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AT&T Buys T-Mobile (And Why It

P

phandroid

Admin News Bot
AT&T has purchased T-Mobile for $39 Billion, immediately making them the largest carrier in the United States. The process could take 12 months to complete, but if and when it does, there could be some pretty crazy implications. If you take the statements from AT&T and Deutsche Telekom (parent company of T-Mobile) you’ll predictably get [...]

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T-mobile had been placed on the list of companies that would be out of business in 2 years.
I think this takeover is great for T-mobile and AT&T customers. Also, the way Verizon has been behaving in a "we're great we'll do as we please" mentality, it may make them re-think their NE2 elimination and their $350 ETF.
 
pool_shark said:
T-mobile had been placed on the list of companies that would be out of business in 2 years.
I think this takeover is great for T-mobile and AT&T customers. Also, the way Verizon has been behaving in a "we're great we'll do as we please" mentality, it may make them re-think their NE2 elimination and their $350 ETF.
Click to expand...
Why should they, att is tiered plans now. Att etf is $375 and they dont offer upgrades every year.

Why should verizon really care, all it comes down to now is who do you hate less. If you hate att, your only option is verizon. If you hate verizon, good news, you have att.

Sprint is a 3rd option but has a lot of coverage issues.

Having only 2 players in the game means they simply set the price they think the can beat out of the customer. Once the highest price they can set with out major protest, they just keep the price high and hand off customers to each other. In a lot of places, the 1-2% churn rate will be 1% from verizon to att and 1% from att to verizon.
 
pool_shark said:
T-mobile had been placed on the list of companies that would be out of business in 2 years.
I think this takeover is great for T-mobile and AT&T customers. Also, the way Verizon has been behaving in a "we're great we'll do as we please" mentality, it may make them re-think their NE2 elimination and their $350 ETF.
Click to expand...

I can assure this is not great. The term oligopoly comes to mind for carriers overall and monopoly for GSM. With only three major carriers, prices will only go up, data caps will now be the norm as well as overages for data (see AT&T), customer service for T-Mobile users will drop like a rock, basically the carriers will be able to get by with just about anything.

Hopefully, and this is hopefully, the FCC won't approve it. That's the last shining bit of hope in this. I don't want AT&T's draconian policies or pricing.
 
It's not pleasant but the economics of bandwidth, with everyone wanting streaming netflix and 2 way videochat (upload speeds are never as good as downloads) is just unsustainable. T-mobile tried to be like a nice little 'mom and pop' carrier that everyone loves but that just doesn't work for the high bandwidth smartphone era.
 
I switched to Sprint. Couldn't be happier so far. VZW is greedy and has long since forgot what customer service is.
 
I had verizon about three years ago started off with prepaid then switched to a monthly plan because my wife and i were using two different companies. thought it would be cost effective. our first bill was about $200 for activation fee's, the next month it went to $350(+) month three it went to $500 and something, i couldn't get an explantion why month four $600+ month 7 good bye verizon :mad:

we owe them $1,500 for termination fee's and other mystery fee's. when they offer me a settlement offer i will consider paying them off

so it looks it will be Sprint, Virginmobile(which i have now) or BoostMobile
 
:mad: Its like the Forecloser Market. Which was supposed to be fixed by the
current government. They all offer A NEW DEAL and it is always the
old deal of screwing the have nots by the have lots. Anyway.. long live
the ATand T. T-Mobile was bound to die the techy death. They employed
to many people named: " Peggy ". Which was a great thing in that they
had jobs. Just not good jobs with benefit plans. So there you are. No
rewards by management.. no real work will be done. By By T-Mobile. AT
and T better be able to help Ameritech...refugees.
:(
 
I'm just really concerned about Sprint because they bungled up 4G with wimax. they have to move to LTE and soon.
 
For what it's worth, T-Mobile UK has merged with Orange UK in a venture called Everything Everywhere jointly owned by France Telecom (Orange owner) and Deutsche Telecom (T-Mobile owner)

All we have noticed so far is better coverage. In the first instance this has been provided by Orange and T-Mobile users being able to roam onto each other's networks. Further down the line will be full integration into a single, very comprehensive, network.

This could actually turn out to be a good thing for USA customers. Just sayin'.
 
RiverOfIce said:
Why should they, att is tiered plans now. Att etf is $375 and they dont offer upgrades every year.

Why should verizon really care, all it comes down to now is who do you hate less. If you hate att, your only option is verizon. If you hate verizon, good news, you have att.

Sprint is a 3rd option but has a lot of coverage issues.

Having only 2 players in the game means they simply set the price they think the can beat out of the customer. Once the highest price they can set with out major protest, they just keep the price high and hand off customers to each other. In a lot of places, the 1-2% churn rate will be 1% from verizon to att and 1% from att to verizon.
Click to expand...

