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AT&T Gives Up on T-Mobile Acquisition

Terrin said:
As a T-Mobile who fled AT&T, I would have got crap if the sale went through. T-Mobile today offers more plan variety than AT&T and it does it cheaper. For instance, I have an iPhone without a data plan. AT&T wouldn't let me do that even with an unlocked iPhone. Further, the only reason there is no T-Mobile iPhone is because Apple isn't stupid enough to sink tons of money into a Carrier that was going to be gobbled up by AT&T. Now that this deal is off the table, we will see Apple come around. It might take until the next upgrade, but it will happen.
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It's not going to happen. Like Sprint, Apple would have been glad to make a T-Mobile iPhone if T-Mobile was willing to sign a deal similar to Sprints (cash and guaranteed sales) but T-Mobile will never do it. As many other people have stated, the parent company of T-Mobile (USA) does not want to put anymore money into T-Mobile (USA). T-Mobile (USA) is also losing customers / money and will now be sold to Sprint or the assets will be sold to the highest bidder in a fire sale. I like T-Mobile and am a subscriber but even I recognize that T-Mobile (USA) is going away.
 
They misjudged the timing. Any idiot would have known a Democrat President would have shot this down.

My prediction, it will be reintroduced after Obama is kicked out in 2012. Since the sitting President appoints the majority of it's commissioners, they will have at least a friendlier oversight.

The current group came out against it before they even looked at any details of it. That's not the right or fair way to do it. Let it succeed or fail on it's merits and what is presented, not on a pre-judgement and pre-conceptions without any of the facts.

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Plutonius said:
It's not going to happen. Like Sprint, Apple would have been glad to make a T-Mobile iPhone if T-Mobile was willing to sign a deal similar to Sprints (cash and guaranteed sales) but T-Mobile will never do it. As many other people have stated, the parent company of T-Mobile (USA) does not want to put anymore money into T-Mobile (USA). T-Mobile (USA) is also losing customers / money and will now be sold to Sprint or the assets will be sold to the highest bidder in a fire sale. I like T-Mobile and am a subscriber but even I recognize that T-Mobile (USA) is going away.
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Wait... isn't that the reason they prevented this merger? Because three instead of four lessens competition?
 
i-John said:
They misjudged the timing. Any idiot would have known a Democrat President would have shot this down.

My prediction, it will be reintroduced after Obama is kicked out in 2012. Since the sitting President appoints the majority of it's commissioners, they will have at least a friendlier oversight.

The current group came out against it before they even looked at any details of it. That's not the right or fair way to do it. Let it succeed or fail on it's merits and what is presented, not on a pre-judgement and pre-conceptions without any of the facts.

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Wait... isn't that the reason they prevented this merger? Because three instead of four lessens competition?
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Let's not get political, here. iWas all for the AT&T-mobile merger, and yes, the DoJ did get involved, but there's no reason to say what you're saying about the President. Keep it strictly "threadly", ok.? Ok. :)
 
Swift said:
We should just get a learned committee together and tell the carriers what protocols and bandwidth they will have to support. You don't need to BUY spectrum as long as everybody uses the same thing.

In other words, the whole model of letting one carrier or another buy exclusive spectrum is crazy. They're not broadcast stations, which need exclusivity. They sell access to the net, period.
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Honestly, It's crazy that we don't already have comittees dictating everything, companies have a way of NOT supporting standards for ****.

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Bigdaddyguido said:
Thank you. It seems that many Americans have been brainwashed to believe competition automatically benefits the consumers. Unfortunately, in real life there are many, many other factors which play in this formula.
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Brainwashed? No, Taught is more like it, and give only one example of when competition *ISN'T* beneficial to the costumer.
 
Wow, can't believe so many macrumors people support this boneheaded acquisition. I guess most users just use ATT and doe not give a rats butt about the outlook down the road.

For the rest of the people that use Sprint and T Mobile, we are assured that there will still be competition and fair plans all around.

Department of Justice did the right thing here, it protects the interests of the consumers and by disallowing a monopoly to occur this will be favorable to all consumers regardless of what they think right now.

All this conjured material about T-mobile going down and ATT wanting to boost their spectrum is hogwash. T-mobile may be declining in revenue but its not even close to shutting down and ATT is just concealing their attentions to eliminate the other GSM carrier.

Anyone who disagree's DOJ actions and ATT's withdrawl clearly do not understand what is at stake here. Had this deal gone through, 5 10 years down the road we would be shooting ourselves for letting ATT vs Verizon and only 2 carriers to choose from. All you speed fanatics can just wait a few years for ATT to expand its spectrum anyways.

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How do you guys NOT understand this?

Competition almost always benefits the consumes which we are.

