NSA Fallout Thwarts AT&T | Hacker News Reader

NSA Fallout Thwarts AT&T

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117 pointsdavidsmith890043 comments

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.

I would epect that it is currently the norm for technologically less developed countries to let foreign companies run their telecom infrastructure. But they might get more sensitive in the future and develop further at the same time. They will probably reclaim their infrastructure one day.

> 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.

T-mobile is actually officially independent of Deutsche Telekom because the FCC has the same rule.

I suppose that depends on your definition of "independent." They are a subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom. When T-Mobile USA and MetroPCS merged, the agreement was signed in Bonn, Germany, not Bellevue, Washington.

It really depends on the FCC's definition, but yeah, I concede the point that they are only just independent enough to make the FCC happy.

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.

Yes, I think they would have a tough time. Then again, maybe they will bring something new to the table.

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.

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...

Possibly yes. I would imagine that doing so would basically subject AT&T to the Sherman anti-trust act, resulting in having it broken up again like in the 80s.

Most of the Latin America mobile market is in the hands of Telefonica (Spain) and America Movil (Mexico):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mobile_network_operator...

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

While I agree with the premise, the conclusion is too strong. I'm ok with foreign companies running telecoms as long as they are heavily regulated - up to the point of full forfeiture of the infrastructure if they screw with the national interest. Mostly because it is not that easy to define 'foreign' and once you do, it is not clear why 'non-foreign' companies would be less likely to screw the region's sovereignty that 'foreign' ones.

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?

"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.

This is a rather optimistic view, I think.

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/nov/01/gchq-europe-s...

With my countries local intelligence agency I have a minuscule, but nonzero chance of having influence over it by the means of elections and some protection by local law. Neither of the two exist when ATT does the collection for the NSA.

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.

Welp, I'm back from half an hour on Wikipedia reading about "Balkanization"... you use that word a lot. I like it.

Balkanisation, is a geopolitical term, originally used to describe the process of fragmentation or division of a region or state into smaller regions or states that are often hostile or non-cooperative with one another.

thanks for pointing that out for him, he certainly would not have read that in the wikipedia article on balkanisation that he just read.

It was more for the benefit of others who may not have read it on Wikipedia.

Making a reply in a thread does not always mean you're directly and only replying to the person you're replying to -- it can be more than that, it can be a reply that moves the discussion along, and gives off information and insights to anyone who's reading the comment. Seeing as you're a new HN user, I encourage you to give the 'comments guidelines' page a read: http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Indeed. I was just about to look it up before reading an article linked also in the comments. Now thanks to mjallday's note I've got the context I was looking for and don't need to drain thirty minutes doubly off-topic reading about Balkanization. (Not that I'd mind, but Wikipedia can be dangerously engrossing like TvTropes...)

Seconded

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...

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.

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

I am starting to suspect that creating a fully-controlled global network might have been a conscious effort since the early stages of the internet, especially given its history with DARPA. Perhaps this effort didn't begin that far back, but certainly since the mid 80s or early 90s, at a point where internet started crossing the critical threshold from hobbyist or military interests, to everyday/commerce interests. Certainly, nobody could have predicted how popular the internet would become, but once its potential became clear I can only imagine how irresistible the opportunity for its control would have been.

The more I think about the current state of affairs, the more I understand now why the Chinese government has resisted efforts by foreign data providers to become primary providers, and instead creating their own versions - it seems they had the foresight that none of us (engineers) had. They smartly created their own search engines and social networks to stop/limit the funneling of their data to foreign companies with the side-benefit of having near-full control over domestic data.

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

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.)

Two things I recall from my undergrad years:

1. Don't sign up for any studies at McLean

2. Daytona is a database of every phone call, ever (or since there were CDRs)

Both were from reliable sources. But heck if I could convince anyone else.

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.

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=at%26t&ei=EG91UuCSGaX2iwK8Z...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AT%26T_Inc.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vodafone

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

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

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.

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.

If they don't know what to do, try buying someone.

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.

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.

historically low intrest rates. virtually unmatched cash flow.

Right now, we are in a brief period of financial conditions where healthy mega companies can do acquisitions that would normally be impossible.

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

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.

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

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