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How should I know? So, Pox it is. (Score:1)
If someone on /. has the knowledge to enlighten the masses on the pros/cons of a merger/aquisition, please do!
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Indeed. What merger? Is this some kind of US thing? I have no idea WTF this poll is for, nor how it affects me on the other side of the globe if it indeed is a US thing.
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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.
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It is only T-Mobile US that is planning to merge with AT&T. T-Mobile UK for example merged with France Telecom owned Orange UK.
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Further more, what the hell does this have to do with us bleating that the world stops at our borders? I don't even understand what this point means.
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Do you have any data to back up that claim?
I am going to go with anecdotal evidence. But if anyone has traffic data, that would be interesting to see.
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Last time Slashdot published statistics, a couple of years ago, 51% of the readership was in the USA and this had been steadily dropping for a while. I'd be very much surprised if it's more than 45% by now.
That said, the AT&T / T-Mobile merger has been covered in most of the tech press, including El Reg (based in the UK), and has been the subject of two Slashdot stories that I've read and probably more that I've missed. If someone has no knowledge of it, then they are entirely free to just not read
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No, he wasn't saying you live under a rock if you are not in the US, he's saying you live under a rock if you haven't noticed the AT&T/T-Mobile merger articles. There have been a few (At least two, IIRC).
Either way, it's not particularly helpful to bash a US-centric website for being US-centric, or a critic of that for being critical of that.
Slashdot is US-centric, of course. For people who are more interested in tech news from other parts of the world, may I suggest submitting stories?
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Re:How should I know? So, Pox it is. (Score:4, Funny)
Ak, a foreigner! Don't you have some heads to shrink or some cannibalistic ritual to take part in. And who taught you how to read? How can we exploit your resources and leave you all living in the Third World version of a trailer park if you can actually read. I'm sending this on to the Privy Office so they can come, lop out your tongue and chop off your hands, you filthy savage.
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well then STOP FUCKING UP the world!
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Yeah, the EU's doing sooo much better. :^>
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.
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The pros are that this is a value-added proposition which will strengthen the position of stakeholders with a synergistic marriage of complementary solutions.
Excellent! You win today's buzzword bingo.
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I don't know. There wasn't a reference to cloud. I'm taking a point off. But, since the cons were spot on, I'll add .2 back.
9.2
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By 2050, it will be an Olympic sport.
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This merger will be a disgrace for capitalism.
We should get better shit when more players compete.
The cold hard reality is that they poo on customers and by merging even the illusion of competition disappears.
This is not about a 'free market', but about putting the effects of real capitalism into effect by blocking this shit.
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T-Mobile is much smaller than AT&T. The merged company will be run by AT&T management.
Current AT&T customers will see no improvement in service. Current T-Mobile customers will see a reduction is customer service, but possibly an improvement in network coverage.
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Less competion = worse deals for the customers. By merging, these two company effectively reduce the field of competition. THIS is the con.
What happens if the merger is blocked (Score:4, Interesting)
Ok, lets say the Fed's block the merger. What happens next? T-Mob continues to bleed itself to death? Their parent co has already said they are unwilling to make the capital investments necessary for T-Mob to compete against Sprint, ATT and Verizon. If the Feds block the merger, are they going to force T-Mob to stay in business?
I'm not excited about the wireless market looking like the residential broadband market right now (a duopoly or monopoly in some markets). But, there is not guarantees to T-Mob's continued success, and this merger has seemed only to accelerate their subscribers running out the door.
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T-Mobile also offers the unlimited data, talk, and text for a pretty reasonable price (if you have two lines, they are only $49 each) (throttled, but it's mobile... who cares).
The main thing I would hate about this is AT&T swallowing TMO and ruining the best pricing available on the market, that I have seen.
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The smart money is on AT&T acquiring T-Mobile to ruin those plans. Given how poor its service and price has been in recent years, that's the only conclusion I can come to. There's not much point in having 3G service with AT&T as most of the time you're dealing with at most EDGE anyways.
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Meanwhile, Boost Mobile (Sprint) gives you unlimited everything for $50/month, and it drops $5 every 6 months until you bottom out at $35/month.