Less competition would mean less choices and options for us indirectly leading to higher prices.

Most of you don't even have this basic concept down and already is debating this decision. Pathetic.

By staying with 4 carriers, this in no way is detrimental to the US and t mobile stays as good option away from the big 2.

People, STOP AND THINK

This ATT Tmobile merger would not have helped you. At a time where the government is being ripped apart by the media, I commend them for this action to preserve the fair balance in cellular options.
 
BlizzardBolt said:
Wow, can't believe so many macrumors people support this boneheaded acquisition. I guess most users just use ATT and doe not give a rats butt about the outlook down the road.

For the rest of the people that use Sprint and T Mobile, we are assured that there will still be competition and fair plans all around.

Department of Justice did the right thing here, it protects the interests of the consumers and by disallowing a monopoly to occur this will be favorable to all consumers regardless of what they think right now.

All this conjured material about T-mobile going down and ATT wanting to boost their spectrum is hogwash. T-mobile may be declining in revenue but its not even close to shutting down and ATT is just concealing their attentions to eliminate the other GSM carrier.

Anyone who disagree's DOJ actions and ATT's withdrawl clearly do not understand what is at stake here. Had this deal gone through, 5 10 years down the road we would be shooting ourselves for letting ATT vs Verizon and only 2 carriers to choose from. All you speed fanatics can just wait a few years for ATT to expand its spectrum anyways.
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True... but Deutsche Telekom wanted AT&T to buy T-Mobile, right?

Now they've got $4 billion to play with... but does DT even want to remain in the US market?

I thought that was the whole point of merging with AT&T?

I totally agree with you that the elimination of a carrier will hurt competition.

BUT... what if that carrier doesn't want to be here?


Plan A: get acquired by AT&T (failed)

Plan B: keep on truckin' like nothing ever happened?

Is Deutsche Telekom gonna put effort into T-Mobile when they just spent the last 9 months trying to get rid of it?

Why were they so keen on being acquired by AT&T then?
 
0dev said:
giffgaff, the ones who pay me to use their network and give me the best deal in the country ;)
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I beg to differ. For starters you are piggybacking on O2's networks so goodbye to 3G. I was there last year, won't go back in a hurry.

Second, if you use up your goodybag allowance you cannot top up and have to wait until the following month to purchase another.

Third, thanks to cashbacks, T-mobile has offered better deals: I currently am on a year's contract, which includes minutes, texts and data AND tethering for which T-mobile is paying me. No tethering allowed on giffgaff.

A £10 top up on a second free T-mobile sim gives me a year's free internet for my MiFi. Unlike some networks, T-mobile also does not sting you with overage but lets you surf and email for free if your data allowance is used up.
 
weckart said:
I beg to differ. For starters you are piggybacking on O2's networks so goodbye to 3G. I was there last year, won't go back in a hurry.
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I get perfectly good 3G signal in my area with both a normal O2 sim and a giffgaff sim.

Second, if you use up your goodybag allowance you cannot top up and have to wait until the following month to purchase another.
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Where did you get that from? Total lie. If you do not renew your goodybag before it runs out, you can still buy credit, and you have to wait 12 hours before you can buy another one. Not a month, 12 hours.

Third, thanks to cashbacks, T-mobile has offered better deals: I currently am on a year's contract, which includes minutes, texts and data AND tethering for which T-mobile is paying me. No tethering allowed on giffgaff.
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But you're stuck in a contract, and you aren't going to be making a profit from those cashbacks.

A £10 top up on a second free T-mobile sim gives me a year's free internet for my MiFi. Unlike some networks, T-mobile also does not sting you with overage but lets you surf and email for free if your data allowance is used up.
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I'll give you the tethering thing, but then, I can get a second giffgaff sim and pay just £5 a month for 500MB on a data only plan, and make the money back from the payback. As it happens, I personally just use WiFi.

And giffgaff has no data allowance at all on the regular smartphone plans. It's all unlimited with no fair use.

Also remember that, not only do you get paid by getting friends and family on giffgaff, but you get unlimited free calls to other giffgaff users, too, even if you have no goodybag or credit.

And one more thing: when I first got my iPhone 4, I used T-Mobile, and it took me days to get my internet activated, because it wouldn't work by itself and the customer service is utterly useless. Not only that, but they made me pay for a micro sim! Then when it did finally get working, the actual coverage I got was terrible in my area, and when it kept roaming to Orange my data would stop working (this is what's supposed to happen, apparently - no data when your phone roams to Orange, and the same applies if you're on Orange and you roam to T-Mobile).

