

AT&T: T-Mobile sucks (and we'd like to buy it for $39 billion) - abraham
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/04/att-t-mobile-sucks-and-wed-like-to-buy-it-for-39-billion.ars

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ratsbane
I've had T-Mobile for several years and I like them. They're innovative in
their billing practices: If you don't want subsidized phones you can save
$20/month and they don't interfere with tethering. This merger is bad news.

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krakensden
I'm pretty sure AT&T sees its highly segmented plans and aggressive billing
practices as innovative, and considers T-Mobile's approach to be naive and old
fashioned.

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pyre
Only if they subscribe to the P.T. Barnum School of Business Newsletter.

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krakensden
Wait- are you saying you don't?

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j79
| "AT&T’s network-capacity challenges, however, are not just 'looming' a few
years down the road—they are here today, the product of AT&T’s mobile
broadband leadership and its need to support multiple generations of services.
And although other providers’ public statements indicate that they have
sufficient capacity to cover their needs until additional spectrum is made
available via auction several years from now, AT&T must move more quickly."

I recently moved from Boston to the West Coast. As an AT&T customer in Boston,
I never had issues with service. I remember two dropped calls in over 2.5
years of service and that's it (I'm sure there were more, especially on the
commuter rail, but the drop calls became rare as my contract/usage went on...)
I was a customer who defended their service when reading about how "bad" it
was.

Then I made the trek over to Silicon Valley. WOW, did things change. About two
weeks I was talking to my dad and had five dropped calls in under three
minutes. Usually I average 2-3 per conversation. Extremely frustrating, to the
point where I no longer even pick up...

So while I'm sad that this merger is happening (I'm all for more competition
and think T-Mobile offers great service - ex T-MO customer here...), I
completely understand why AT&T is doing this. I'm sure weighing the cost of
buying T-Mobile vs new towers (and the cost/time for those) just made sense.

Checking the coverage for T-Mo, they appear to have where I live extremely
well covered. IF I'm still an AT&T customer in a year, hopefully this will
help. I know a few other AT&T customers who would be happy with this as well.

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abeppu
For several months last year, I was involved in a long distance relationship,
and phone calls constituted a very large proportion of my interaction with my
BF. Unfortunately, at the time I was both living in SF, and an AT&T customer.
The constant dropped calls drove me crazy -- as you pointed out, several
dropped calls in a very short window of time was quite common. The nature of a
conversation changes when you're always afraid you're about to cut off. You
get paranoid every time you hear a pause in someone's speech. And sometimes
you get the the point where after the umpteenth redial, neither of you says
anything, because you know you won't be able to talk long enough to finish a
thought. Eventually I switched to T-Mobile, and moved across the country to
live with my BF again. Now, with this looming acquisition, I'm faced with the
prospect of becoming a reacquired AT&T customer, and again being dependent on
a company whose service was so crappy as to have literally brought me to tears
more than once. Yes, AT&T's infrastructure is already stretched thin -- but I
wish their approach to increasing network capacity didn't involve dragging me
back in.

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ck2
If the FTC/FCC approves this, they are utterly corrupt and beyond redemption.

Why do we forget so quickly that airwaves for tv, radio and cellular are
licensed by the people, for the people, and we are not served by FEWER choices
and only a handful of super-conglomerates owning everything.

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ares2012
AT&T buying T-Mobile is only good for AT&T. It would result in the US having
only 2 major wireless carriers in a matter of years and falling behind the
rest of the world in wireless technology. This is exactly what the FTC was
created to prevent.

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zhyder
The full 381-page document:
[http://www.mobilizeeverything.com/documents/PUBLIC%20Descrip...](http://www.mobilizeeverything.com/documents/PUBLIC%20Description%20of%20Transaction%20PIS%20Related%20Demonstration.pdf)

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JoshTriplett
I can't speak for the broader AT&T or T-Mobile customer bases, but personally
as an AT&T customer I welcome this change if it means I can roam to the
T-Mobile towers for fast 3G/3.5G on the frequency my phone can use, while also
supporting the AT&T towers that actually manage to have signal at my house
(which T-Mobile fails at).

As for AT&T's insane capped plans, they suck, but in my case I have a
$15/month unlimited data plan so that doesn't affect me. :)

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jordan0day
I can't think of a single place where T-Mobile has _better_ coverage than
AT&T. As an amalgamation of almost all the former baby bells, AT&T has
(geographically speaking) the best coverage of all the providers. Presuming
your AT&T phone is a GSM one, you would be able to roam to a T-Mobile tower if
AT&T and T-Mobile just had a roaming agreement. This wouldn't require a
takeover and wouldn't affect competition in the market the way this buyout
undoubtedly will.

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JoshTriplett
As you pointed out, AT&T has better coverage than T-Mobile pretty much
everywhere; a roaming agreement wouldn't help most AT&T customers, with the
exception of those using phones that only do 3G on T-Mobile's frequencies
rather than AT&T's. So, it seems unlikely that AT&T would sign a roaming
agreement with T-Mobile that would primarily benefit T-Mobile's customers but
not AT&T's.

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shareme
maybe the will get suckered into net neutrality as part of the buying
concessions with the FTC.

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phlux
AT&T are scum. (But all the carriers are)

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hugh3
Virgin Mobile isn't so bad, although their service in the US is lacking
compared to other countries.

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trotsky
Just FYI - Virgin Mobile USA is wholly owned by Sprint. Since they are just a
Sprint MVNO, it's (at this point) just a way to discount their services
without diluting their brand. The various Virgin Mobile brands in different
companies are all(mostly?) independent of each other.

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hugh3
That's interesting, I didn't know that. Branson really doesn't own any of it?

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trotsky
I think virgin group does own the UK service. Apparently they did VM USA as a
joint venture with sprint and then sprint bought them out. The rest appear to
be franchise/licensing agreements.

<https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Virgin_Mobile>