AT&T's ETF is $325 - $10 per month.
I didn't realize their ETF was that high though.
 
Drhyde said:
I can assure this is not great. The term oligopoly comes to mind for carriers overall and monopoly for GSM. With only three major carriers, prices will only go up, data caps will now be the norm as well as overages for data (see AT&T), customer service for T-Mobile users will drop like a rock, basically the carriers will be able to get by with just about anything.

Hopefully, and this is hopefully, the FCC won't approve it. That's the last shining bit of hope in this. I don't want AT&T's draconian policies or pricing.
Click to expand...

I said it's great for AT&T and T-mobile customers. AT&T customers get more coverage, T-mobile customers don't get dumped because T-mobile went out of business. If it isn't approved, T-mobile will most like go out of business soon along with all of their employees being out of work.
 
ari-free said:
It's not pleasant but the economics of bandwidth, with everyone wanting streaming netflix and 2 way videochat (upload speeds are never as good as downloads) is just unsustainable. T-mobile tried to be like a nice little 'mom and pop' carrier that everyone loves but that just doesn't work for the high bandwidth smartphone era.
Click to expand...

Bandwidth is not an issue. Trust me on this one. Since the RF at these frequencies is only Line-of-site, and low power; contention for the channel is really at a minimum should proper network and protocol designs be used.

And, they can always buy more spectrum... Or, ask the Government to just give it to them, like they usually do.

A 25KHz channel can easily support a full 768Kb/768Kb channel for about 50 users per tower (Since tower interference is nil).

The "not enough bandwidth" argument only comes into play when you leave Line of site frequencies (sub-VHF), or start using monster power (Not the 25mW transceiver in a phone).

Think about it for a second: On a part 15 device, you get a full 54Mb/sec channel... With old technology. Split among 5 users, that's still 10Mb/sec per user. And, that's on a 2.5KHz channel, not a 25Khz channel.
 
I am sure there are a lot of people that were around when we had the phone tethered to the wall and you could not replace it without calling AT&T.
Your bills were high and you had no choice....

Why we are letting AT&T buy everyone up is beyond me.
The only people making a lot of cash here are company executives.
The people screwed are the customers of AT&T and T-Mobile.

It's about controlling the market, not about the 'customers' as these companies keep putting in cookie cutter press releases.

Then idiots read them and believe it.
AT&T needs to be broken up - not allowed to keep buying back all the bell companies and it's competitors.

We are almost back to 1982 all over again! :eek:
 
PSkeptic said:
Bandwidth is not an issue. Trust me on this one. <SNIP>they can always buy more spectrum... Or, ask the Government to just give it to them, like they usually do.
<SNIP>
Think about it for a second: On a part 15 device, you get a full 54Mb/sec channel... With old technology. Split among 5 users, that's still 10Mb/sec per user. And, that's on a 2.5KHz channel, not a 25Khz channel.
Click to expand...

Think about this for a second and - Remember this? "--- is now the new ---" ... The phraseology could have been: The old demon is now using ---'s good name! It wasn't long before we newly initiated felt the talons of the old demon. One should never expect the leopard to change its spots because it has gobbled up more prey. Lessons learned.

Some serious questions need to be posed. Are they Android-centric? Do they have a Google philosophy of openness? Is Tethering called illegal if they can't slap an extra charge on you for it? Never mind that you are ALREADY paying for unlimited phone service and paid a wad for your SMARTphone for all of its capabilities. I got the feeling that they wanted to extrapolate every iota of money from every crevice that they possibly could, and even then, I had to watch my bottom line. A new fee for this, an added fee for that... and none of them explained to my satisfaction.

A rose by any other name is still a rose. This one stinks!

Generally, one company doesn't buy out another to keep the buyee the same. They buy to own more assets...not to keep the company as you knew it, the same. The bought company assumes the culture and the leadership of the purchasing company. Even if they take on leaders from the bought company, the old leaders don't have enough leverage to wield any power in the new agreement. They are in effect, romantic figure-heads. They had better be happy with the purchase price because that is often the most they'll get.

As the cog that runs the wheel (we consumers) we can safely say that "Nobody asked US!". They never do, LOL. But how we respond is the name of the game. The squeakiest wheel gets the most oil.

Because this merger would make one company the sole front-runner, I think that if this deal is allowed to go through that the government should mandate a heavily announced 30-day period for all who want to leave without penalty to do so. We, the people should demand it. This is after all, America...of the PEOPLE, by the people and for the people...not the conglomerates. Or is it? Damnation. This economy has taught me far more than I ever wanted to know, LOL.
 
@NowVoyager - Ah-****ing-men!!!

If this deal is allowed I will be extremely pissed. AT&T has some of the worst customer service and their plans are almost as expensive as Verizon without having the coverage. Their phone lineup sucks and if it wasn't for iPhone, they'd probably have gone under alot sooner.

