If AT&T buys T-Mobile, I will be canceling my plan immediately (and I better not be expected to pay an ETF to a company I did not sign a contract with). I'll sign up with Virgin Mobile or Sprint or someone who won't screw me over (I'm not so convinced Verizon isn't dangling the same sword over the heads of its customers).
Still, there are other concerns. T-Mobile and AT&T are the ONLY major U.S. providers that use GSM (even though its a global standard). Everyone else, Verizon, Sprint, Virgin, U.S. Cellular, etc... uses CDMA. This means that AT&T has a monopoly over a specific service. What am I to do with my GSM phones if there's only one provider? That's not choice. I can't just move to Verizon, I won't be able to bring my phone. This deal creates an unfair monopoly in that respect, which was one of the things the government punished AT&T, formerly Ma-Bell, for in the first place. Used to be you had to have the telephone companies' phone to use their service. Well, AT&T is buying their way back into that conundrum. No, they didn't force Verizon and the others to use the crappier CDMA system, but AT&T is stuck being one of the last GSM carriers now. If they buy T-Mobile, I could easily see a lawsuit emerge about how AT&T forces customers to use their phones which are not compatible with their competitors.
When I first read this news it ruined my whole weekend I got so bummed out. After all the crap AT&T has put their customers through claiming they can't afford to upgrade their network, and now I might be forced to change providers (and phones), because they have $25-billion CASH to buy out my provider? This is bad news indeed.