AT&T to Acquire T-Mobile USA for $39 Billion
businesswire.com
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The one issue with T-Mobile is it uses the fairly nonstandard 1870 MHz frequency. I don't know of any other carrier that does (anywhere). I assume this is because AT&T has the rights to the more common frequencies in the relevant markets? I wonder what technical and regulatory hurdles stand in their way for switching T-Mobile infrastructure to also do the "standard" frequencies.
Wireless really is a mess in the US. Europe and Australia have really benefited from choosing one technology (GSM). In the US you pick your carrier then pick your phone. Elsewhere you basically pick your phone then pick your carrier. Don't like you carrier? Swap your SIM. Problem solved. The US really suffers (from the consumer point of view) by this lack of carrier mobility.
It's my theory that US wireless is so expensive at least in part due to it being the most balkanized market in the developed world (and possibly the entire world).
I was hoping LTE would help alleviate this problem as it seemed to be on the road map for 3 out of 4 of the carriers (all but Sprint). Now I guess it's still 2 of 3. Sprint is still the odd man out with the (basically failed) WiMax technology.
I can see this acquisition facing some serious regulatory and legislative scrutiny.
Not that they're that expensive new. But if portability was easy there would even be an omnipresent resale market for used phones, so even boring phones retain resale value, as is common in other countries.
It crashes in call (total power off); data availability hasn't been stable (I would say about once a week I have significant issues where I won't be able to use email, a browser, etc. for the entire day); maps/GPS is iffy; I think there are some interface design flaws.*
I used to have an iPhone 3G. I thought it was great.
I switched to VM for the plan -- $25/month for 300 minutes, unlimited text and data ($40/month for 1200 minutes).
Honestly, though, these problems haven't really bothered me too much. I've found that for $25 or $40 a month it's fine with me if the experience isn't "perfect".
*My friend also experiences these same problems
Search #vmdd (Virgin Mobile Data Down) on Twitter and follow the fun.
The Optimus V is a late 2010 phone. My iPhone 3G is from 2008 and hasn't been sold by Apple for a full generation. Your comparison doesn't really make sense.
Even if iPads or other tablets become subsidized by carriers, my guess is that a lot of tablets will still be sold without subsidy simply because people are used to it.
Another effect of being able to simply swap SIM cards is that there will be a larger population of useful old unlocked/unlockable phones out there with expired contracts. A lot of early GSM competition in Europe was driven by smaller carriers or MVNOs who could simply send you a SIM card to put in your old phone.
As far as I can tell, T-Mobile is (was?) the only major US carrier to even offer the option of buying a phone up front and then getting a month-to-month plan that costs less than the equivalent 2-year contract. That is what I use and all told it is going to save me about $200 over two years vs. a subsidy based plan. But if hypothetically my monthly rate were the same as what it would be on a 2-year contract, as it would be on AT&T, why wouldn't I take advantage of the subsidized phones (apart from lock-in)?
OK, there are prepaid plans, but the choice of phones (especially smartphones) is limited compared to what's available on postpaid.
One can hope, but I'm not holding my breath. My guess is that FTC and FCC will make some comments, AT&T will make some small gestures, the deal gets approved and about a year later AT&T's plans increase in price by 15-20%.
Genuine question: Obviously it can't be challenged on anti-trust grounds (unless the original AT&T settlement applies here somehow), and I don't know enough US law to know what else might apply. I know many countries have a regulator for mergers that can sometimes apply a "bad for competition" policy, but I thought in the US that would only apply if it forms an actual monopoly?
The other part seems to be the attitude that customers are the enemy, who should be squeezed for their last cent while being provided with minimal service and support.
Add to that very weak customer protection laws and lack of competition.
How are pricing plans in the US when you are roaming beyond your state? I live in Sweden, where I have a decently priced data and call plan.
However, as soon as I go outside of Sweden, which is a small country (9M people), I have to pay roaming charges. I don't mind so much the call charges, but they want €4/MB ($5.60/MB) for data. Which essentially means that I don't use data roaming at all when out of town unless on Wifi, and I don't travel much in Sweden. Ok, so I can get calls when I travel, but I hardly use the phone for calls, I use it for the data access.
Yes, I can get another SIM, but then I have to tell everyone who may call me that I have changed number for that week, which is not really workable.
However when I leave the country they want $10 per MB of data, and $1.29 per minute for calls, and $0.99 for text messages. (This is T-Mobile).
I've heard that AT&T is even worse though :-/
http://www.wireless.att.com/learn/international/roaming/affo...
It's 20MB for $25/mo, 50MB for $60/mo, 100MB for $120, and 200MB for $200/mo.
I usually sign up for 200mb plan if I am going somewhere for a week, and don't worry too much about data usage (email, web, yelp app). Turn it few days after I am back, and all roaming charges had chance to post.
