Sprint Files Suit Against AT&T T-Mobile Merger 132
zacharye writes with a news post in BGR. From the article: "Sprint ... announced that it has filed a lawsuit with a federal court in the U.S. District of Columbia in an effort to block AT&T's planned $39 billion acquisition of T-Mobile USA from Deutsche Telekom. The suit is related to the Department of Justice's lawsuit, which was filed on August 31st. 'Sprint opposes AT&T's proposed takeover of T-Mobile,' Sprint's vice president of litigation Suzan Haller said. 'With today's legal action, we are continuing that advocacy on behalf of consumers and competition, and expect to contribute our expertise and resources in proving that the proposed transaction is illegal.'"
Oh yeah? (Score:1)
As a concerned citizen and avid consumer, I will file a suit against Sprint due to them attempting to block the AT&T & T-Mobile Merger.
Sent from my Vodafone iPad.
Re:Oh yeah? (Score:4, Insightful)
As a T-Mobile customer I would just like to say "Go fuck yourself."
Re:Oh yeah? (Score:5, Insightful)
Amen. If I wanted to switch from T-mobile to AT&T, I'd do it myself.
You can't reduce the # of nationwide GSM carriers in this country from 2 to 1 and try to pretend that somehow 'improves competition'.
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As an AT&T customer, I echo your sentiments. The last thing I want is less competition that would allow AT&T to increase their already bloated rates. (Though to be fair, maybe T-Mobile's pricing is a bit on the low side if they're unprofitable enough that they want to sell so badly).
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T-Mobile is profitable, it's just that it's parent company would like an immediate payday. A 39 billion payday makes investors happier than owning the 4th largest carrier.
Yes they have lost a few customers, but they have replaced most of them with higher value smartphone customers, while others are moving to their prepaid service which is rather attractive.
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Cmon, things will be fine.. its not like the best and brightest at T-Mobile have been leaving in droves while there are still jobs available at their competitors and no mass layoffs.. Because they were personally assured by the CEO that this transition will be wonderful for the customers and company...
ATT (Score:1)
Re:ATT (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:ATT (Score:4, Informative)
The Justice Department has not blocked the merger. They filed suit with the goal of blocking the merger. They can still lose, and the merger could still go through.
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Sure, profits and revenue are down, but T-Mobile USA still made $1.3B on $20B in revenue last year. They are in no danger of going out of business for a few years.
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The parent company, Deutsche Telekom, wants to sell them off. that seems like a significant danger of going out of business in a few years. Maybe sooner.
This detail is commonly overlooked.
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So, in your world, the *only* reason a company is ever sold is because it is in danger of going out of business soon?
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Well, where do I start?
First, I wrote "that seems like a significant danger ..." One of several significant dangers of going out of business would be, as I was trying to point out, that "The parent company, Deutsche Telekom, wants to sell them off". May we agree that when your parent company doesn't want to operate you any more, that is a significant danger to your continued operation?
Secondly, and more importantly, I was responding to your statement:
"Sure, profits and revenue are down, but T-Mobile USA s
Didn't look very hard, did you? 1st link: (Score:2)
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-08/deutsche-telekom-is-said-to-discuss-sale-of-t-mobile-usa-to-sprint-nextel.html [bloomberg.com]
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Ok, let's look at this:
March 8, 2011; Bloomberg reports Sprint is talking with DT about buying TMO.
March 20, 2011; AT&T announced merger with TMO.
Sounds like Sprint is out of the running.
Now, if DT will take maybe $25B from Sprint, then there may be a buyer. Will Sprint offer that much?
More to the point, and please turn up your hearing aid, Sprint has NOT made a counter-offer.
There was talk in 2010 [cnet.com], but it never came to fruition. Even that was supposition.
BTW, these rumors go back to 2009. TMO and
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And being willing to sell that donut to someone for $130 instead of $100 is certainly the seller's preference.
But in this case, there's a lot of talk about Sprint wanting to buy the donut for $25B, and while these things are conducted quietly, surprise, AT&T offers $38B for the donut, and well, DT says yes.
Not one peep from Sprint that they still want the donut. Not one.
Sounds to me like there is only one buyer that DT is interested in. Proably cause AT&T offered them a 6% stake, where Sprint offe
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Companies that aren't going bankrupt typically only get sold when there's a hostile takeover or the larger company bribes the executives. Profitable companies rarely if ever benefit from being purchased.
