AT&T/T-Mobile Merger 'Not In the Public Interest' 190
jfruhlinger writes "AT&T's plan to merge with T-Mobile just hit a pretty big snag. The FCC declared the merger would be anti-competitive and not in the public interest."
According to the NY Times, the FCC seeks to hold a hearing before an administrative law judge in which the burden would be upon AT&T to prove the deal isn't anti-competitive.
the new att same as the old what next for them (Score:3)
you have to rent your home phone?
Re:the new att same as the old what next for them (Score:5, Insightful)
you have to rent your home phone?
And the major cell carriers have continued that business model by getting most people to rent their cell phones. It's not like my cell phone bill is reduced after my 2 year contract term is up and my phone subsidy is supposedly paid off.
Except on T-Mobile where on their value plans, you actually do save money when the phone is paid off.
I agree (Score:5, Funny)
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T-Mobile has a banging-hot chick in their advertisements.
And i find it hard to believe that when they were filming their latest commercial they didn't notice what it actually sounds like when they're singing "walking in a 4g wonderland."
In my neighborhood... (Score:2)
...the T-Mobile store is right next to a sex shop.
The giant posters of the T-Mobile girl (her name is Carly Foulkes, btw) make me want to go to the sex shop more than they make me want to buy a phone.
Re:I agree (Score:5, Insightful)
Who cares if she negatively affects fat girls' self image? She's banging hot!
Re:I agree (Score:5, Insightful)
So you feel that "disproportionately-skinny and negatively-affecting female self-image chicks are clearly in the public interest"? Chauvinist bastard!
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So you feel that "disproportionately-skinny and negatively-affecting female self-image chicks are clearly in the public interest"? Chauvinist bastard!
Considering the average dress size in the US is 14, just about any healthy girl would be disproportionately-skinny.
Re:I agree (Score:5, Informative)
And before anyone trots out the "Marilyn Monroe was a size 16" bit of tripe, understand that 1960 size 16 is not the same size 16 as 2011.
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disproportionately-skinny
The ads were originally aired in Europe with average-looking women. They just forgot to replace them with average-looking American women when they exported it.
Re:I agree (Score:5, Funny)
disproportionately-skinny
The ads were originally aired in Europe with average-looking women. They just forgot to replace them with average-looking American women when they exported it.
Not all of us have the 16:9 tv required to view average looking American women.
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Considering what these chicks get paid, we should all be so terribly exploited!
Hint: I know some make four figures per hour.
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Considering what these chicks get paid, we should all be so terribly exploited!
Hint: I know some make four figures per hour.
Yeah, and Cindy Crawford made 5 figures per day... that's the carrot, for every one of them, there's 100 more trying to "make it" and hoping they can at least land a rich husband. It's a pretty sad scene, all told.
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Yeah, there's always lots of hopefuls and wannabes and do-anything-to-make-it losers in any glamour industry, tho they bring that on themselves with a self-delusional reality distortion filter. The sensible ones regard it as just another job (I say, having done bits and extras for several years myself).
Of course in the big-money ads we only see the winners, but those winners can hardly claim to be exploited at the wages they make.
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Some people are just skinny and hating on them is no better than hating on fat people. A poor self-image isn't the fault of anyone who just happens to look different.
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The fact that you have to do the replacement indicates you are not in agreement after all.
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oh sorry, you must be American. not used to seeing non-obese people i guess.
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As an American, I miss the days when women weren't all obese. It hasn't always been like that over here.
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oh sorry, you must be American. not used to seeing non-obese people i guess.
This is Slashdot. It's not like any of you have actually seen a hot chick up close.
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I agree that she's not all that pleasant-looking.
I'm pretty surprised that she ended up as the T-Mobile spokesmodel. She doesn't make me want to buy a phone so much as have an intervention to get her to stop binging and purging. She even has that shiny weird complexion that bulimic women sometimes get.
