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AT&T to Acquire T-Mobile USA for $39 Billion

euphoria47 said:
im know others have said this before in this thread, but it doesn't seem to have sunk in that although both att and tmobile are "gsm", their 3g technologies are quite different and generally not compatible.
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The technologies are identical, it's the frequencies that are different. But it's a much smaller hurdle than different technologies (as we saw with the Sprint/Nextel merger). Changing a phone's frequencies is pretty trivial for manufacturers. And there are a small handful of phones out there that support both AT&T and T-Mobile's 3G bands (The Nokia N8 comes to mind).

I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that pretty soon, all of the new 3G/4G phones T-Mobile starts selling will also support AT&T's 3G frequencies, to help ease the transition.
 
Found out about this clusterfrack while traveling over the weekend. I'm with T-Mo explicitly because it ISN'T AT&T.

Now I can look forward to higher prices, more restrictive data plans, and crappier customer service. Didn't we break up Ma Bell for a freaking reason?

Three national cell carriers by the end of 2012 - maybe Armageddon really is coming.

AT&T - I lift my middle finger in salute to you.
 
Uh no all GSM is standard frequencies, although there are a set number, QUad phones work just about all GSM services around the world.
Iphones are Quad GSM
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It doesn't work that way now, those who have JBed and use iPhone on T-Mob only have Edge.
 
Acquiring competition is always bad. Less competition means less effort from the company to improve.

The more dominant a company is the less they try.

I don't want AT&T, so if this really goes through I will be switching carriers, I couldn't care less about gaining the iPhone as a choice.
 
iEvolution said:
Acquiring competition is always bad. Less competition means less effort from the company to improve.

The more dominant a company is the less they try.

I don't want AT&T, so if this really goes through I will be switching carriers, I couldn't care less about gaining the iPhone as a choice.
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Not always, it still leaves Sprint out there with Verizon, so now all 3 will be fighting to have the best network, although I do think Sprint will not be able to last on their own, and since like this merger, they share similar technologies, I could see them working out a deal with Verizon very shortly, Sprint will not survive standing alone, they do not have the iPhone and their customer base is shrinking and not as large as AT&T or VZ's.

it will be interesting to see what comes out of this whole thing when the dust settles, but I do see VZ maybe scoffing up Sprint :rolleyes:
 
FoxyKaye said:
Didn't we break up Ma Bell for a freaking reason?
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The old "Ma Bell" was in fact a true monopoly.
Not the case here.
You have other national and regional carriers to chose from.

T-Mobile USA was a money pit for DT. They have been looking for a buyer for a long time now.

As an AT&T subscriber, I'm happy.
T-Mobile in AZ has their backhaul upgrades already in place and their towers are already running 21Mbps HSPA+.
Just a matter of adding the AT&T frequencies to the towers.
 
Howdr said:
Uh no all GSM is standard frequencies, although there are a set number, QUad phones work just about all GSM services around the world.
Iphones are Quad GSM
Click to expand...

Uh no GSM isn't 3G. While it's true that an iPhone will work just fine on T-Mobile's GSM network, you will be stuck with EDGE. In an age of 4G, who wants to be stuck on 2G?
 
Antares said:
So this merger will leave:

AT&T
Verizon
Sprint
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MetroPCS ( actually bigger than U.S. Cellular)
U.S. Cellular

Do the subcontracting cellular companies count as competitors?
Like Boost and Clear, etc.?
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Technically, it is "leasing" time and being a "Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO)".

Boost and Virgin Mobile (USA) are already owned by Sprint. Cricket is independent but leverages Sprint; so there is no change there either.


U.S. Cellular leverages Verizon for national coverage. ( That would make much more sense to buy at some point than Sprint since already loosely integrated. )

Clear is also mostly owned by Sprint. Essentially, Sprint stuffed bandwidth into that separate entity. Again a move to get others to help build out the network (cable companies). Sprint's 4G leverages Clear's 4G.

