AT&T - T-Moibile merger, poster child of America's corporate governance

The recently announced AT&T acquisition of T-Mobile would eliminate the third largest national carrier in the US moving AT&T to the #1 position over Verizon, leaving Sprint a very distant third. For those of you who travel internationally and carry a GSM world phone by necessity, your choice in US carriers would be reduced from two to one: AT&T.

Forgetting for just a moment that AT&T may very well be one of the worst run organizations on the planet, with the worst customer service, forgetting that their business model has always been to gobble up companies that provide better service than they do, as they did with Cingular/SBC/LA Cellular, so that they can continue to provide their outrageously expensive and horrible quality product, perhaps someone can clue me into how this merger could possibly be good for the American consumer? Can having only one national GSM carrier be considered anything but a monopoly? Can having only two major national cellular carriers be considered anything but a duopoly? Does anyone actually believe that having two companies rather than three will actually lower prices and provide a better product to the consumer? When one of the two companies starts to fail and threatens to lay off 50% of it's employees, does anyone believe the government will be less likely to bail them out because of the merger? What happened to the problems with "to big to fail"?

Whining aside, it seems the rubber stamp of approval from the Senate Anti-Trust subcommittee is a sure shot, regardless of the consequences to the American people. As much as the deal pisses me off, the lack of government oversight pisses me off more. It is the poster child of everything that is wrong with our government today.

I'll tell you honestly, when I first looked at the Senate Antitrust Subcommittee members, I was actually pleased that five were Democrats, and only three were Republicans, because everyone knows the Republicans are beholden to big business, right? Then I read this article:

Big labor and the League of Latin American Citizens? Seriously? I was always under the impression Big Labor was a staunch opponent to corporate power run amoc. Turns out, big labor loves the merger because it consolidates their choke-hold on the Telco labor market, adding 24000 non-unionized T-Mobile employees to their roster(or how ever many are left after the post merger layoffs). Doesn't that just sound GREAT for America? Wonder how much of AT&T's history of suckage can be attributed to their use of union labor?

Suddenly, the lopsided overweight of Democrats on the subcommittee seems like the thing that will guarantee this mergers approval. With the unions all banding together to show support for the merger, does anyone believe those subcommittee members are going to vote against the special interest groups that support them?

 

WTF is AT&T gonna eat the EU branch of T-Mobile , or it will pick only the US cherry ?

 

The company is being bought part and parcel from Duetch Telecom. I would assume that means EU branches as well. You browse the web on this and you will see nothing but negative press, with many/most of T-Mobile's customers promising to abandon the company if the merger goes through. AT&T doesn't care because they get the infrastructure and eliminate a major competitor. T-Mobile doesn't care because of the massive payday attached. Congress oversight doesn't care because their union supporters will benefit. The only people who give a cr*p are American consumers, and who really gives a rats ass about them.

 

Hmm sound like Verizon might get a big customer influx . As for Europe O2 , Orange and Vodaphone will eat any AT & T . T-Mobile has being doing so so in the EU . I doubt they'll be BIG in the next 18 months or so .

 

This is what i understand capitalism to be, and how it ends. ONE big business. It's the only conclusion as every business grows, it fights to take over the rest. Eventually there can only be one.

I think you might find this is a way for the government to control ALL communications in & out of your country. We are being subject to similar with our upcoming NBN (national broadband network). Along with that we get our net censorship with a huge list of banned web sites, although that's spoken about less-often these days.

 

That's why anti-trust laws were invented , to make sure no one has a complete monopoly over a certain sector .

 

That seems to be working well in the AT&T case then.

 

To be fair, the complaints are coming before the deed has actually been done, but most speculation says the deal will go through, even though it will result in a single national GSM carrier in the USA. One only has to look at how often companies like Microsoft(when they were somebody) got spanked in the US for bad behavior vs how often they got spanked by the EU to know things are very permissive here in the US. Its not like Microsoft was better behaved here, with 96% of the desktop marketplace.

IMO, its pure government corruption. The police who are supposed to be enforcing the Anti-trust laws are politicians who are obviously in the pockets of special interests, be they the telcos, the unions, or both. Its this type of thing that landed 200 of Obama's top donors cushy government jobs such as Ambassadorships. Its the type of thing that gets you billions of US dollars to bail out your company when both the CEOS and the unions that work for them donate to your campaign (GM).