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A company like T-mobile doesn't "go out of business." It goes bankrupt, and either reorganizes itself or is sold to whoever will take it on.
While Sprint would prefer if competitors just dried up and blew away, it will accept that they don't merge together to become unbeatable competitors.
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No, they *are* going out of business because Deutsche Telekom is getting rid of their US operations.
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Selling it in pieces doesn't work. As you said, only AT&T would want the technology by itself. But the equipment is far less valuable than the long list of paying customers. And the customers would want to keep using the same equipment.
It's a unit that functions only as a unit.
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If Duetsche Telekom doesn't want T-Mobile anymore (which evidence suggests is the case), and they can't sell it to AT&T, what is going to happen to it?
DT spins it off as a separate company with a new identity?
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A likely endgame. Leave it to the shareholders to suck up the losses.
But I doubt T-Mobile is a loser. I think DT is just doing the math wrong somehow.
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No, they haven't. The courts won't have anything to say until the outcome of one of the current lawsuits aimed at blocking the merger.
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Only until lobbyists with bigger budgets convince them otherwise.
Everybody, quick! (Score:1)
DOG PILE!
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Is this what you were looking for?
http://www.dogpile.com/info.dogpl.t2.2/search/web?fcoid=417&fcop=topnav&fpid=27&q=sprint+at%26t
excellent! (Score:2)
Reward everybody involved by breaking them up into 2 companies each (at least)! Sprint, AT&T, and T-mobile. Hell, throw in verizon and anyone else I'm forgetting just for good measure...
Herfindahl and Hirschman would be proud.
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Better idea, mandate they sell each other transport at cost + X% profit.
Even better idea, don't let the same company own the network and provide the service.
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...and if they complain, offer to:
1.) print off their coverage map
2.) see if it blends
3.) force them to separate into one company per blended piece of coverage map
4.) everything else that guy just said
I use T-Mobile (Score:5, Interesting)
The reasons I use T-Mobile:
They have reasonable prepaid plans. I can get unlimited text, voice, and data (throttled, but meh) at 50$ a mo. I can get unthrottled data at 70.
The android phones they offer can make use of my home wifi to make and recieve calls, even if the cellular coverage is spotty. I live in the boonies, and this is a major perk. It allows me to keep a big city number where the phone company would charge me long distance otherwise.
They actually give a shit about their customers, or at least appear to more than ATT does.
They are the only other US carrier that is GSM besides the bloated whore that is ATT. The last thing I want to see is ATT shove another cellular carrier up its chancre riddled snatch.
That said, ATT does NOT need T-Mo's spectrum. What they need to do is deploy the spectrum they have more sensibly. Rather than trying to shove 10 thousand subscribers on a single tower, then bitching when they all use the maximum allowed bandwidth-- they need to deploy 10 reduced power output towers that each service 1000 subscribers. They can go ahead and deploy the high power towers in rural areas to maintain their "We have the best coverage!" nonsense (because it is a lie, but meh), but for urban areas such persistent signal is deleterious due to reflections off buildings causing multipath issues, in addition to the obvious one of trying to satisfy the data demands placed on such a network.
So, rather than buying T-Mo, patching the problem in a manner that would require most ATT customers to buy new phones (that have the T-Mo/UK frequency antennas), and then using the GSM monopoly to play king of the mountain-- they need to use the money they would have spent on buying T-Mo, decommission the high power transponders on the urban area towers they have, replace them with lower power ones, and then build more total towers in the poorly serviced urban areas.
Oh, but that is that whole "Invest in infrastructure" thing that they dont want to do.
Fuck ATT. Fuck them with an iron spike on a jackhammer.
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As someone looking to leave Verizon I hope this deal falls through. If I had only AT&T and Verizon I would just stick with Verizon.
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The reasons I use T-Mobile:
I tried switching to T-Mobile in 1-2 years ago from AT&T for a lot of the reasons you give above.
But the coverage in my area was very poor, while AT&T's is quite good and Verizon's is great. So I stayed with AT&T.
If the coverage wouldn't be so poor by me, such as driving between the house and work, it would be a no-brainer. But dropped calls and dead zones made me want to pull my hair out.
Then again I'm sure they're stellar in other areas, especially closer to the big cities.