My iPhone is roaming on telenor. AT&T wants to charge me $19.99 per MB for data roaming here. Needless to say it turned it off and I'm using wifi when available.
Yes, I can get another SIM, but then I have to tell everyone who may call me that I have changed number for that week, which is not really workable.
Right now I'm travelling in Australia and have settled on getting a local pre-paid SIM with a few GB of data included. I purchased a Skype-online number and am forwarding my US Google Voice number to my Skype number, which I can answer either with Skype running on my phone (Nexus One) or directly with my phone (via Skype forwarding). Additionally I can tether my phone to my netbook via USB or wifi. (The people at Vodafone AU spent about 15 minutes trying to figure out if that was allowed on a pre-paid SIM.)
This is not exactly a simple solution, but is working for me on the road to make relatively cheap calls and I'm always reachable (when I want to be).
I'm not very optimistic about what will happen to my T-mobile bill with AT&T buying them.
Google Voice is not available outside the US (at least last time I checked)
I don't want to entrust Google more then my searches and (very partially) my email. This rules out, for example, an Android phone or using Chrome.
If you use data roaming, traffic from your device goes back to your home operator and only after that to Internet. I don't know if any significant changes were made in Rel-8 (Rel-10?), but for now that's how it works.
This can be problematic for those always on the move (the US has an all-round advantage on domestic market size), but in addition to the 2007 and 2010 roaming regs, the EU is apparently looking at forcing more reasonable data roaming charges across the board.
I think you mean GSM/UMTS band II (PCS), as 1870 is in the uplink portion of PCS (1850–1910MHz). That's a pretty standard frequency in North America. All four major US carriers (ATT, T-Mo, Verizon, and Sprint) operate in it (CDMA band class 1 overlaps with UMTS band II), as well as Bell and Telus in Canada, and Telcel in Mexico.
The only somewhat-oddball spectrum T-Mobile has is AWS, which they use for UMTS service. Even then, that's still a standard band according to the ITU.
Bell, Telus, Rogers = AT&T
Wind Mobile, Mobilicity, Videotron = T-Mobile*
Public Mobile = Sprint/Verizon
Bell, Telus (old network) = Sprint/Verizon
And our Big Three (Bell, Rogers, and Telus) are even worse than youres. It's beyond ridiculous.
There are also a large number of non-major players (such as SaskTel in Saskatchewan, Aliant in the Maritimes, and so on) that are largely irrelevant unless you live in their coverage areas.
Smartphones have historically needed handset subsidies to be attractive to consumers, so they tend to be associated with monthly billing and have locked hardware - but locked for the duration of the contract. After the contract has run out, you are then free to ring up your contract provider and have your phone unlocked. You can then swap out the SIM, unlike what you can do with e.g. a Verizon handset. Alternatively, you can visit your local disreputable phone shop and get your phone unlocked directly (i.e. in violation of your contract).
The hardware itself, because of the SIMs and relative uniformity of radio bands, is switchable. This is key.
You're also wrong about the concept of buying minutes just coming to Europe. Business phone users under contract have long bought minutes. But most phones have been feature phones, and sold in prepay situations, which means that they are unlocked right from the get-go.
FWIW, when I got my first phone, it was an unused one that was rattling around in a drawer. All I needed was a SIM, which was a token purchase and came with call credit greater than its cost; these days, SIMs come free in the delivery box with online mail order purchases, just needing activation.
Based on the auction maps, T-Mobile USA had virtually no LTE/700 spectrum space. So AT&T acquiring T-Mo should not change the mix on LTE/700.
The wild card is Frontier, which won the auction for the 'E' block for a large part of the US CONUS. Frontier is somehow interconnected with Dish/Echostar. See the maps here ..
Actually, T-Mobile uses the AWS spectrum (in addition to PCS/1900MHz spectrum) which has the uplink around 1700MHz and the downlink around 2100MHz. AT&T and Verizon both have AWS holdings as well as Cricket, MetroPCS, and others. It's standard spectrum and MetroPCS and Cricket are actively using it for service today. AT&T and Verizon seem to be holding it to use for LTE in the future when increased capacity becomes necessary.
If you'd like to learn more about AWS spectrum and see some nice maps of who bought what, Phone Scoop has a great article: http://www.phonescoop.com/articles/article.php?a=99&p=14...
I would imagine AT&T has a certain number of favors to cash in at this point.
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/AT%26T#Privac...
It's 2011, folks. We can't let oppressive regimes have their way.
Imagine if Apple had tried to get their iPhone AppStore arrangement in a single-GSM
carrier world?
(Wait a minute; I don't appear to be paying $0.20 for text messages either, and I'm AT&T.)
Very, very few handsets are built for both GSM and CDMA, which is a situation that won't change for quite a while (upcoming next-gen LTE handsets should work on all carriers, but we will see about that).