Virgin Mobile (also Sprint) gives you unlimited everything for $55/month. But personally, I prefer their $35/month plan, which only gives you 300 minutes of talk, but everything else is unlim
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Not 100% sure, but I think the catch with Virgin is slow data. I could swear I read somewhere that they're 1xRTT-only (in English: ~153kbps nominal speed, ~50-80kbps real-world speed, compared to 300-600kbps real-world speeds seen by Sprint customers using EVDO).
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$80/mo with reduced speeds after 10G is what I see. Is that what you are talking about?
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).
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I just hope that there's a fairly speedy (as in three to five years, not a decade) resolution to the court battle that will undoubtedly ensure if the federal government successfully blocks the merger, and that it comes out in t-mobile's favor. They have had excellent rates for unlimited service, and if everyone remembers, back when ISPs used to offer only so many minutes per month for internet usage it was an awakening when they all switched to unlimited.
Since the FCC is planning on auctioning very desirab
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T-Mobile should just take that money and put it all towards an iPhone exclusive contract. That's the main reason they are losing their lunch to AT&T right now.
Of course, now that Apple is in such a dominant smartphone position, they'd be stupid to take exclusivity at any price. Release a duel GSM/CDMA phone that works on any network and they could double their US market share in a couple years...
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Right, T-Mob get a $3B payday, but there is no certainty (or indication) that they are going to invest that back into their network.
They are probably going to take the money and run all the way back to Germany.....
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If the feds block the merger, AT&T has agreed to provide favorable roving terms, spectrum and money. That is, the bridge so the capital investment is less dire, the primary good
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T-Mobile gets an iPhone?
T-Mobile goes out of business which allows their customer to leave their contract?
T-Mobile Continues as it?
Whatever. AT&T means no options, higher costs, and worse service.
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If the deal gets blocked, they still come out a few billion a head in in free spectrum and money that AT&T put up to demonstrate the seriousness of their bid. So, in the short term, it all works out pretty well for T-Mobile. In the long run, however, they probably end up making nice with sprint so that instead of 2 MASSIVE providers and 1 little one, we end up with 3 "pretty big" providers. That's still a slight improvement. Alternately, someone else might wish to buy them and continue operating th
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AOL continued to make profit, even as its customers fled in droves to faster, broadband connections. My reference to 'bleeding itself to death' refers to their continued subscriber losses, especially in the profitable post-paid contract market.
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Losing 0.2% customer base per quarter is hardly arterial bleeding.
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They can go under. The biggest problem with cell phone mergers is that once the merger takes place its forever, no new national level competitor can enter the market without an existing provider selling them bandwidth (which would pretty much be a lose/lose for said provider). If T mobile goes under and its spectrum is given to a new competitor it prevents us from falling all the way to three national providers forever.
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Ok, lets say the Fed's block the merger. What happens next?
Somebody else buys T-Mobile. CenturyLink, a consortium of US cable companies, a private capital investment firm, a different foreign telecom (say, América MÃvil) . . . there are lots and lots of people who aren't AT&T, Verizon, or Sprint Nextel out there.
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What happens next?
T-Mobil reduces prices and sell accounts with higher caps than the competition. Capitalism is: "Give customers what they want to stay in business", not, "Keep the cartel alive or sell out to another member of the cartel". If T-Mobil offered an unlimited data plan while all of the others are capping the shit out of their customers they will bounce back.
AT&T with too much power = bad. (Score:1)
There's a reason that Ma Bell was cut into pieces. 1 company with too much power is not good. Maybe we need to remember that when looking at other companies, too.
Re: (Score:1, Offtopic)
The Democrats are bad but the Republicans are a bunch of suicidal maniacs. Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell said his number one priority was to make Obama a one term President. WTF!? The R's would rather run the country into the ground so they can blame it on Obama and regain the Presidency than do anything constructive to improve things for the US as a whole. Bastards!
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it was, until someone took this opportunity to emote about how the politicians they love are all pure as the driven snow, and the ones they don't like are evil, bad, and responsible for all the world's problems.
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Sometimes you have to hit rock bottom before meaningful change is actually accomplished. Rock bottom can be a single Verizon monopoly, or the complete collapse of the social safety net and the resulting consequences...
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A historical U-6 unemployment graph would be a good start
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More Eye Candy (Score:2, Funny)
keep them seperate, I like the t-mobile chick
Divide and Divest (Score:1)
This merger is bad news (Score:2)
With any GSM network I have ever used I simply buy an unlocked phone (not expensive, in brick & mortar shops they are sold a
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That $0 phone isn't $0. It just means $0 down payment. You're then financing the phone at a sharky interest rate (25% APR is typical) for 2 or 3 years.
