

NSA Fallout Thwarts AT&T - davidsmith8900
http://online.wsj.com/news/article_email/SB10001424052702304073204579167873091999730-lMyQjAxMTAzMDMwMDEzNDAyWj

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malandrew
Telecom infrastructure is entirely too important to a region's sovereignty to
allow any foreign company to own and operate. I hope AT&T is slowly excluded
from every single market outside the United States. They don't deserve to
operate anywhere else. Heck, given their complicitness in dicking over their
their customers, they don't deserve to operate in the US either.

~~~
whyenot
> Telecom infrastructure is entirely too important to a region's sovereignty
> to allow any foreign company to own and operate.

Using the same line of reasoning, should T-Mobile (Deutsche Telekom) be
excluded from the United States? That would be a shame, they have done a lot
to shake up the U.S. wireless market. A new entrant in Europe might have a
similar effect there.

~~~
Maakuth
I wonder if AT&T would be ready for the telecom competition landscape in
Europe. At least in Northern Europe, the competition is very fierce and the
prices are quite low thanks to that. Looking at US mobile prices, I don't
think the competition there is working very well.

~~~
bediger4000
_I don 't think the competition there is working very well._

There isn't meaningful competition anywhere in the USA. Regulatory capture
(the famed "revolving door" between the US Federal Government and large
corporations) means that major carriers have carved up the USA into
territories in which they have a local monopoly. There are other factors, but
that's the big one.

~~~
001sky
Verizon in particular, but AT&T is from the same lineage (ex Ma Bell). The
only other players in this league are the Cable companies and Hollywood. The
only reason these industries have not been disrupted...

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dmix
Indeed. Europe's telecom mega-corporations are perfectly suitable at working
with their own local intelligence agencies, then sharing data with the NSA.

Why make it ever so slightly easier by letting ATT do it?

~~~
forgottenpaswrd
"Europe's telecom mega-corporations are perfectly suitable at working with
their own local intelligence agencies, then sharing data with the NSA."

Exactly, they share data THEY WANT TO SHARE, on their terms.

There is a very real and justified need to share information regarding
criminals like terrorists, or murders.

But NSA scandal is about a different thing, mainly indiscriminate spying of
every human being, inside and outside US borders without oversight.

~~~
anigbrowl
This is a rather optimistic view, I think.

[http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/nov/01/gchq-
europe-s...](http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/nov/01/gchq-europe-spy-
agencies-mass-surveillance-snowden)

------
pasbesoin
Given my own experiences with AT&T, I find it difficult to find any sympathy
for them.

I do have some sympathy for increasingly (re)balkanized electronic
populations. The Internet, for a time, opened an avenue past local,
restrictive controls.

Unfortunately, although perhaps inevitably, the U.S. and related players felt
compelled to replace them with a global overlord.

At which point, balkanization starts to look at least partially useful, again.

Hopefully, though, we will not regress simply to state-controlled
balkanization. Grow orthogonally, and develop independent networks. Decreasing
costs may favor this.

~~~
fsck--off
My favorite story, written in 1992, about the quality of AT&T's customer
service is:

[http://www.csd.uwo.ca/staff/magi/personal/humour/Computer_Fo...](http://www.csd.uwo.ca/staff/magi/personal/humour/Computer_Folklore/How%20DOES%20AT&T%20Stay%20in%20Business%3F.html)

~~~
pasbesoin
This is hardly the only circumstance, but as a concise and personal (as
opposed to commercial) example:

Something over 10 years ago, I ordered DSL from them. It was my only high
speed option at that time. Actually, to be fair, it was I think at that time
Ameritech, which subsequently fairly quickly got sucked into SBC, which is
what AT&T really is, now. (SBC bought the "shell" of AT&T some years back,
that included perhaps principally the name and branding. All of the old AT&T
"substance" had long since been hollowed out.)

Placing the order took less than 10 minutes. The call was answered, by a live
customer service rep, within a minute.

Accomplishing the installation took three half-day appointments (they wouldn't
provide a narrower window). They simply blew off the first two.

The third appointment resulted in bare connections hanging on the side of my
building. The third party contractor they sent reused some old, old wires
someone had left hanging there and didn't even bother to wrap the splices.

(Fortunately, my downstairs neighbor was friends with a real, honest to
goodness union lineman for the voice side of their operations, who was over
visiting subsequently and cleaned things up a bit as a personal favor to my
neighbor.)

Their network was for shit. tracert would show requesting bouncing through
sometimes over a dozen of their servers before even making it out onto the
wider Net. And it got to the point of going down at least once a week.