I don't really care that she's got such a good job if I didn't have to see the outline of her
Re:I agree (Score:4, Insightful)
So let me get this straight. (Score:5, Insightful)
This is not in the public interest but allowing fragmentation of cellular standards between GSM/HSPA and CDMA was in the public interest by allowing the major carriers to offer incompatible services so that they did not have to directly compete with each other was? Was it in the public interest to allow a a further fragmentation of GSM/HSPA between standard HSPA with AT&T and AWS for T-Mobile? Was it in the public interest to allow further fragmentation of CDMA with Sprint going early with CDMA + WiMax?
The major carriers could have all agreed to use HSPA years ago and shared the standard frequencies used in Canada just like how Canada has Telus, Bell, Rogers and smaller virtual carriers all operating HSPA frequency networks compatible with the iPhone and other popular handsets.
Re:So let me get this straight. (Score:5, Interesting)
They let the market sort it out. I might not have been the best approach from a technical point of view, but from a capitalistic point of view it was fine. Given that the carriers practically give away phones every time you sign a contract, having to wait a year or two to jump carriers is not the end of the world. It would be great if you could take your phone with you, but that would be unAmerican. I would rather that the carriers get to decide what technologies they want to use. Expecting the government to make educated decisions when it comes to technology is unrealistic.
Re:So let me get this straight. (Score:5, Informative)
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I live in a populated area, no GSM doesn't work any better than CDMA does. My reception with Sprint was significantly better than my reception with AT&T. Where the former uses CDMA and the latter uses GSM. A few minutes ago I tried to call a friend and despite having 4 bars I wasn't able to complete the call. I got through, but there wasn't any ability to talk.
Re:So let me get this straight. (Score:4, Informative)
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Could be AT&T's network behind the scenes, but I would find that surprising.
As an AT&T customer (not for much longer), I certainly don't find that surprising at all.
Re:So let me get this straight. (Score:5, Informative)
2G GSM has limitiations due to the time-division nature of its air interface that makes covering large areas not work due to propogation delay. 3G GSM *is* CDMA. It covers large areas well at a lower frequency, but initial deployments were all at 2.1GHz which has issues with signal propogation (read: doesn't go through buildings/etc as well as sub 1GHz GSM).
Minor nitpick: in the above I use "CDMA" to mean "Code-division multiple access", a generic description of the approach that the IS-95 and 1xRTT air interfaces use -- they are commonly referred to as CDMA, they're what sprint/verizon use/used, but there are other protocols that use that approach too.
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I live in an extremely rural, low-populated area and AT&T (GSM) gets far-better coverage than Verizon, to the point where my unfortunate Verizon-using friends are always asking to use my phone because they're getting no signal.
Why don't they just switch to AT&T, you may ask? Simple: Verizon's slimey marketing scheme which turns all their customers into unpaid salespeople. Because their plans offer "free texting (but only to other Verizon customers)" and other underhanded BS like that, it encourages
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No, it wasn't "fine" from a free market point of view either. In order to have an efficient market, people need to be able to make choices.
The government didn't have to guess, it could simply have forced companies to pick a common standard. Furthermore, given
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This also sort of explains why the US is the way it is, because everywhere else it seems GSM/HSPA works.
Posting only to un-do a faulty mod. But seriously I didn't click-slip, there's some bug than turned my intended mod into flamebait.
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This is not in the public interest but allowing fragmentation of cellular standards between GSM/HSPA and CDMA was in the public interest ...
I believe that when someone does something right, slamming them for doing something else wrong is not the best use of time. If we want to see more good activity, we should support the good activity--in other words, more flies with honey.
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So, you are too stupid to understand limited government involvement. Perhaps you think the government should be making all decisions for corporations, what OS they should run, etc....
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Right there you pretty much lost the whole argument.
I'd say that right there YOU lost the whole argument, since what was said that he's responding to is "So, you are too stupid to understand limited government involvement" and he turned the phrase on its head pointing to the guy he was responding to. Not seeing that really makes you look stupid. Sorry, that's how I see it.
I like how you just automatically assume the government "owns" the whole radio spectrum to start with.
Just as I "assume" that the governm
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Well.. Almost. [windmobile.ca]
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This is not in the public interest but allowing fragmentation of cellular standards between GSM/HSPA and CDMA was in the public interest by allowing the major carriers to offer incompatible services so that they did not have to directly compete with each other was?