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They have reasonable prepaid plans. I can get unlimited text, voice, and data (throttled, but meh) at 50$ a mo. I can get unthrottled data at 70
What are you talking about? Their cheapest unlimited plan is 59 with no data at all, their "premium" plan is 89, and "Ultra" plan with 10gb/mo is $119 dollars. I used to pay $79 a month for unlimited everything without throttling, now somehow I pay the $89 and only get 500 minutes! Defaintely NOT reasonable. The only reason I stay with t-mo honestly is because they only throttle instead of charging for data overages which I will occasionally do because I use my phone for tethering for work.
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THIS. I'm on this plan now with a Nexus One, and my wife is on the same plan with a G2 I bought outright.
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T-mobile is better than Sprint (ultra-shitty coverage) or AT&T (nothing at all worth having), but not much different from Verizon.
They do have the hottest spokesmodel, though.
Wow... (Score:4, Interesting)
VP of litigation?
just... wow...
Re:Wow... (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, also known as the sue-pervisor.
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Re:Wow... (Score:5, Informative)
Not sure why it would surprise you at all that a company as large as sprint would also have someone dedicated to legal issues, or even specifically to litigation.
On Legal Staff (Score:2)
most likely if your company is big enough that having a meeting with the whole staff would need a PA system in the room you should have at least one lawyer on staff. Now most of the time that lawyer should be working on defining "unacceptable liability" and not working on suing different people.
A company the size of SPRINT should have a whole department of lawyers (and clerks and paralegal ect) so the head of that department would be a VP just on principle alone (and so that the VP of litigation can tell t
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I'm sure she handles it both ways.
Sheesh, minds out of the gutter -- I mean litigation. Both the suing of Sprint and Sprint suing someone else.
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Chief Shystering Officer.
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Sprint's current "killer phone" is a 3D Android phone
Nope, Spint's killer phone is a rooted Samsung Epic with custom rom and kernel plus unlimited data.
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Had to root my phone to install the tethering app-- took about as long as it would take to drink two glasses of bourbon. Easy peasy.
the merger is dead (Score:2)
sprint is rumored to be getting the iphone this year but no work on T-Mo. Sprint will probably steal the rest of the profitable customers, AT&T will walk away from the deal due to the lower valuation of the company and we will have 3 big carriers in the US once T-Mo files for Chapter 11 and gets sold off piece by piece.
It really wouldn't shock me at all if Apple had something to do with it as well by giving the iphone to sprint but not t-mo. 2 super carriers is bad for apple since they will have the pow
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once T-Mo files for Chapter 11 and gets sold off piece by piece.
I don't know, T-Mobile will get quite the shot in the arm what with that $6 billion that AT&T will give them when this fails.
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there was a story last week that if t-mo's value falls too much then there is no break up fee
Doesn't anyone... (Score:1)
...think that Sprint's suit for "advocacy on behalf of consumers" carries just a wee bit less weight than that of the DOJ's suit?
Deutsche Telecom (Score:2)
My understanding when this merger was first announced wasn't that T-Mobile was doing poorly, but rather that the company wasn't doing as well as Deutsche Telecom had hoped. The lack of the iPhone was likely one of the things that hurt them. But ultimately the impression I got was that Deutsche Telecom couldn't be bothered with T-Mobile.
I'm with AT&T. Not because I have any love for them, but because there's no better alternative. Verizon offers no better coverage in this area and their business practice
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... Sprint / Nextel
2 small companies merging, not a huge deal.
But how many times do we have to keep splitting AT&T / Ma Bell up?
AT&T sees it different (Score:2)
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It is split up now - between Verizon and AT&T. They both are comprised of Baby Bells.
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In each product area there are enough privately owned firms to ensure that no single firm can set prices or otherwise subvert impersonal market controls; as a result prices reflect the pressures of market competition
So yes becoming too big is a problem since that leads to a communist system aka the opposite of capitalist, and is why we have laws against it unless you've been legally granted an exception like with the power companies and other utilities. Why do you think we broke up old MaBell in the first place, and implemented a whole slew of anti-trust laws over the last 100 years?
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that leads to a communist system
So if AT&T buys T-Mobile their workers take over the company and make the decisions in a democratic council?
Stop saying bullshit, a huge monopolist company is just inefficient capitalism, it has nothing to do with communism.
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Indeed, it would only be "communism" if every worker owned a piece of this massive company. Then it would be both monopolistic and communist! Hooray!
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No, stop applying capitalist concepts. The workers wouldn't 'own' anything, since in a communist economy there is no private property*.
I don't "own" my country just because I vote for its direction. I just live in it.
* Not to be confused with personal property.