At the time of the iPhone deal, T-Mobile and AT&T were Apple's only two real options for deployment (Verizon was a negotiating tactic) -- they wanted to build a GSM handset they could deploy globally. The situation would not be any different today. AT&T only won that war because of their dominant position, which allowed them to throw billions at promotions and guarantees -- which, of course, only further worsened T-Mobile's ability to compete (imagine if they had gotten the iPhone instead).
In today's world, if you were Apple, AT&T would once again be able to sit back and dictate terms, as they will be the only real nationwide GSM network in town. It's 1998 all over again, and I don't like it one bit. The other players -- MetroPCS, etc -- are clearly regional / metropolitan plays and do not offer the footprint necessary for an iPhone type device.
As an aside, I would appreciate if your responses were more than one liners.
Nationwide wireless networks are extraordinarily capital-intensive. Absent a massive technological shift --- which may be coming and which AT&T and Verizon are powerless to stop --- there are always going to be a (1) few (2) very large companies providing cell coverage. It may be more expensive to launch a nationwide wireless network than it is to launch an airline.
Meta, responding to your aside: respectfully, no. I'm trying to avoid typing for the sake of typing. I asked a serious question; you answered it; I responded to it with my take. That's how the system should work.
What are you thinking of?
The thing that makes the "OMG $0.20 SMS PAY TO TETHER WTF" people isn't going to be a better cell carrier; it's going to be something that obsoletes cell carriers. Look at the RIDICULOUS PHONE you have in your pocket right now; nothing like it even existed in 2005.
My Dell Axim had a 624 MHz CPU, 256 MB, wifi, Bluetooth, 3,7 inch VGA screen, TV-out and two card slots, one that could be used to upgrade it. 2005.
More competition is good, but, from a pragmatic perspective, the loss in competition (such as it is) might not outweigh the gain in efficiency for AT&T and T-Mobile subs.
And people already complain about the fact that there are only 2 GSM providers and 2 CDMA providers in the US. Your statement appears to me to be "I don't understand why you are complaining, it's not much worse than what we already have", but people already don't like what we have. This just makes it worse. Between a rock and a hard place, I guess. I completely understand your point, but slowly taking away options and freedoms to slowly turn a free and complacent consumer base into a single group under control of one entity is not a cool thing to do. Look at the current political debate over wiretaps and the PATRIOT act, it's the same idea.
Our choices as consumers and citizens are slowly being whittled away and no one gives a shit because "It won't be much worse than what we already have."
I completely understand your frustration at having to choose between two goliath companies for wireless access that works when you get off the plane no matter where you fly. But them's the breaks. What you really want isn't some legal action that increases to 3 from 2 our number of options; what you want is a technological improvement to reduce the cost of providing nationwide wireless access. You can, seriously, go work on that and maybe get somewhere.
I was commenting on your point that it's not that big of a deal for AT&T to acquire T-Mobile. It is a big deal because, why it may not be easy (or in fact possible) to stick a third carrier in the middle of this in a completely hypothetical scenario, combining the two carriers in a real life, AT&T just announced it was planning on doing just that scenario is not good for consumers. It is worse than the already less than ideal situation we have right now.
From what I've heard, I won't get this kind of service as an AT&T customer. I'm sad to see T-Mobile go, but this merger always was kind of on the horizon.
Anyway, from a long-time T-Mobile customer perspective, I think AT&T is the worst possible place for T-Mobile to end up, though I guess I'll get a bigger network, eventually. I just hope they don't change the unlimited data plan I currently have. That would suck, and lead to me look for alternatives.
For folks who hardly ever use their voice minutes, nothing else even comes close.
Grrr.
(Well, there's Virgin Mobile, but they have almost no network -- I think it's Sprint w/o any roaming onto Verizon.)
http://www.t-mobile.com/shop/Phones/cell-phone-detail.aspx?c...
It looks like the cheapest you can get in is with the $15 R225.
But, it's a lot better than what they had when I last shopped for prepaid.
Edit: I forgot to mention the no fee for tethering or hotspot. I use that enough for it to be very helpful but not to pay an additional fee.
Here comes added congestion from iphone users. Here comes a price increase (customers end up paying for most mergers in the end), etc. Hopefully by the time the deal goes through Verizon will have a full LTE roll-out and decent Android-based phones to take advantage of it.
I'm a little surprised this move is going to even take place. In markets with only a few providers, cell phone prices and caps are terrible. Take Canada for an example. Now the US will follow in Canada's footsteps.
I think the industry is set on killing competitive pricing. The dream of the mobile providers is to convince everyone that a $100-$150 monthly bill with 2+ year lock-ins is normal. Mobile data should be a commodity, not a premium service.
[citation needed]
Oh, and unrelenting robo-reminders. Those calls never drop and they always leave a message.