Since all of these more narrow marketed services use Sprint, it would be tough for Verizon to get that deal past the US DOJ. They'd be way past the 50% mark in control (of direct and indirect subscribers). Sprint is big enough that they are really can't be bought easily by #1 and #2 ( doesn't matter which one is bigger at any one moment).


There are some TracPhone ( or something similar in pre-paid space) which may have been hooked to T-mobile but it is small.


Since I use Sprint, I would obviously prefer they buy T-Mobile.
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That would be horrible move by Sprint. They have already spent gobs of money trying to choke down Nextel's incompatible network. To go off and choke down T-Mobile's would be worse. What Sprint really wanted was for T-Mobile to help chip in and build out 4G (probably LTE) with them. I suppose they could have shared 4G roaming but didn't make sense to buy.

ATT probably just saved Sprint from themselves. The other upside for Sprint is that ATT won't have as much money and their own integration mess to sort out over next 3-4 years.
 
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rjohnstone said:
The old "Ma Bell" was in fact a true monopoly.
Not the case here.
You have other national and regional carriers to chose from.

T-Mobile USA was a money pit for DT. They have been looking for a buyer for a long time now.

As an AT&T subscriber, I'm happy.
T-Mobile in AZ has their backhaul upgrades already in place and their towers are already running 21Mbps HSPA+.
Just a matter of adding the AT&T frequencies to the towers.
Click to expand...
Let's have that monopoly talk in another year once the FCC rubber-stamps the AT&T/T-Mo acquisition. There's real consumer choice and the illusion of choice that we presently have (one of the posts before this does a great job of who really owns whom in the cellular market).

T-Mo USA was not a money pit: it had flat revenue, but was still profitable. DT wasn't thrilled with this, but by no means were they losing money.

I'm glad you're happy with AT&T in AZ, but the two places I do business, the San Francisco Bay Area and New York, have been an AT&T disaster area.
 
FoxyKaye said:
I'm glad you're happy with AT&T in AZ, but the two places I do business, the San Francisco Bay Area and New York, have been an AT&T disaster area.
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Both of these areas were specifically cited by AT&T as reasons why they feel this acquisition is necessary. Hard to fix the problem when it takes 2-3 years to find a acceptable tower site and get through the bureaucratic mess to get it built. Now, they won't have to do that.
 
Mr Bigs said:
Verizon should have bought T-Mobile and gained an overseas market. Too Late Now !!!!
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You do realize that DT sold tmobile for 39 billion and 8 percent contol of at&t. Im pretty sure DT could buy verzion or atGt themselves
 
yg17 said:
The technologies are identical, it's the frequencies that are different. But it's a much smaller hurdle than different technologies (as we saw with the Sprint/Nextel merger). Changing a phone's frequencies is pretty trivial for manufacturers. And there are a small handful of phones out there that support both AT&T and T-Mobile's 3G bands (The Nokia N8 comes to mind).

I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that pretty soon, all of the new 3G/4G phones T-Mobile starts selling will also support AT&T's 3G frequencies, to help ease the transition.
Click to expand...

Maybe on the hardware side they are identical (with obvious exception of the 1700 mhz band) but the fact is that LTE ≠ HSPA. It isn't too far off that these similar systems can merge in theory, but it will take some work from the carriers as well as hardware manufacturers to make a system that will have universal compatibility. As I said before there will be a lot of growing pains and unhappy / confused subscribers in the interim.
 
Aw crap. I had ATT to start which was horrible. On T-mobile right now and I've been happy with it.

Nice work, ATT. Looks like you may have finally pushed me to get an iPhone...on Verizon.
 
This would be nice if AT&T would take the UMA T-Mobile offers and start pushing it for all their phones but sadly I see AT&T killing off the T-Mobile UMA instead of trying to expand on it.
Hell I wish Apple would push UMA. UMA is so much better than the Microcell crap.
 
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