Re:I don't see how it is illegal. (Score:5, Insightful)
So yes becoming too big is a problem since that leads to a communist system aka the opposite of capitalist,
Communism has a very distinct meaning and it has absolutely nothing to do with a company becoming too big.
A monopolistic company is basically the most extreme result of pure capitalism - it's just that over time we've discovered that pure capitalism kinda sucks - hence why we have laws against monopolies and other such things that capitalism tends to promote. On both extremes of the scale, both capitalism and communism are terrible economic models - you have to strike a balance (the optimal balance leaning more towards capitalism, but not all the way over).
Re:I don't see how it is illegal. (Score:5, Informative)
Is it now illegal for a company to simply become too big?
Yes, as long as you understand that by "now" you mean since 1890 [wikipedia.org], and specifically this kind of merger since 1914 [wikipedia.org]. Both those laws were created because of large firms engaged in various forms of price gouging and other efforts to artificially inflate prices on commonly used goods such as gasoline and steel.
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That says nothing about the absolute size of a company, it is about preventing monopolies in order to prevent anti-competitive behavior. ATT isn't buying T-Mobile in order to get a corner on the market. They are buying them to expand their network so they can have a hope of competing with Verizon.
Verizon is still going to be a big problem for ATT after the merger. If there were no Verizon, you might have a point, but as it is, I don't see how it could allow ATT to act in an anticompetitive way.
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ATT isn't buying T-Mobile in order to get a corner on the market. They are buying them to expand their network so they can have a hope of competing with Verizon.
You believed that line too? Too bad it's not true [businessinsider.com]
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Naivete and ignorance in one post. It has already been made public that expanding AT&T's network would cost about 1/4 (IIRC) of the cost of buying T-Mobile. This merger is all about taking out the competition, not improving AT&T's service to make it competitive.
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39/3.9 Buying t mobile is about ten times more expensive then just upgrading the network. Not 1/4
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HAHAHAHA!
Tell that to wikileaks!
This was NEVER about expanding spectrum, it WAS about reducing competition.
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Is it now illegal for a company to simply become too big?
Yes, it has been for quite some time now.
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Spectrum was auctioned off to the carriers over several years/decades. Allocation at that level was a function of capital, more or less.
How the carriers used tha spectrum is a business decision. AT&T is regularly excoriated for their poor performance in hi-density areas, but this is as much system design as any complaints of spectrum. Here lies an interesting problem.
If you think AT&T can just build out a bunch of new towers to satisfy metro demand, you haven't tried renting out tower space. Many
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Say,you want to leave the us. Perhaps a business trip, perhaps a vacation. 99% of the rest of the world uses GSM. That means if you want to keep you phone, and go to another coutry, you will HAVE to use ATT.
You would be foolish to think att wouldn't abuse that natural monopoly, to fleece people it thinks have lots of cash. I would expect att to totally stop giving out unlock codes for their phones shortly after a successful att-TMo merger. Afterall, why would you, a consumer, need to unlock the sim lock i
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>99% of the rest of the world uses GSM. That means if you want to keep you phone, and go to another coutry, you will HAVE to use ATT.
Or a Sprint MoPho (Motorola Photon). It can roam on GSM & UMTS worldwide. The only catch is that it apparently refuses to use GSM if it sniffs any hint of local CDMA service in the air, which annoys people who travel to countries where there's a local CDMA network that only has 1xRTT data & the phone refuses to use the faster UMTS provider's network instead.
Truth be
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Because it's cheap and easy!
There are certain markets where there's just no feasible way to compete with the entrenched players. If some company wanted to compete in GSM, they'd have to buy spectrum (oh, AT&T and various other providers own it all? And AT&T specifically owns all the world-standard GSM spectrum? And they don't want to sell? Too bad). On top of that, they'd be fighting against a company that could just drop their prices until the new rival runs out of cash, and then raise them back up
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Any other company can startup their own GSM network.
They could, but they couldn't turn it on since they wouldn't be able to purchase spectrum, as all of it has been allocated to the current existing carriers.
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Well let me propose to you that in fact this merger is an act of free market at work, if this merger goes through, then Sprint will have a formidable competitor, covering very large area, and this competitor will be able to bring prices down and hold off against inflation longer.
Get out of your ivory tower and get back in the real world.
There is NO WAY IN HELL that AT&T would lower their prices. The rest of your argument is invalidated by AT&T's greed. Expecting them to lower their prices and/or provide better service is like expecting a crackhead not to smoke crack when presented with more crack.