I moved to giffgaff after I was sick of that crappy service and got the whole thing set up in 20 minutes. Any problems after that were addressed very well by both forum users and agents. Not a single real complaint about giffgaff at all during my year of using them.
 
davewyman said:
This is great news for the consumer, as long as the communication industry is driven by private enterprise.
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No its not.

It means that T-mobile will go out of business and the end result will be identical.

It also means that AT&T will not be able to improve their service in the meantime.

That's great news!
 
Willis said:
Is this a retention offer? Can't see anything relating to this on their site and any new contract taken out has a maximum of 1GB with fair usage with T-Mobile and 2GB with Orange.
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Yeah, I phoned up to cancel when my contract ended as I'd seen a much better deal with '3' - it worked out cheaper than my existing £30/mo contract. IIRC the '3' offer was around £25 and included a microsim for the iPad. The T-Mobile rep asked if they could keep me there, and I basically said what I wanted,and that I wanted it as cheap as she could do it - thats what I ended up with :p The first 3 months were only £3 as well!
 
Maury said:
No its not.

It means that T-mobile will go out of business and the end result will be identical.

It also means that AT&T will not be able to improve their service in the meantime.

That's great news!
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Please stop trying to explain business to these people. They hate corporations.
 
Bad idea? Please enlighten me !

Unless you work for either company or are a major stakeholder,
would somebody PLEASE TELL ME HOW THIS COULD AFFECT THIER LIFE ??
 
rmwebs said:
Its a completely different matter in the US as the silly networks dont use the same technology, and they cant inter-operate with each other.
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Sprint and Verizon use the same technology. If Verizon (or Sprint) wanted to they could activate phones used on the other carriers network.

marksman said:
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A334 Safari/7534.48.3)

I like that the us government thinks it can force DT to run Tmobile as is.
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Well the government could have let AT&T buy T-Mobile but told them they get none of the spectrum. After all the spectrum is ours (the public)...
 
realmike15 said:
Screw AT&T, this was only about limiting competition. If you believe anything else you're naive.
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No, it was about an instant network expansion. You have any idea how long it takes to get the permits, and all the red tape to build cell towers with everyones NIMBY attitude? AT&T would have been able to come in, with a few minimal upgrades and tweaks and instantly expand their network with these towers and increase service coverage. They were paying for 2 things. Towers and Spectrum. customers who were leaving would have left anyway, and the ones they retain would have likely been able to keep their grandfathered plans until they upgraded, same with any other carrier mergers.

So now, what happens? Let me show you how the next few years play out.

Dish Network? They'll try to run the network, fail, and sell it off. They can hardly even run their own satellite network. They should take a lesson from Cox. Trying to run your own wireless cell network is expensive and painful for a cable tv company.

Sprint? They'll take the customers and spectrum (Not like they need it), and sell off the towers to AT&T as they bring the customers onto their CDMA/LTE network in 2013.

Verizon? If they wouldnt approve AT&T, why would the larger carrier get approved? even if they did, the time and expense to change over all the towers from GSM to CDMA would not be worth it to them, and the added expense of running 2 networks would be undesirable.

In 2 years this will all be a moot point. Every carrier will have LTE phones with SIP Voice stacks in them, circuit switched voice will be dead by 2014 except in painfully rural areas, and everything will be IP over LTE. The biggest concern then will be who your carrier has LTE and Data roaming agreements with.
 
Abacab said:
Unless you work for either company or are a major stakeholder,
would somebody PLEASE TELL ME HOW THIS COULD AFFECT THIER LIFE ??
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Higher prices, less choice.

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JoeiiApple said:
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Really.? How.?
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You're joking, right? Has there ever, in the history of capitalism, been a merger between companies that did not result in job LOSSES as opposed to "job creation" that would allegedly have resulted in this purchase, as claimed by at&t?
How would the purchase of T-Mobile have created better coverage for anybody? Both the at&t and T-Mobile networks are in place now, and the concept of roaming agreements exists. Rather than just trying buy out and shut down the competition, at&t could have invested those $39 bn into its own network and actually improve overall coverage, instead of just purchasing T-Mobile's network and relabel it.
 
Kar98 said:
Rather than just trying buy out and shut down the competition, at&t could have invested those $39 bn into its own network and actually improve overall coverage, instead of just purchasing T-Mobile's network and relabel it.
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As has been explained many times already, building out new towers takes YEARS and in some cities like SF, is all but impossible to get new permits. Buying existing towers and doing equipment/software updates is much cheaper and faster.
 
rjohnstone said:
As has been explained many times already, building out new towers takes YEARS and in some cities like SF, is all but impossible to get new permits. Buying existing towers and doing equipment/software updates is much cheaper and faster.
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The same could have been achieved with mutual roaming and tower sharing agreements. Without eliminating choice and competition.
 
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