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Re:What happens if the merger is blocked (Score:4, Informative)
Ok, lets say the Fed's block the merger. What happens next? T-Mob continues to bleed itself to death?
From What ATT Owes T-Mobile if Deal Doesn’t Go Through [allthingsd.com]:
As part of the deal, AT&T has agreed to pay T-Mobile $3 billion and promised valuable spectrum and a roaming agreement should the deal fail to garner approval.
If the deal doesn't go through, T-Mobile wins ($3B payday). If the deal does go through, T-Mobile share-holders win (big payday).
Re:How should I know? So, Pox it is. (Score:4, Informative)
The pros are that this is a value-added proposition which will strengthen the position of stakeholders with a synergistic marriage of complementary solutions.
The cons are less competition, higher prices, poorer service, and a general trickle-down effect that smells like salty ammonia and colors snow yellow.
Re:How should I know? So, Pox it is. (Score:1, Informative)
Why do people do this? If you come to Slashdot, you must have seen articles about this by now.
I do, and no I haven't.
Yes, we get it...you aren't in the US, but really what is the point of making these comments?
Perhaps because the rest of the world is tired of the US bleating that the world stops at it's borders.
This has been all over the internet
No it hasn't. Maybe it's been all over the US parts of the internet, but that's my point. Outside of the US who gives a fuck about this?
and whether or not you live here, you've seen it
No I haven't. Way to go making that typical US assumption that the rest of the world hangs on every happening in America.
unless you live under a rock and only check Slashdot like once a week (apparently just to make witty comments on the polls).
So what if I do check slashdot once a week.
I just LOVE how if someone is not in the US then they're living under a rock.
Re:Oppose a single GSM carrier (Score:3, Informative)
Having come back to the USA, I've decided to adopt this practice for myself, buying unlocked phones online, and using them with either AT&T or T-Mobile. ATT has gotten much better about their pre-paid plans lately. I love their $50 unlimited pre-paid plan. They didn't hassle me at all the last time I went in, I just told them I wanted a SIM card, and they didn't even ask to see the phone. They just pulled out a SIM card, sold it to me, and told me that if I wanted to use it in a smartphone, I'd need to buy a data package for it. So for $50 plus data, you're still beating their price for what a similar unlimited plan would be on contract. T-Mobile was always good about selling me a SIM card, but I found on their prepaid plans, there are a lot of places where data won't work. I live in a fairly rural area, and it seems that ATT has much better coverage. T-Mobile will roam on ATT for voice, and if you are on contract, I believe they will let you roam data too (but only on Edge), but on prepaid, if there isn't a T-Mobile tower in range, you won't get any data.
So this merger is not good for me. I wish that America was more like the rest of the world, where I would have at least three robust GSM networks to choose from for my unlocked phone. Right now, I only have two choices, and where I live one of the choices isn't really an option if I want data. I think the presence of T-Mobile, and their easy pre-paid and no-contract plans has at least caused ATT to offer a similar service, I'm afraid that if there's only one network, we'll lose that competitiveness. I would say there's probably only a small amount of people in the USA who do what I do, and buy unlocked phones and then shop for service. If theres only one GSM carrier, then whatever small incentive there was for ATT to offer a decent no-contract plan for users like me, will disappear.
And I'm not convinced we can blame it all on the carriers, much of it has to do with the uneducated American consumers, who don't even know that in most of the world, you can buy the phone you want, and use it on any network. If consumers realized that this was possible, more people would start buying phones this way, and carriers would respond by offering more options for people who want to buy SIM cards and go no-contract.
I have my fingers crossed that LTE can maybe improve the situation a little bit. If both Verizon and AT&T start using LTE, then I'm hoping that we'll be able to unlock LTE phones, and be able to get an LTE SIM card from either Verizon, or AT&T. If you've seen a new Verizon phone that supports LTE, and open it up, you'll see a surprise - a Verizon SIM card. In the future, I'm hoping that all carriers will start selling LTE SIM cards, and we'll be able to buy unlocked LTE phones and shop around for a carrier. I think that's how it should be - pick the phone you want, and then shop for the carrier that meets your needs best.
Just a funny anecdote to finish up my point. My non-American girlfriend recently arrived, and I gave her an AT&T SIM card to use in her Nokia she brought with her. I arrived home from work one day, and found my Verizon Droid that I'm no longer using completely dismantled on the table. I asked her why she tore apart my Droid, and she said, "I wanted to try this phone, and I can't figure out where the SIM card goes in here, they hid it really good!" I then explained that not all American phones take SIM cards, and that phones are usually bought from the carrier on contract and can't be moved to another network, and some networks don't use SIM cards and don't all support the same standards. She muttered something about "dumb Americans..."
Re:How should I know? So, Pox it is. (Score:4, Informative)
Jesus Christ, T-Mobile is owned by Deutsche Telekom (who has been trying to unload the company for years). This isn't just a U.S. thing. It impacts the biggest telecommunications company in Europe. It has subsidiaries that offer mobile coverage to a significant portion of the world. Check out this map: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Deutsche_Telekom_world_locations_2010_new.png [wikipedia.org] I'll grant that you may not be in one of the pink countries, but you have to at least recognize this issue spans over many countries.
BTW - you comments work for a large number of /. polls and stories, just not this one.