Is It Time To Break Up AT&T Again?

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SirGCal

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Yup... Buying out Tmobile instead of increasing their capabilities and properly introducing unlimited internet in cell AND HOME again... Ya, they need to be taught another lesson... Instead of locking down their services; they need to upgrade their capabilities so they can properly supply the services they should be...
 

snurp85

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Their buying out tmobile, but keeping the name and service? They are doing this to improve service and advance the digital age?

hmm... sounds to me like they are going to switch all of the tmobile satellites and 4G stuff over to their own network, leaving tmobile customers a crippled network and essentially force them to switch. Not that it matters because the first thing ATT will do is bump the tmobile prices and put caps on all of the plans.

this is bad news for everyone no matter how you look at it
 

chris_bc_33

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This merger/buyout should not be allowed to go through, nor should Verizon have been allowed to buy Alltel. For a free market to succeed there must be adequate competition, and no market segment should allow one large competitor to merge with or buy out another.

At a bare minimum, the goal should be to have three strong competitors in any given area. The recommended level of competitors should be four or five. At any count of five or lower, mergers should be prohibited in most cases.
 

glasssplinter

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[citation][nom]chris_bc_33[/nom]This merger/buyout should not be allowed to go through, nor should Verizon have been allowed to buy Alltel. For a free market to succeed there must be adequate competition, and no market segment should allow one large competitor to merge with or buy out another.At a bare minimum, the goal should be to have three strong competitors in any given area. The recommended level of competitors should be four or five. At any count of five or lower, mergers should be prohibited in most cases.[/citation]

Couldn't agree more. The only good thing with Verizon was that they didn't mess with the Alltel. AT&T is completely wiping out Alltel now and once you fully transition to AT&T from Alltel no unlimited data etc anymore. Going to just stay grandfathered in and then move to someone better after.
 

djsting

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[citation][nom]dogman_1234[/nom]How about the FTC gets off their arses and get these guys to court for monopolization![/citation]

That would be so awesome. If this fails, it will hit ATT where it hurts, the wallet.

"Due to serious regulatory concerns, the transaction could prove costly for AT&T, which agreed to pay $3 billion and transfer lucrative spectrum assets to T-Mobile USA if the deal does not receive approval." source: http://www.foxbusiness.com/2011/03/20/3-bln-t-mobile-usa-buy-att-creates-industry-leader/

 

happyballz

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This is one of only a handful of times when gov. needs to step in and do something... just as I said in my other post we are basically down to a duopoly. Verizon and ATT should be broken up into individual independent companies. Same goes for ISPs...with no competition you get no fight for customers, no race to inroduce new technology and no strive to improve anything since they already own all of it anyways.
 

happyballz

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[citation][nom]happyballz[/nom]This is one of only a handful of times when gov. needs to step in and do something... just as I said in my other post we are basically down to a duopoly. Verizon and ATT should be broken up into individual independent companies. Same goes for ISPs...with no competition you get no fight for customers, no race to inroduce new technology and no strive to improve anything since they already own all of it anyways.[/citation]

Don't worry they will just increase their customers "Regulatory Charge", decrease data caps allowance, and increase prices for data on their bill to even it out ;).... every time they lose a settlement the customer pays with these hidden fees, this crap needs to also be illegal.
 

hellwig

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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.
 

caeden

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Ya, not sure where I stand on this one. I have been an ATT wireless customer for just about forever (2000-2001?). I survived the dark days of Cingular and back again to the much better customer service of ATT. Part of me is stoked because it means that ATT will get much better wireless tech to implement over the network by the time I am ready to move up to a smart phone, but I am also well aware that my costs are only as low as they are because ATT has so much competition, and in my area T-Mobile and Verizon are huge for competition (as well as Cricket and Cincy-Bell... but they are much smaller fish in a big pond). Knocking out one of the larger competitors would be good for Verizon and ATT, but perhaps bad for us customers.
 

leon2006

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This is not good from customer point of view. Acquisition of TMOBILE don't equate to improve service but purely self serving muscle flexing of ATT.

The wireless and cable company are forcing bad product/service to customers. We need more competition on both wire/wireless provider.

All these companies are going to the path of bandwitdh CAP instead of investing on providing faster internet to its customers.

The US wire and wireless providers are going to the path of downgrade instead of growth. These companies continue to MILK the customers with OLD and SLOW products.
 

RipperjackAU

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You guys want to know what it will be like if this goes through, just look at Australia with its stupidly high cost of Internet and their draconian caps.

You want cheap internet in Australia? How about this for a sample deal:

Easy Broadband XS - 30 Gigabytes - $39.95/month
Easy Broadband S - 150 Gigabytes - $59.95/month
Easy Broadband M - 250 Gigabytes - $79.95/month
Easy Broadband L - 350 Gigabytes - $99.95/month
Easy Broadband XL - 600 Gigabytes - $109.95/month
Easy Broadband XXL - 1,000 Gigabytes - yes that's 1 Terabyte! - $129.95 /month

That's from Internode, one of the larger "small" ISP's in Australia. The other first tier providers like Telstra and SinTel/Optus are just as expensive of not more so.
 

kinggraves

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They should've remained broken up to begin with, instead of being allowed to remerge and swallow up several other companies. The US government does need to step in and either deny the sale or force sanctions on AT&T to ensure that they actually use their new acquisitions properly.

Unfortunately today's US government can't even decide which hand to scratch their own (head) with, nevertheless deal with a potential monopoly, and the American people are too overfed and lazy to remember that their officials are elected and the power still remains with them, should they bother to get up and actually write a letter to their Senator.

This IS an upgrade to AT&T's networks, they are acquiring TMobile's network, it's just that a past history of market manipulation, shady practices, and outsourcing lead most people to believe they will still cry and refuse to improve their service.
 

f-14

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my first comment on sunday about this was no sale with out an anti trust lawsuit. if no anti trust lawsuit pull all federal taxes and funding from AT&T as they proved they no longer need them.
their service is over priced and terrible, and their network is obsolete.
 
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