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In the UK, if you compare the price between a contract with phone and a SIM only contract, it adds up to pretty much exactly the price of the phone. Which means provided you remember to switch to SIM only when your contract expires, you are getting an interest free loan for the handset. Of course, most people don't remember to do that, and that's where they make their profit.
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Exclusive deals are nearly unheard of in many parts of the world, networks should be competing based on the service they provide and handsets should be completely seperate. This w
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CMDA isn't a problem, the problem is that neither Sprint nor Verizon is required to use handsets that have a SIM card and they're not required to unlock compatible phones. That issue made me leave Sprint when I found out that because my replacement phone didn't have the silk screened logo on it that they wouldn't activate it on their network for "reliability" reasons.
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CDMA is a problem in that CSIM capability is optional, and therefore nonexistent for all practical purposes.
Depends (Score:4, Funny)
If it were up to me, I'd accept bribes from ATT, T-Mobile and any of their competitors. Whichever question gave the biggest total bribe (for or against), would tell me whether to allow it.
I would then inform them that I don't in fact have the power to make that decision and tell them to go bribe someone else, as I run off with the money.
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Amateur (Score:2)
"Whichever question gave the biggest total bribe (for or against), would tell me whether to allow it." Wait, you're only gonna take money from the highest bidder? You're supposed take the money from all of them, give them vague promises, and half-hearted attempts/speeches (to make it look like you're actually working for the money) for 3 or 4 election cycles, gathering bribes from them the whole time, then when you see they are finally losing patience, go with the highest bidder.
Never butcher the cow till i
Read my Sig (Score:5, Funny)
--
I oppose the AT&T/T-Mobile merger because I don't want to lose the hot T-Mobile girl ads.
.
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What hot T-Mobile girl ads? I haven't seen any hot girls in their ads since they got rid of Catherine Zeta-Jones.
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Not surprised at the results. (Score:2)
I've been reading stories and comments about this acquisition since it was announced and across the board about 9/10 people are against it. The reasons vary, but among T-Mobile customers (and I am one) the attitude is pretty much, "anybody but AT&T!". AT&T is astoundingly customer-hostile. They always seem to be the first to raise rates and curtail services. When the other telcos see them get away with it they follow suit. While AT&T was counting their iPhone money Verizon built an LTE network.
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Which is why Congress made doing so illegal when it substantively decreases competition?
From the Wikipedia page on Clayton:
Provisions
The Clayton Act made both substantive and procedural modifications to federal antitrust law. Substantively, the act seeks to capture anticompetitive practices in their incipiency by prohibiting particular types of conduct, not deemed in the best interest of a competitive market. There are 4 sections of the bill that proposed substantive changes in the antitrust laws by way of supplementing the Sherman Act of 1890. In those sections, the Act thoroughly discusses the following four principles of economic trade and business:
SNIP
mergers and acquisitions where the effect may substantially lessen competition (Act Section 7, codified at 15 U.S.C. 18) or where the voting securities and assets threshold is met (Act Section 7a, codified at 15 U.S.C. 18a);
It's fine with small businesses, but when there's only 4 companies in the entire country or large sections of it, it's definitely a no no.
Let "the market" decide (Score:1)
120 people so far voted for "I would encourage the ATT/T-Mobile merger", which is fine, whatever one thinks.
But 222 people have voted for the "let the market decide" option. This is nonsense, however one thinks. What has the market had to do with Verizon, or AT&T, or Sprint? For one thing, the local loop is de facto, and in many cases de jure, completely divided up in the country between Verizon and AT&T (and Qwest too, although all Qwest states are west of the Mississippi, minus large states lik
Just can't escape AT&T (Score:1)
I wept when the merger was first announced.
AT&T didn't take over Cingular, SBC took over (Score:2)
You've got that backwards. Cingular took over AT&T Wireless (and only Wireless). Years later, Cingular's parent company SBC bought the remnants of AT&T and renamed themselves as AT&T.
Detailed version:
Cingular was a joint venture between Cellular One (McCaw Communication) and SBC, the mega-baby-bell that started as just one of the 6 or 7 after the AT&T breakup of the 1980s. Cingular became the brand name for the wireless service of SBC, and eventually SBC owned it all.