You sound like you expect some logical, objective standards about what the government decides is "in the public interest" when it comes to mergers. The reality is anything but. America used to have three major airliner manufacturers. Lockheed got out of the business, and then Boeing bought McDonnell Douglas. This left America with one airliner manufacturer. The US government was fine with granting a total monopoly in that field.
"In the public interest" is whatever the current crop of politicians decides it
Re:So let me get this straight. (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah... there is no way you can seriously be arguing that the state Canadian telcoms are in is preferable what we have here in the US.
Hmm. Let's see.... I can get a subsidized iPhone 4S on any plan combination of data and voice as long as it is at least 50 dollars per month and I can choose one of the following HSPA+ carriers: Rogers, Fido, Bell, Telus, Koodo, Virgin or one of several regional carriers if I happen to live in a couple of the provinces. Canada got unlocked iPhones a year before they became available in the US and several of the carriers offer unlocking either 90 days into the contract in good standing or at the end of the contract. I got my 4S subsidized on a 70 dollars per month plan that included 6GB of data (free tethering), 6pme evenings and weekends, 10 favourite numbers, unlimited texts/MMS and voice mail.
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You mean rogers, bell, or telus. The others are virtual networks and are at the mercy of the carriers they ride on, not real competition.
If you want to use a GSM phone that doesn't support our 3G freqs, (or prior to a year? or so ago when the others added 3G GSM support), you have/had one choice. rogers. Pretty pathetic. Letting them buy fido was mindnumbingly stupid.
They should can the whole ownership laws and let some real competition come in, though.
Moreover, the fact that $70 is a "good deal" to you sho
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I've always found that point funny, coming from a different country. 12 years ago I was travelling from the UK to europe, scandinavia, africa and asia while keeping in touch with home without issues. You poor bastards, living in such a third world country!
That's what you get for keeping a system that allows companies to run your country.
Just wait until you see what we did with healthcare!
You're just jealous because we've got hot Norwegian chicks like Sarah Palin.
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You're just jealous because we've got hot Norwegian chicks like Sarah Palin.
How DARE you insult hot Norwegian chicks!
AT&T mouthpiece (Score:5, Insightful)
Larry Solomon, senior vice president of corporate communications at AT&T, called the F.C.C.’s action “disappointing.”
“It is yet another example of a government agency acting to prevent billions in new investment and the creation of many thousands of new jobs at a time when the U.S. economy desperately needs both,”
Just because AT&T continues to say that the deal would result in investment does make it true. If they were interested in investing in infrastructure and jobs, they would do it. Instead they want to buy T-Mobile, loot whatever is left in their coffers and lay off all of their workers.
When an organization as corrupt as the United States government is coming out against a deal, you can be certain that something is rotten in Denmark.
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The best part is the implication that government, funded by citizens paying taxes, has some grudge against businesses investing money and creating jobs.
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Honestly, they should be charged with a violation of the Lanham act just for that statement.
Re:AT&T mouthpiece (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the relevant bit here is that there are some lies that are so big that even government agencies can't look the other way. This would be one of them. AT&T would have brought a bunch of low paying call center jobs back to the US and laid off a significant number of technicians that would no longer be needed to maintain the duplicate infrastructure.
I'm not sure how anybody could possibly buy the notion that prices would go down when competition is reduced form 4 to 3 companies. And probably from there to 2 companies.
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It's called the "Big Lie". Repeat a lie often enough and people will start to believe it. Just look at how all the Teabaggers believe that monopolies and cartels are good for the economy.
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Just because AT&T continues to say that the deal would result in investment does make it true. If they were interested in investing in infrastructure and jobs, they would do it.
No, their problem is permitting for cell tower space takes 3-5 years because of FCC delays. AT&T is over-capacity today, and can't wait that long to build out, so they need T-Mobile's towers.
Instead they want to buy T-Mobile, loot whatever is left in their coffers and lay off all of their workers.
No, they want to take their
Re:AT&T mouthpiece (Score:4, Insightful)
So AT&T's failure to develop an adequate 5 year plan that addresses the needs of the market is the FCC's problem? The only reason they "need" T-Mobile's towers (at least given the argument that you laid out) is because AT&T cannot plan ahead.
