AT&T Officially Ends Plans To Acquire T-Mobile USA 176
An anonymous reader writes "AT&T has officially announced that it no longer plans to purchase T-Mobile USA from Deutsche Telekom. In a press release, the company said, 'The actions by the Federal Communications Commission and the Department of Justice to block this transaction do not change the realities of the U.S. wireless industry. It is one of the most fiercely competitive industries in the world, with a mounting need for more spectrum that has not diminished and must be addressed immediately. The AT&T and T-Mobile USA combination would have offered an interim solution to this spectrum shortage. In the absence of such steps, customers will be harmed and needed investment will be stifled.'"
Why link to a story which only rehashes the press (Score:4, Informative)
The story just rehashes the press release by AT&T.
And by the time the story got to Slashdot, others have already written decent stories about it - those would have made much better links.
The business perspective [bloomberg.com].
The regular news [nytimes.com]
And the tech perspective [arstechnica.com]
AT&T Attitude Problem Hasn't Changed (Score:3, Informative)
"We own our customers." has been the attitude for decades.
Has anybody forgotten their CEO's "my pipes" speech with the subtext of "That's a nice internet connection you have. Be a shame if anything happened to it."?
Re:It still hurt T-Mobile bad (Score:5, Informative)
That is why AT&T is going to pay them around 3 Billion in compensation.
T-Mobile USA is not sliding towards bankruptcy.... (Score:5, Informative)
T-Mobile will still get bought, or will go under.
To say nothing of the assets that will come available when T-Mobile declares bankruptcy
T-Mobile USA makes money. It just doesn't make enough money for the corporate overlords at DT. They don't view the United States as a growth market without billions of dollars in capital investment they've thus far been unwilling to make. Absent that investment T-Mobile USA will remain what it has always been: an urban focused value carrier.
T-Mobile will still get bought, or will go under.
Vodaphone is a possibility if they divest their 45% share of Verizon Wireless. Verizon would love to buy them out; the question is would they be willing to sell to jump into the US market with both feet or does it make more sense for them to keep cashing VZW dividend checks?
Re:And there was much rejoicing !! (Score:5, Informative)
T-Mobile is very profitable. Deutsche only wants out because it's no longer in growth mode. It certainly won't grow any without spectrum and LTE, and it can't afford either one. So yeah it will be sold or merged one way or another, but it's not a bad business. They can ride their faux-G network for a while but not forever.
Re:Good news (Score:2, Informative)
Verizon is to Bell as AT&T is to Bell. (Score:4, Informative)
I'm not sure why you're not getting modded up. Verizon is as much "Ma Bell" as AT&T is.
http://www.freepress.net/files/att_history.jpg [freepress.net]
Re:And there was much rejoicing !! (Score:4, Informative)
It seems like every discussion on cell phone providers ends up with stories like this. People who've had little or no problem everywhere they go, people who had trouble with signal on one provider in some area but fine with another, etc. I had an opposite experience with Verizon and T-Mobile - Verizon sucked in my house in a suburb of Atlanta, both T-Mobile and now AT&T have been great. Verizon also sucked at my in-law's house out in the very middle of nowhere PA, while T-Mobile also sucked and AT&T is at least usable.
So, it pretty much seems like everyone needs to find the provider that works best in their area while they all need to work more on network coverage.