AT&T Wireless was a
Ok, someone explain this to me. (Score:2)
1. What does "I'm ambivalent, but would let the market decide" mean? The decision making players are AT&T and T-mobile management, and the federal government. "The market" has essentially nothing to say about it and no way to really even weigh in on the matter. Anyone who thinks that "the market" can or will put a stop to a bad merger - two words: HP Compaq.
2. "A pox on both their houses". What the hell? Which are the two houses you want to put a pox on? AT&T and T-Mo? AT&Tmo and the USG? AT
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2. "A pox on both their houses". What the hell? Which are the two houses you want to put a pox on? AT&T and T-Mo? AT&Tmo and the USG? AT&Tmo and Verizon/Sprint?
Yes.
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spokesmodel (Score:2)
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Oppose a single GSM carrier (Score:5, Insightful)
As a regular VISITOR to the US, I would oppose anything that reduces your already meagre choice of 2 major GSM networks, to 1. (A visitor from almost any other country is going to be carrying a GSM phone, making Sprint and Verizon non-options from the start)
At the moment, a visiting tourist's two options are:
a) AT&T, who prefer to sell you a crappy GoPhone handset rather than just a SIM. Oh and if you find an AT&T store that actually understands what you're trying to do, and you insist on just a SIM, make sure you don't tell them it's for an iPhone, because they won't let you activate a normal (i.e. non AT&T locked down) iPhone on their network. Just tell them it's for some old Nokia or something, activate the SIM using said old Nokia (and it's associated non-iPhone IMEI), then transfer the SIM to your iPhone. And BTW that doesn't include any data by default and you have to call some number to add a data pack taken from your existing credit blah blah.
b) T-Mobile is a lot friendlier to tourists wanting some prepaid voice + data and are happy to sell you a SIM without caring what kind of phone you put it in. Hooray! BUT ... unfortunately they use some wacky HSDPA frequency/band that nowhere else in the world does (and thus your phone is almost guaranteed not to support it). Result is, you'll get your voice service, but your data will only be at GPRS or EDGE speeds. Better than nothing though and it's still worth it for not having to jump through the hoops that AT&T make you do.
I have no idea what a merger between the two companies would look like from a visitor's perspective but I can't imagine it would be good. Probably more like the current AT&T than the current T-Mobile. Either way, why does it have to be so much more complicated (and expensive) than in every other country where you can literally pick a SIM up for $2 bucks in the arrivals hall at the airport and have it instantly activated? You can't seem to do this in the US since the carriers don't seem to have shops in most airports like carriers do everywhere else.
From 'our' perspective, the mobile phone market in the US is bizarre. It's overpriced and relies on coupling particular phones to particular networks. You overhear comments from Americans along the lines of "I want a *phone X* but it's only available on *network Y*" - a concept foreign to most of the rest of the world. I also understand that even if you DO buy an unlocked phone outright in the US, and you go to your carrier to get a plan for it, you still have to go on a contract, and you still have to pay handset repayments as part of the cost of the plan anyway (!?!) (i.e. the plan cost doesn't change if you bring your own handset). It would make me rage uncontrollably if I lived there full time ;)
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From 'our' perspective, the mobile phone market in the US is bizarre. It's overpriced and relies on coupling particular phones to particular networks. You overhear comments from Americans along the lines of "I want a *phone X* but it's only available on *network Y*" - a concept foreign to most of the rest of the world. I also understand that even if you DO buy an unlocked phone outright in the US, and you go to your carrier to get a plan for it, you still have to go on a contract, and you still have to pay handset repayments as part of the cost of the plan anyway (!?!) (i.e. the plan cost doesn't change if you bring your own handset). It would make me rage uncontrollably if I lived there full time ;)
That's one more reason to block the deal. T-Mobile does have non-contract rate plans that are lower without the phone subsidy. I think they called them "Even More Plus" plans last time I checked, but it may have changed since then.
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Replying to my own post, but they did change the plan name. There's a no contract section with both prepaid and monthly plans. Right now the Unlimited talk+text+web(5GB before throttling) is $70 vs. $90 for the same plan under contract.
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I forgot where I read it, but I vaguely remember hearing that Verizon and AT&T are likely to somehow use incompatible forms of LTE. It might be related to the operating frequency. If that's the case, then we're stuck with the same "locked into a single carrier" issue you're describing.