AT&T was broken up in the first place because your arguments do not apply when monopolies occur. If there is a monopoly the free market gets fucked.
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But wait a moment. AT&T's monopoly was established by the government [mises.org], which killed a few thousand competitors in the process.
So we have government creating a monster and then 'fighting' it? (seems similar to everything else government does, from Iraq with Saddam, to Afghanistan with OBL, to Iran with the Shah).
Really, think about all the blow back that you get when gov't gets involved. But now I am going to ask you this question:
IF you believe that AT&T and T-Mobile will NOT bring prices down then
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IF you believe that AT&T and T-Mobile will NOT bring prices down then answer this question: how does any of this hurt customers of Sprint and how does this hurt Sprint?
I could give a shit less about Sprint, I'm a T-Mobile customer and I would like to remain a T-Mobile customer and my rates will increase and my service will dramatically decrease if AT&T is allowed to purchase T-Mobile.
As for the possibility that Sprint may lower prices if confronted with more competition, well if AT&T doesn't lower their prices, and of course AT&T will not lower their prices to current T-Mobile prices, exactly why would Sprint lower theirs?
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As a T-Mobile customers, you are going to get more coverage, so better service, because you will have wider infrastructure, that is AT&T infrastructure. This will work out to be the economy of scale to you, and besides, it's not clear that T-Mobile was going to stay in business for that much longer, I heard that, but that may be wrong, so I am not going to push that point.
However there is a reason why Sprint is coming out with the statements they are coming out with: they clearly believe that this merge
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If there is any problem with my logic (there may be)
The only problem with your logic is you are expecting the market to work in a logical manner.
If AT&T was a logical company they would not be scrimping on their infrastructure and would instead try to build more towers and improve their service, they ain't interested in that though.
As to the question as to why Sprint is suing, well monopolistic companies have a very large influence on their marketplace and are able to dictate the market.
This would not be nearly the issue it is though if all phones were u
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Just because YOUR coverage with T-Mobile is already better than YOUR coverage with AT&T doesn't mean anything, does it? Maybe you live right at the T-Mobile tower and AT&T is not there, doesn't mean this is everybody's experience. To say that the coverage of the 2 combined companies will be somehow worse than coverage of one of them and at the same time call me a "dumb ass, who is full of crap and living in fantasy world in my own head" is sort of telling something, but not about me.
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AT&T's tech and t-mobiles are not compatible
Um, actually they are the only 2 US providers that are compatible.
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It depends what you mean by "compatible". Able to make basic voice calls and use data at speeds that would make users jealous of somebody with a 56k modem? Yeah. Able to use the fastest 3G data? No. Able to use 4G speeds? Not even close. In terms of high-speed data, T-Mobile's network is no more compatible with AT&T than it is with Verizon or Sprint. T-Mobile uses HSPA+ on 1700/2100MHz for high-speed data. AT&T and Verizon use mutually-incompatible implementations of a subset of LTE, and Sprint use
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Wow, this is gripping, where can I subscribe to your blog of crazy rants?
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WHO GETS HURT?
If Sprint gets hurt because they see more competition, that is GOOD for the customers.
Do customers get hurt? How do customers get hurt? Nobody forces customers to get out of Sprint and if what AT&T and T-Mobile merger creates is more expensive and worse quality, then it's just better for Sprint.
I get hurt. My monthly cellphone bill will go up 5 fold. Admittedly, I have a sweetheart deal. I bought my smart phone outright and went on my parents' plan as an extra line. And unlike AT&T, T-Mobile does not force smart phone users to pay for a data plan if they own the phone outright. So I'm currently playing 5 bucks per month to my parents for phone service. That would go up to $25 per month under AT&T. I have better things to do with the extra $240 annually.
It's probably true that not
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Are you sure that T-Mobile is going to survive at all if not bought out by somebody, anybody? You may have a wonderful deal, but if a company does too many deals and takes a loss on every deal, how is it going to stay in business?
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Making $1.5B in profit on $20B/year in revenue is not what I'd define as a company starving.
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The fact T-Mobile made $1.3 billion profit on $20 billion revenue last year suggests it is not taking a loss on those deals and that it would survive just fine if not bought out
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The ATT/Tmobile merger just screams "too big to fail" to me. I would consider it thuggery to allow such a merger given the history of the Bells; Sprint/Nextel OTOH were comparatively small potatoes.