Welcome to corporate America, where very few seem capable of seeing past next quarter.
You should go to work for AT&T. Seriously. If what you say is true, you would not be doing any worse than the "experts" that AT&T currently has on the payroll who are trying to influence the government with regards to this deal.
I want to be a corporate spokesperson (Score:3)
and get paid for lying through my teeth!
Hey! We're buying T-Mobile to keep it out of the hands of our rivals. We don't care about the customers or the service, in fact we just want T-Mobile gone. But we'll tell you that the merger will create tens of thousands of jobs! And fewer companies in the marketplace means more competition! Yeah, baby!
I'm glad someone in the FCC has the cojones to stand up to this sort of nonsense.
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I have been saying legacy PR based on controlling the message is fundamentally flawed for a while now.
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And fewer companies in the marketplace means more competition! Yeah, baby!
No, fewer companies in the marketplace does not mean more competition. It means more innovation. Because now the few remaining telcos will have more money to be able to provide innovative services like...I dunno...TV! Yeah! That's it!
Google should buy these folks... (Score:3)
...that way, Google can talk (read boast) of true vertical integration. How about that?
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But even aside from the regulatory approval, $40 billion is a pretty large chunk of change, even for Google.
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Who do you know who has cash on hand which is not in their pocket? Do you have bills sewed into your mattress? Stacks of bills stashed away in a wall safe? If you have a lot of cash, you put it in some form of investment. Cash *IS* pocket change.
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Re:Google should buy these folks... (Score:4, Insightful)
Vertical integration isn't illegal provided that the company doesn't use it to harm the competition. Amazon right now represents a vertically integrated publisher where they own all steps from production to distribution and in some cases even the reader you read on. They haven't been sued for antitrust violations nor will they likely any time soon as they're still disrupting the industry and bringing more competition to the market.
Depending upon how Google handled it they could definitely bring competition via a vertical monopoly. Remember being a monopoly isn't illegal, abusing market position is.
INEVITABLE MERGER (Score:2, Informative)
Assuming AT&T can't by T-Mobile,who else is going to buy / merge with T-Mobile?
The whole deal was based around AT&T hugely over paying for the benefit of reducing competition,
other companies may well want to buy T-Mobile, it just doesn't make sense at the rate AT&T was paying.
AT&T could even buy parts of T-Mobile, either network or spectrum, but if they can't get anything that reduces competition,
then they have no reason to pay more than anybody else, and have an existing network that they c
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Approval would be far more likely were it Sprint trying to buy it, especially in light of the document that leaked proving that AT&T was just trying to buy out the competition to have less of it. However, Sprint doesn't have the money to do so and is still trying to deal with the technology merger from when it bought Nextel. Maybe in a few years, when LTE is the de facto standard instead of the competing 3G techs, such a merger will make sense, but not now.
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That's what I want to know. Supposedly the parent company is looking to sell T-Mobile. Personally, I'd expect somebody like Centurylink to buy it up. Centurylink bought Qwest a while back and provides internet in many states, owning a cell business as well would make it much more competitive with folks like Verizon and allow for it to roll out improved services much more quickly.
Ultimately it's hard to say, but I would expect for somebody that isn't currently a major player in the cell phone market to buy T
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Because T-Mobile's parent company, Deutsche Telekom, wants to sell, AT&T or not.
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How about Carlos Slim?
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Here's an idea. Not every goddam company has to be bought / merged with some fucking shark^H^H^H larger company. How the hell is it in the public interest for companies to go on endless buying binges? The logical end result is going to be THE COMPANY. Want a car? Buy it from THE COMPANY. A milkshake? THE COMPANY. No choice whatsoever; no competition.
And here's another thought. Company B does not have to be of comparable size to company A to compete with it in the marketplace.
And why does every company have
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You make it sound like Weyland-Yutani is a bad thing.