The whole thing, as you've aptly described, is ridiculous. When I was in high school, our entire marching band traveled to London to march in a parade. All of the chaperones were shocked to learn that their cell phones
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why does it have to be so much more complicated (and expensive) than in every other country where you can literally pick a SIM up for $2 bucks in the arrivals hall at the airport and have it instantly activated? You can't seem to do this in the US since the carriers don't seem to have shops in most airports like carriers do everywhere else.
1. Because they don't give a shit to make it simpler. The rate of international travel flux in the US is simply much lower than in Europe. While I agree it sucks bot
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While I generally agree with your post, and would prefer to have unlocked phones that could be moved from network to network, one thing I will say in defense of American cell phone companies is this: no other country has had four companies cover such a vast geographical area with such a dispersed population. It's easy in these small, densely populated European or Asian countries to have lots of competition in the cell phone market. You want to become a competitor? Just set up a few hundred to a couple thous
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My comparison is largely with Australia though, which is the same size as the lower 48 US states with a similarly dispersed population. And it has three nationwide GSM networks (access to which is wholesaled to other companies meaning we end up with something like 5 or 6 major nationwide carriers). And that's all to serve a population smaller than some individual US cities. So it can be done.
Agree with your comparisons with Europe though, it IS obviously a lot easier in that kind of area.
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Oh agreed - wasn't suggesting that I think that prohibiting the merger was something that ~should~ be done. It was simply the selfish reasoning that would apply to me alone (i.e. "if it were up to me, I'd block it, because I would personally not benefit"). But in a wider society there are obviously other considerations and principles to adhere to.
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AT&T was evil before M$ (Score:3)
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I'm an AT&T shareholder, you insensitive clod. (Score:2)
n/t
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Me too. And after, crossing fingers, the deal goes through, I will be voting against all of its directors at the next shareholders' meeting. Why in God's name would anyone agree to pay $3 BILLION as a breakup fee even if the breakup occurs for reasons outside the buyer's control?! Everyone knows that US regulators have become completely arbitrary and capricious as the rule of law has disintegrated. To put $3 billion of your shareholders' money on the line betting that they would "allow" the deal (as if
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So they have another excuse not to invest in their network...
"Well, we would have invested in more backhaul capacity, but our $3BN payment to T-Mobile caused us to have to defer those investments."
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It's one thing to prohibit activities that deny others the ability to enter a market, it's another thing entirely to tell one company that it can't buy another. They're very different. Simply "being big" does not by itself prevent someone else from starting their own company and competing with it (in some ways it makes it easier; what could be easier than offering better customer service, for example?). And this is not a question of natural monopolies; if there is value in competition and the opportunity
Pool the resources (Score:2)
Take the AT&T and T-Mobile bandwidth resources and place them into a holding company that operates the system and wholesales bandwidth back to the retail operators (AT&T/T-Mobile) under standardized contract terms. Terms that another reseller can sign up for and give consumers even more choice.
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Yep. Usually regulated utilities have ROI limits set by the regulator and/or legislation. So there would be no problem with setting that to zero and then having the wholesale rates calculated to target this.
In the sort term, profits or losses will be made. But as long as those are kept within the entity and either invested or returned via across the board rate discounts.
Whatever brings back Catherine Zeta Jones (Score:2)
And those skimpy tight skirts.
Prohibit it, but don't stop there (Score:2)
I wouldn't only prohibit the merger, I'd break up AT&T and Verizon into at least three different companies each. Seems like something that needs to be done every couple of decades. They'll glom back together again, and then we should break them up again. The markets need a reset every once in a while to work properly.
One Ringy Dingy... (Score:2)
This is insane (Score:2)
AT&T leads the way in throttling bandwidth, the other companies follow, now AT&T are buying people out. Shouldn't it go the other way?!? People should be abandoning AT&T's ship to companies that don't throttle. WTF went wrong?
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Shut down Verizon!!
Not that I work there or anything >.>
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"Here's to our Ma Bell overlords!"
Ma Bell was sentenced to be drawn and quartered in a grisly spectacle by Judge Green decades ago.
It's only the bloodied zombie limbs, torso and head of her that separately live on in some depraved and degenerated form.
Whither art thou, oh Bell Labs of old? Alcatel-Lucent research group is but a pale shadow of what once was. Only a fragment of Ma Bell's brain kept alive in a vat somewhere in Naperville.