purchases within it. It simply assumes that the MNOs must have buyer power because they are big. This is a leap of faith, not an economic demonstration.
Many factors determine the competitiveness of an input market, including the availability of other buyers (such as new market entrants like Dish Network, government agencies, or utility companies) and the ability of suppliers to switch among them. The report ignores these complexities and instead rests its entire case on an irrelevant statistic about the consumer market.
The Market Is Already Solving the Problem
Perhaps the most compelling rebuttal to the Brattle report’s call for intervention is that the market is already working to address the contractors’ complaints. The report details a list of grievances from NATE members of NATE, including rigid pricing, extended payment terms, uncompensated cost passthroughs, and the use of noncompliant 1099 workers.
For example, the report notes that “there is anecdotal evidence that MNOs may ignore various labor safety and authentication procedures in order to lower costs,” citing a source that claims:
During this period of low volume and abysmal profits a new problem entered the ecosystem. Large general contractors and midsized tower contractors began to turn to unqualified subcontracted tower crews to perform the work they couldn’t self-perform at the mandated low fixed pricing. An independent workforce (known as 1099 because they don’t do federal withholding or social security taxes or offer workers’ comp insurance, etc.) started springing up. Rogue, unqualified crews would take on the work at rates far below what qualified contractors who paid their employees using W2 wages could afford.
There’s no debate that contractors face significant business challenges. But these are being resolved through negotiation, not litigation.
In May 2025, Verizon and NATE announced a “breakthrough contracting framework” that directly addresses the core issues cited in the report. In July, T-Mobile informed the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) that it was entering into a similar framework negotiation with NATE. In a July 28 webinar, NATE representatives indicated that they are working on developing a framework with AT&T.
These discussions indicate that the relationships between MNOs and contractors do not constitute intractable anticompetitive domination. These are commercial relationships that, after a period of friction, find a new equilibrium through dialogue and negotiation. This is the market functioning as it should, rendering the report’s premise of a “market failure” inapt.
The ‘Positive Externality’ Red Herring
The report’s second major claim is a little harder to track, so let’s break it down.
First, the report notes that tower climbers and telecommunications-infrastructure workers are highly skilled, and that they maintain the nation’s “critical infrastructure.” Thus, their employment generates a positive externality by protecting, preserving, and enhancing public safety and national security.
Next, the report argues:
Intense price pressure from major telecom firms is driving experienced tower climbing companies out of the market, threatening the availability of a highly skilled workforce essential for maintaining and restoring wireless infrastructure in the longer term.
In other words, the report argues that, by squeezing contractors’ profits, MNOs are causing a shortage of skilled tower climbers. Because this workforce is vital for national security and emergency response, its erosion harms the public.
This argument is a red herring. It attempts to elevate a commercial dispute over profit margins into a matter of national security, but utterly fails to connect the dots.
The report notes that many of the contracting firms who responded to the authors’ survey report financial distress. What it does not demonstrate is that tower climbers’ wages are suppressed below competitive levels, or that increased contractor revenue would be passed on to employees. Without establishing this crucial link, the entire “positive externality” argument falls apart. It is an unsupported assumption that tries to add public-interest weight to what are ultimately private contract disputes.
Many factors—including intense competition among contractors, rising material costs, and general business management—influence small construction firms’ financial health. Blaming it all on “market failure” and then making a speculative leap to national security distracts from the real issues.
While the Brattle Group report effectively documents the business challenges some tower contractors face, its diagnosis of monopsony and market failure are incorrect. It misuses economic concepts, relies on irrelevant data, and ignores the fact that the industry is already resolving these disputes through negotiation.