TMobile Competitive Without AT&T... (Score:4, Informative)
What I enjoy for "landline" service (Ooma VOIP "free" $5 a year to cover taxes), the rest of the world enjoys a similar experience for wireless. TMobile seems like the black horse right now, and I rather see them follow through on a merger with Sprint than AT&T, mainly to bring back the third competitor in the pack similar to what was enjoyed in the late 80's/early 90's between MCI, AT&T, and Sprint. That set the bar for me personally where 3 competitors in telecom was a minimum number necessary for what I considered a truly competitive balance where they made their money and I felt I got value for my money. This is necessarily in the telecom space in my humble opinion with how things are looking. If a Verizon and AT&T duopoply were to happen
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I used to have T-Mobile, and loved their customer service. I had to switch for job reasons but I still think about switching back. TM are the only carrier that I have used that wasn't pretty much constantly screwing me around one way or another.
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Wow, if T-Mobile is the best you have there, then you Americans are in deep shit.
AT&T can just wait it out (Score:2, Insightful)
Once the business friendly Republicans win more elections, all of this will be reversed. AT&T needs to start bribing / donating some big bucks in that direction to make it happen.
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Once the business friendly Republicans win more elections
Are you trying to claim that business-friendly Republicans aren't already running the entire show? You're hilarious, tell me another of your jokes!
5 Minutes (Score:3)
And it took them how long to figure this out? Most of us knew it in the first 5 minutes.
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They had to wait for the salary offers to come in from the lobbying jobs they're looking at after their stint with the FCC is up.
The T-Mobile Girl (Score:3)
for those not in the know: (Score:5, Interesting)
The reason why allowing att to buy tmobile is "epically, boneheadedly bad for the public interest" is as follows:
The FCC licensed both tmobiles and atts GSM spectrum as exclusive licenses.
This means that if you want to use a gsm technology device on internaltionally standardized frequencies in the us, you either use att, or tmobile. (Or one of their downstream sublicensed local carriers.)
Allowing tmobile and att to merge (given the lopsided nature of such a process though, "buyout" seems more applicable..) would create a single, exclusively licensed "super carrier" that owns the whole standard gsm band, creating a natural monopoly. Historically, natural monopolies have never been in the public's best interest. (See standard oil, bell telephone, etc.)
Add to that the leaked inside documents showing that the cost of aquisition of tmobile exceeds by a large sum the estimated costs of builing out comparable capacity on att's existing network infrastructure, and also the fact that once att owns tmobile's spectrum license, it can choose to revoke any downstream sublicensing agreements with local gsm carriers that are currently contracted with tmobile.
The potential for upheval in the already low-diversity market for gsm carriers, the potential for massive job destruction from having licenses pulled, and the omnipresent risk of abusive monopoly pricing with no free market alternative (CDMA is not a valid alternative if you require international operation) is simply and demonstrably unacceptable.
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It could be seen either way. There is a naturally limited resource (internationally standardized frequencies), with a single gatekeeper entity. Similar to the "last mile" issue with landlines, you cannot just conjure new frequencies into being, and have them work with standard hardware. (Likewise you can't just go lay new fiber.)
Its a bit ambiguous, I'll grant that. Regardless, its still not in the public interest, regardless of what kind of monopoly is granted.
This FCC??? (Score:2)
The same FCC chair that wants to relax media consolidation rules yet again? With the chairman being the very person that profited by the "Rupert Murdoch" fiasco that led to Fox and Vivendi?
"He was Chief of Business Operations and a member of Barry Diller's Office of the Chairperson at IAC/InterActiveCorp and executive responsible for the creation of Fox Broadcasting Company and USA Broadcasting. He earned at least $USD2.5 million when Vivendi acquired Universal assets in 2003.[10]"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wi [wikipedia.org]
Don't make the same mistake as Canada! (Score:5, Interesting)
This CDMA vs GSM debate is totally off topic. WRT the merger question, the FCC is totally right. Like AT&T want to do, Rogers did acquire FIDO because this pesky little competitor in the GSM space (Bell and Telus have CDMA networks) dared come out with a very competitive "unlimited" plan (CityFido for those that remember). Friends of mine that were lawyers in this field were shocked that the CRTC allowed this merger to happen. At very least, they thought the CRTC would have used their regulatory authority to impose some undertakings, for example, you must grandfather not only CityFido subscribers, but continue to offer this plan for X number of years. They didn't and the first thing that Rogers did was essentially eliminate the CityFido plans as they had existed.