AT&T didn't buy Cingular per se. In late 2006 AT&T and Bellsouth each owned 50% of Cingular. AT&T got their 50% ownership via SBC. AT&T became sole owner of Cingular by acquiring Bellsouth. That deal closed about Dec 30, 2006 (after many delays getting approval from the FCC). The original iPhone was announced by Apple on January 9, 2007.
edit: /sarcasm, obviously.
Make the check out to my name.
[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irony_punctuation#Temherte_slaq...
Expressing sarcasm or irony in a text without any punctuation marks or any other obvious hints is hard and, if done right, brilliant. It’s an art quite unlike expressing sarcasm or irony in speech where we actually do hit people over the head with our delivery. We are just more used to it and it has a better image.
We probably shouldn’t be all that ashamed of hitting other people over the head with our sarcasm and irony in text, at least in casual online discussions and when we don’t have time for brilliance.
I was being sarcastic.
"We usually have to tell them that if they unlock their iPhone, it won't work. That
it's going to be like a $700 paperweight, and that the antenna will fry itself
on T-Mobile. Of course, that's not true, but that's what we tell them."
The release says this will "enhance [AT&T's] network capacity". That means T-Mobile isn't likely to exist as a separate thing that's just owned by AT&T. It's pretty certain to be rolled directly into AT&T. It's Cingular 2.0.
I don't know exactly what would be involved, but it's worth noting that T-Mobile 3G and AT&T 3G are not currently compatible.
The nice thing about T-mobile is it is/was the only company which charges less if you didn't have a contract.
See article seven of the CTIA's Consumer Code for Wireless Service (http://files.ctia.org/pdf/The_Code.pdf):
"Carriers will not modify the material terms of their subscribers’ contracts in a manner that is materially adverse to subscribers without ... allowing subscribers a time period of not less than 14 days to cancel their contracts with no early termination fee."
However, I can see the same thing not happening with this deal. AT&T really is the antithesis of T-Mo in terms of pricing, flexibility, and customer service.
I've got both (an iPhone and a Nexus One). While 3G coverage is not as readily available on T-Mo as it is on AT&T, there have certainly been many times when it has been more reliable in call quality and drops.
The only upside to this? It is very likely the US will end up with unified GSM frequencies. We will see.
Seriously not looking forward to this.
1. Will I be able to keep the same plan I'm on now? I'm assuming the answer is yes unless I make any changes, at which point they'll try to force me into a new AT&T, which will suck.
2. When can I buy an iPhone for use on my T-Mobile plan? This will still probably a good year away, though I hope it'll be faster.
Many T-mobile phones support old GSM (EDGE) on 850, 900, 1800, and 1900, which overlaps with AT&T. But UMTS (3G) support is on bands 1700 and 2100, neither of which AT&T uses. 2100 is common in Europe.
We have a company leveraging their government-granted-duopoly in the broadband marketplace to strengthen its market share in a closely related market (mobile phones). It's a good move for them ... They're stretching their net and once it's across the whole Internet, get ready to pay some real rent...
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12745304/ns/technology_and_scien...
Meanwhile AT&T was up front about rolling over.
Since any telco can legally lie about this, I'm curious why T-Mobile was later added to the initial suit while Qwest was not. I looked around the EFF site but got tired of poking through PDFs and not finding anything to explain that.
Granted, he's been convicted of insider trading and may be a biased source, but I'd say it's a good indicator that Qwest isn't named as a defendant in the EFF suits.
Hell, maybe AT&T wants to buy T-Mobile to ensure everyone gets spied on equally. Look for an attempt to buy Qwest next. :)
I'm not sure I'm trying to make a point, but I do not know what AT&T did with the Cingular. Did it use it's network? Did they just engulf it to remove the competition? Maybe someone else more knowledgable of this ordeal knows.
How will AT&T use T-Mobile after they acquire them? What becomes of the T-Mobile network that will soon by AT&T's network?
I'm thinking of a data-only phone that puts all of these evil companies out of the equation. All you need to provide data is wireless hotspots, and this can be done by small companies.
The only problem is who owns the fast fiberoptics. These fictional small companies could create a cooperative where they all work together to create their own infrastructure. It has worked for the organic food industry (Organic Valley).
ATT screwed me seven years ago and I vowed never to take their business again (from what I hear their customer service is still not much better), so I guess if this goes through it's goodbye T-Mobile.
ATT's stated desire to catch up to Verizon while losing customers seems like an internal issue that just can't be bought away.
On a personal note. I left Sprint for Nextel years ago to see it bought. And I left ATT in November for T-Mobile and well....
At least I can look forward to a larger bill.
ed: FCC approval is probably kind of important too...
I'm sure ATT will find a way to ruin it though. Too much redundant capacity, will shut down the Tmobile towers in SF.
So it probably wouldn't be a stretch to say that Apple played a role (albeit unintentional) in this acquisition.
Bravo!