I was thinking about joining Sprint a couple of months ago and I definitley be willing to jump ship if this is about to happen but only if Verizon isn't allowed to touch Sprint. I'm very dissappointed in this move
 
ari-free said:
I'm just really concerned about Sprint because they bungled up 4G with wimax. they have to move to LTE and soon.
Click to expand...
Why? If they go to lte, they will be on their own. You can not transfer phones, it will not improve coverage, it will not improve speed. All it will do is offer what the other guys have, just with a weaker foot print.

It would be like a store having everything that the other stores had, but less product for more money. They tried that with cdma and that has dumped them into 3rd place.

They have nothing to gain and if they switch, it will cost billions more then wimax.

The safest bet is to offer wimax for cities and lte for rural areas. But to move from wimax to lte would be just stupid, but we are talking about sprint here, they do stupid things.
 
Tmobile customers why are you so bitchy? Do you not like shiny new things for christmas? Ah but it comes at a price which no one even knows yet. At least wait till we can get more information on how this will affect plans & pricing. In the meantime be appreciative that your network just expanded. Before this you weren't sniffing LTE, you were the little fat boy who never got picked in a pickup game. Now you get to run with the big boys.
 
....To AT&T, Sprint, Verizon and T-Mobile..Customers are a commodity to be traded. I am not a commodity!!! In economics a market is only so big. The U.S. Cellular Market is one example. If there are four players competing for a finite set of customers this is infinitely better than having the market divided by only 3.

... Whatever customer service AT&T exemplifies for it's cellular customers is surely impacted by the fact.. A customer has 3 other choices (not counting prepaid services like Metro PC, Boost, Cricket etc)

.... This is not a good deal by any stretch of the imagination. Period!!!

.... I've been with T-Mobile since before it was T-Mobile!!! I love their customer service.

.. And as for coverage area... Where are you going? Antiqua? The Bahamas? (Every carrier covers all of the major metro's.... The coverage is more physical in nature i.e. where is the closest antenna to you 'at the time') at the end of the day I've traveled all around the country on TMO , never had a dropped call, and never roamed!!!
... COVERAGE AREA IS A NON ISSUE

...TAKE IS FROM A TRAINED COMM GUY.. THIS DEAL IS ALL ABOUT T MOBILE NOT KNOWING HOW TO GROW THEIR BUSINESS. THEY ARE GIVING UP!!! SIMPLE!!!
 
If we don't learn from history, we're bound to repeat it!! When was the last time AT&T actually lowered it's actually usage pricing? It's ok... I'll wait. At TMO I have a finite plan for my 3G Phone...Unlimited Talk, Text and Web.. No hidden side charges...and a bill that has stayed within a 1% to 2% fluctuation month in month out like clockwork for over 9 years~~~ AT& T gouges you because you have no choice!!! If they are gouging now 'wait until they get their hands on a new 30 customers ...14 million of which are on plans...LET THE BLOOD FLOWING BEGIN!!!.. If this deal closes, I'm gone....QUICKLY!! No good will come of this. NONE
 
RiverOfIce said:
Why? If they go to lte, they will be on their own. You can not transfer phones, it will not improve coverage, it will not improve speed. All it will do is offer what the other guys have, just with a weaker foot print.

It would be like a store having everything that the other stores had, but less product for more money. They tried that with cdma and that has dumped them into 3rd place.

They have nothing to gain and if they switch, it will cost billions more then wimax.

The safest bet is to offer wimax for cities and lte for rural areas. But to move from wimax to lte would be just stupid, but we are talking about sprint here, they do stupid things.
Click to expand...

wimax has poor building penetration. I can't even consider Sprint until they switch.
 
PSkeptic said:
Bandwidth is not an issue. Trust me on this one. Since the RF at these frequencies is only Line-of-site, and low power; contention for the channel is really at a minimum should proper network and protocol designs be used.

And, they can always buy more spectrum... Or, ask the Government to just give it to them, like they usually do.

A 25KHz channel can easily support a full 768Kb/768Kb channel for about 50 users per tower (Since tower interference is nil).

The "not enough bandwidth" argument only comes into play when you leave Line of site frequencies (sub-VHF), or start using monster power (Not the 25mW transceiver in a phone).

Think about it for a second: On a part 15 device, you get a full 54Mb/sec channel... With old technology. Split among 5 users, that's still 10Mb/sec per user. And, that's on a 2.5KHz channel, not a 25Khz channel.
Click to expand...

There is a long term bandwidth congestion issue if you think you can give everyone unlimited data plans with hi-res 2 way video calling and netflix streaming for a low price. It just isn't going to work for a small company. It's hard enough even for Verizon.
 
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