Now Canada has among the lowest rates of smartphone/cellphone usage and subcriber base in the world and surprise, among the highest smartphone/cellphone pricing in the world. Just google it and you will see. A survey I saw not long ago put Canada around Peru for cellphone subscription rates. What an embarassment.
It was a huge battle to bring in a competitor (Wind Mobile) because of the narrow interpretation of the legislation the CRTC used to the benefit of the incumbents. The Canadian market desperately needed new competitors to shake up the market because the incumbents were clearly operating as oligopolists and the regulator was letting it happen unabashed. It took an act of Cabinet to overrule the regulator and though rates have dropped 30% overnight, Wind is not having an easy go at it. The Egyptian financial backer actually regrets jumping into the market. Just google Wind Mobile in the news and you can see for yourself.
In this case, Canada is not living up to that mythical socialist ideal that so many Americans think we are. In the wireless space we are where the US incumbents want to be if they could buy off the politicians and the regulators. Less competition, more profits!!!! The Canadian wireless market is a textbook example of how certain industries NEED regulators to keep anticompetitive behaviour under control in order to encourage growth and advancement.
As a Canadian, I used to look longingly at the rapid pace of innovation and the menu of options you have in the US. Mega-mergers like this will take you along the path to where we are in Canada.
Good luck to you!
It might save Sprint, but... (Score:2)
What's the alternative? (Score:5, Insightful)
Hence either T-Mobile is bought out by AT&T and we have one fewer carrier, or T-Mobile goes under and we have one fewer carrier. It seems like we might at least preserve a few jobs with option number one that would otherwise be lost with option number two. The other main carriers don't want to buy a GSM provider, it doesn't make technological sense. They just want a shot at picking off some T-Mobile customers that they might not otherwise get if AT&T buys them out.
iPhones (Score:2)
My wife has a factory unlocked iPhone on T-Mobile. They are the only discount carrier with coverage nationwide, especially outside of metro areas (getting away from Verizon's dropped calls at our home was very welcome).
AT&T and Verizon either outright block, or charge not so discount rates, for iPhones on their prepaid branches. T-Mobile actively encourages them on prepaid talk / text / data plans that start at $50.
If this merger goes through, she might have to switch to a windows phone 7 device. At l
Re:Verizon and Alltel was OK (Score:5, Insightful)
T-Mobil has 33,000,000.
Not really on the same scale there.
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Alltel was a fairly small regional carrier. T-Mobile is the fourth largest carrier, and has full national coverage.
Frankly, if the merger were between Sprint and T-Mobile, it would be more likely to go through.
Re:Verizon and Alltel was OK (Score:5, Informative)
Alltel wasn't "regional". Rural would be more accurate. Can't really call something that was licensed in states from OR to CT "regional". While they only had 800,000 customers they also were the number one CDMA roaming partner for the carriers. I don't know for sure but I think they may have made more off their roaming agreements than their customer base. That was a major reason that VZW bought them.
Sprint buying T-Mobile would earn Sprint the title as dumbest company ever. Their networks aren't compatible. It would be Sprint Nextel all over again.
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>Their networks aren't compatible.
Actually, UMTS (3G GSM) and CDMA2000 aren't nearly as mutually alien as you'd think. Thanks to new chipsets like the Qualcomm MDM6600 (used in roughly half the new high-end Android phones sold worldwide), the only thing you really need to do to make a "CDMA" phone design work with UMTS is add a socket for the SIM card and support it in the firmware.
If Sprint were smart, and quietly made a point of making sure that all of their new high-end Android phones were physically
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Alltel was a fairly small regional carrier. T-Mobile is the fourth largest carrier, and has full national coverage.
Frankly, if the merger were between Sprint and T-Mobile, it would be more likely to go through.
Sprint can't afford T-mobile, and even if they could a merger with T-mobe would be a disaster. The last thing they need is to support incompatable cell technologies.
T-Mobile has what?!?!?! (Score:5, Informative)
I just drove from New York City to Tampa Florida and back this summer. This is by far the most densely populated part of the country... straight down I95... I had a GSM phone with a T-Mobile card, another GSM phone with my Norwegian card (which bounces from network to network) and I had a Sprint phone which I bought a while back... between the three of them, I managed to have slightly better than despicable coverage while driving. Oh... I also had a T-Mobile 4G wireless modem.