One time, I spent a half hour or so on the phone just talking with and calming
down one of their contracted "service" reps, who was so frustrated that she
was quitting her job the following week and going back to Maine. She was nice,
and straightforward, and with a good sense of humor, so I didn't mind taking
the time.

She told me that, in her contract position, all she could do was file a
ticket. She couldn't even examine the status of an already-filed ticket. Even
for them, the subsequent repair process was a black box.

I guess I should add that a call for service (e.g. those weekly network
dropouts, for example) took, at a guestimate, on average about 30 minutes to
get out of queue and reach a person. During this time, _sales_ calls (calling
the number to order service) continued to be answered almost immediately.
Priorities could hardly be clearer.

Add to this the 700+ million in tax breaks and subsidies that SBC (now AT&T)
received in return for committing to universal high speed Internet access in
this state. Whereupon, they turned around and immediately deployed and hired
lawyers and lobbyists to get them out of their half of the deal while keeping
the incentives.

Their lawsuits and lobbying against any and all attempts of municipalities to
deploy their own networks, most often only after AT&T has refused to provide
said service themselves.

On and on...

Anything that keeps them from growing further? I'm all for it.

------
vincie
The US is starting to look like China, and AT&T (and other American companies)
like Huawei. Can't be trusted, keep at arms length, lips moving so must be
lying, has ulterior motives, etc etc

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austinz
Given the comparisons to other companies...I wonder if Huawei, ZTE, or any
European or Japanese company in recent memory has been explicitly outed for
this kind of behavior in the same fashion the American telecoms have. My (very
limited) understanding is that before Snowden, these types of accusations were
backed mostly by insinuations and conjecture. (For example, Huawei is suspect
because it has supposed ties to the Chinese military, not because a security
researcher has discovered a clearly nefarious backdoor in a router.)

~~~
alan_cx
Are you suggesting that Europeans treat allies and enemies in the same way?

People defending US interests are forgetting that the US is _supposed_ to be
an ally to Europe.

------
sker
How exactly would AT&T acquire the second largest mobile network operator in
the world, who happens to have a similar market cap and apparently larger
profits? Obviously it would be a merger, but the article makes it sound like
an aquisition. And what could AT&T possibly offer to Vodafone?

[https://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ%3AVOD&ei=FW91UrjjOqq...](https://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ%3AVOD&ei=FW91UrjjOqq-
igKuVg)

[https://www.google.com/finance?q=at%26t&ei=EG91UuCSGaX2iwK8Z...](https://www.google.com/finance?q=at%26t&ei=EG91UuCSGaX2iwK8Zw)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AT%26T_Inc](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AT%26T_Inc).

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vodafone](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vodafone)

~~~
justin66
When you phrase the question like that, the answer can only be "debt." I would
think antitrust issues would be a bigger obstacle.

------
jsmeaton
Good. Economic backlash is the only backlash that will cause change.

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adventured
I really, really hope European and Asian countries start disrupting a lot of
attempted acquisitions and mergers by US companies in response to the spying.

One thing everybody in this understands, is money. What's worth more than the
NSA? AT&T ($191b market cap), Google ($343b), Apple ($467b), Microsoft
($296b), among others

You want to see the all-powerful lobbyists at the biggest companies begin to
squeal like pigs and push back against the espionage state and the harm being
done by it, start severely hurting their businesses. The politicians will fold
very quickly.

------
wil421
I don't know why AT&T is trying to go to Europe again. They bought the company
I work for in the 90s for this reason as we have a big foothold in Europe. We
were split from them once Ma Bell was forced to split up. Their Europe
expansion didn't work out either way.

History repeats itself.

~~~
adventured
The reason for their hunting expedition is the US market is saturated and
'conquered' \- split among a duopoly protected by the US Government.
(hopefully Softbank can change that, we'll see)

They can't buy Verizon, and taking US market share is a very slow process. So
an alternative path forward for faster growth is to try to eat international
business.

~~~
kps
If you've ever dealt with (or worked on something sold to) telcos you'll have
noticed that winning customers is simply not something they show any interest
in. It's all about _increasing ARPU_ — Average Revenue Per Unit.

Of course if you've ever been a telco customer (sorry, _unit_ ) you'll have
noticed the same thing.

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logn
Perhaps the NSA would like to comment on exactly how likely a deal is.
Inquiring minds want to know.

------
stox
Ha Ha! AT&T would sell its mother for a nickel. Glad to see that coming back
to bite them in the ass. The old AT&T used to actually care about its
customers. The new AT&T simply tolerates them as a revenue source.

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devx
I would hope so. It's time they learn there are consequences for (literally)
selling their user-data en masse to spy agencies.