Having been around the world a bit, it makes me proud to say the police who patrol our streets are very non-corrupt by comparison to most places I've been. For the most part, a cop would never take a bribe from a motorist or someone committing a crime. Why is it we tolerate what has every appearance of massive bribery at the highest levels of government? I read somewhere that most US lawmakers leave elected office to become lobbyists.

 

Wait a second won't Verizon , Sprint and Virgin still be around ? They offer some serious competition to AT&T .

 

Verizon is the other major carrier. Sprint will be a very very distant third with some minuscule portion of the national market. Virgin isn't even a blip on the market, but I'm happy to see them here.

Specifically for GSM, there will be only one. AT&T

 

Long Live King Popo and his clan.

I call both of them Freaks and Pricks. Are you going by my side now ?

Seriously, our house phone is Vonage. Verizon is too much. Cell phone is At&T though since we got a great deal from them. Until promo time is over were just gonna switch. Same number.

 

Congratulations! You are AT&T's one satisfied customer.

 

As consumers we had to find whatever great deals to save. I guess paying 200 bucks a month for 4 lines with internet for 2 lines is a great deal as against Verizon charging us for the same plan for a 100 more a month.

 

I pay $140 for the same thing with t-mobile. Once they are gone, my rates will go up 40%.

 

My phone & internet are two different accounts altogether - Telstra (our AT&T) for phone @ 35 per month & Virgin Mobile for Internet at $70 for 10gb @ around 4-5mb speeds (less Youtube these days as when you pay per mb it's actually very expensive) but not too bad for the basic stuff.

As I live in the bush, the wireless dongle is much faster than the unlimited dialup I used to have, which is my only other option out here, @ $30pm. I had moved into town for most of last year and enjoyed a 50gb adsl2 (20gb speed) connection for $79pm. Those deals are only available in cities with larger populations but most people more than 10kms from a big city still only have dialup or wireless options.

The coming NBN is supposed to connect 90% of the population @ 100gb speeds, but even that will come nowhere near my place, when it arrives (in 2015-18).

 

I told you earlier your now stepping closer on my side. King Popo welcomes you to the club.

The price is I think decent enough especially if you just need a good laugh from P&R of DP.
How you've been, mate. Haven't seen you for a while.

 

I disagree. I'm equally opposed to monopolies regardless of whether they are run by the government or private enterprise. Anyone whose had a taste of AT&T's customer service knows it is quite similar to dealing with the DMV. I suppose you could make the argument that cheering on government interference in a private industry business transaction like the AT&T acquisition of T-Mobile makes me a Democrat, but I would argue it simply doesn't make me a Libertarian. We need a few laws and, yes, regulations, or we would all be settling our business transactions like the mafia does.

 

It's affordable but I would much prefer cheaper, I was just getting into YouTube.

Been well thanks, enjoying your posts. I made a decision to get into work instead of trying to fix the world lol and have been working towards my FIRST Google payment . . . getting close. FYI: My normal business sells web site advertising but we do the hard yards, business-to-business for that (and make more money) but as a side-line the extra won't hurt.

 

Strange , i didn't knew you consider your hands and yourself a clan .


Anyway the price of mobile phones is the US is very high for the simple reasons that the US continents is net to impossible to cover 100% and the fact that you guys are about 10 years behind when it comes to the expansion of the fiber optic network . Europe has dirt cheap mobile phones (5000 minutes outside the network , inside the network and 5000 SMS for 7 USD) because our optic cable infrastructure is more developed and because providers enjoy a good level of legal stimulus and a clear set of rules . I mean we went so far as to have 1 GB/s ports on academic network labs and @40 MB/s for home Internet . Maybe US companies need a better set of laws to achieve the same thing .

 

I guess the free marketeers there are waiting for big business to do it for them which is fine if you're happy to wait. The problem we had was big business couldn't make a business case for connecting a large section of rural Australia as the cost outweighed short-term profit. It took a visionary government to understand this would break down the tyranny of distance suffered by rural Australians and help push our growing populations out of the cities and into more rural or metropolitan areas and play a major part of solving the perceived over-population under-infrastructure problems we have recently faced. Faster Internet opens many more opportunities.