For nearly 50% of the trip, I had no Internet access. For about 80% of the trip, I couldn't get anything better than edge. For about 20% of the trip, voice was not available. For another 20% of the trip, the call quality was so shitty that there wasn't even any point of calling. In the many of the gigantic malls we stopped in (for food and air conditioning... it was July and my family is Norwegian... HOT!!!) we'd run around begging for wifi access from stores because 2G, 3G and 4G wouldn't work in the malls. Hell, I thought it was hilarious that the Best Buy where I bought the 4G modem didn't even have 4G access... or 3G... or 2G... or even respectable voice. Then later at a different mall, I stopped into a Radio Shack to get a T-Mobile refill card and I couldn't even use it until I drove 20 miles because I couldn't get internet access anywhere near there. Can you say Microcell?!?!?!
Anyway, if the FCC gave a shit, they would not only let this happen, but they would also require that the PCS network was gradually replaced with a GSM network and that AT&T and Sprint should have to share access to their networks with each other so that the consumer would benefit. The FCC would then on top of that start providing funding to either of those companies or to smaller startups to build out the GSM network so that maybe one day, the U.S. might have better mobile phone service than most third world countries.
Re:The SEC matters, not the FCC... (Score:5, Informative)
The FCC's input in this is important, since its approval is required by law.
The odds of the merger happening have dropped dramatically, though I think they were less than even before this.
Re:The SEC matters, not the FCC... (Score:5, Interesting)
The merger would most certainly require FCC approval, and would not be able to be completed without it.
You're right that the FCC's input to the SEC is unimportant, because the FCC does not need to explain itself. It can simply say "no" and that would be that.
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Depends how much they want to stop the merger. The FCC has ultimate control over the frequencies. If they let AT&T understand that if they go ahead with the merger they won't be getting US spectrum for the merged company, or even that T-mobile's spectrum will be going elsewhere....
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Depends how much they want to stop the merger. The FCC has ultimate control over the frequencies.
This won't be true for much longer. When a Republican takes over the White House in 2013, one of the things they'll do is disband the FCC (along with the EPA, FAA, and FDA), so these companies will be free to do whatever they want with the airwaves.
Re:The SEC matters, not the FCC... (Score:5, Interesting)
Have you seen the current Republican field? I wouldn't hold your breath, though the major cell carriers certainly should.
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I hope you are kidding. The Republicans are not going to disband the FCC. Radio, television, paging, cell phones... i.e. corporate America doesn't want wide open signal piracy like there was before it existed. As for the FAA American planes won't be able to fly abroad without the FAA. No FDA means drug legalization essentially. EPA they might want to get rid of, but then the states have free rein and the Republicans get blamed for every environment harm from then on.
Re:The SEC matters, not the FCC... (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not kidding, though I wish I were. Just listen to what the Republican candidates have been saying.
No FDA doesn't mean drug legalization either; they can still ban any drug they want (i.e. marijuana) with a simple law from Congress; as marijuana and the others are presumably already banned this way, abolishing the FDA won't change that. It'll just mean that all our food will no longer be checked for quality or safety, so we'll all be eating Chinese-sourced food loaded with melamine, we'll have e.coli in our meats, etc.
Getting rid of the EPA is entirely feasible. Sure, it'll mean pollution like what London had back in the 1800s, but by the time people finally get sick of it and try to make a change, it'll be too late.
Yes, I understand this all seems crazy, but I'm just going by what our Presidential candidates themselves are saying. These people seem to be very popular these days, so I see no reason to doubt some of this stuff may very well come true. Just look at how Americans have been voting over the past decade or two; they're obviously not a very bright bunch.
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You are absolutely correct it won't change the ability of congress to one off ban drugs. But most drug it doesn't want to ban but control. Further there are tens of thousands of drugs in the USA that are legal, about a thousand applications a year and hundreds of thousands of foreign drugs. Congress could deal with 10 drug bans a day 200 working days a year and barely keep up with the new stuff.
And I'm thrilled the Republican candidates are saying that stuff. If the