Leaked AT&T Letter Demolishes Case For T-Mobile Merger

http://www.broadbandreports.com/shownews/Leaked-ATT-Letter-Demolishes-Case-For-TMobile-Merger-115652

by rosser • 15 years ago

303 41 15 years ago

rauljara• 15 years ago

There is already too little competition in carriers (and telecoms in general). Even completely ignoring the document, I can't imagine who thought public good would have been served by allowing such a merger.

cowkingdeluxe2• 15 years ago

Doesn't matter to the politicans. They don't work for the American public, they work for the corporations who give them money and high paying jobs later in life.

danilocampos4• 15 years ago

The state of regulatory capture in this country makes corrupt Latin American dictatorships look like bastions of ethics and accountability by comparison.

edit: Downvote away. At least in Latin America, everyone accepted the corruption was going on. Here we pretend the revolving door between policy enforcement and well-paid private sector jobs in the enforced-upon industries is totally fine and not at all subject to conflicts of interest.

Fuck, man, one of the people who approved the NBC/Comcast acquisition later took a very cushy job with... Well, I'll leave it to you to guess. Spoiler: she didn't join a consumer advocacy nonprofit.

marknutter• 15 years ago

Hacker News is starting to sound like r/politics more and more every day.

object404• 15 years ago

Additional related articles where a lot of this was sourced (3 of them sourced from each other):

---------

Unredacted AT&T Filing Shows $3.8B Price Tag

By Maisie Ramsay Thursday, August 11, 2011

http://www.wirelessweek.com/news/2011/08/unredacted-ATT-fili...

---------

AT&T Letter Damages Case For T-Mobile Acquisition

Rue Liu, Aug 12th 2011

http://www.slashgear.com/att-letter-damages-case-for-t-mobil...

---------

AT&T’s “Ooops” Damages Their Biggest Argument In Favor Of T-Mobile Takeover

By David, Managing Editor August 12, 2011 4:10 pm EST

http://www.tmonews.com/2011/08/atts-ooops-damages-their-bigg...

cowkingdeluxe2• 15 years ago

Wasn't $3.8 billion around the amount the AT&T has to pay T-Mobile if the merger fails to go through?

fpgeek3• 15 years ago

I think so, but I don't see how the two amounts would logically be related, so I presume that is a coincidence.

djeikyb• 15 years ago

Is the leaked document available anywhere? I'd love to read it for myself. I'm searching for it, but as yet it eludes me.

cookiecaper4• 15 years ago

The proposition of this merger is one of the most blatantly negative outcomes for the public I've heard in some time. Anyone with even an inkling of sense regarding this industry understands that it would be very dangerous and troublesome for consumers if T-Mo were absorbed into AT&T -- not only would it pare down the oligopoly that is mobile telco and allow further price gouging (which is already quite excessive; cf. 20¢/text), but AT&T would have acquired the entire GSM market in the US, leaving current T-Mo customers with no choice but to use AT&T or get a new phone and foreign visitors with no choice but to roam on AT&T.

> (somewhere there's a paralegal looking for work today)

I like to think that somewhere there's a paralegal holding his head high for the "accidental" damage he inflicted to this potential merger. Good for you, man.

NoPiece2• 15 years ago

I think that is overstating the negative. You basically are going to get significant coverage improvements for TMO and ATT customers, and the cost will be potential price increases due to decreased competition. As an ATT customer, I really want the Tmo bandwidth. I'll take the risk.

fpgeek3• 15 years ago

I think you missed the point of the leaked letter. It claims that AT&T could have gotten the relevant coverage improvements for roughly 1/10 the price of the merger ($3.8 billion vs $38 billion). Why is AT&T willing to pay the extra $34+ billion? Taking out a key competitor seems like the obvious motive.

rokhayakebe2• 15 years ago

I just cannot wait for a startup to disrupt this space.

ahi• 15 years ago

How? ATT and Verizon control the spectrum.

lsc• 15 years ago

there have been several stabs at similar problems using unlicensed spectrum; you pay people to use wimax or wifi wireless routers running software you provide. Your software allows your other customers to connect to the internet through those routers. From there it's easy enough to provide voip phone service. If you control the software on the routers, it's easy enough to set up authentication so only third parties that pay you can connect, and to rate-limit those third parties to something reasonable.

But it's a difficult thing to carry off. Several companies, I believe, have tried and all have failed. (I can't remember the names of any of those companies right now; I don't know if that's 'cause I'm tired, or if that's 'cause I'm actually remembering a conversation about a business that someone wanted to start that never happened, or if I'm just making this up wholecloth. None the less, it seems like a direction from which you could attack the market using unlicensed spectrum. You would have many obstacles, but it seems possible, at least in high-density urban areas.)

rokhayakebe2• 15 years ago

If I knew, I would have worked on it or shared the idea here.

hammock• 15 years ago

As long as spectrum is controlled by the government (FCC), ain't going to happen.

stretchwithme• 15 years ago

Agreed. If the spectrum had been treated like other property all along, owners would have a strong incentive to figure out how to carry more data.

Landowners have a similar incentive. And, where it makes sense to do so, we see buildings that are many stories high, effectively using the same land many times over for the same purpose.

But in spectrum, we have spectrum lying around unused, while emergency services can't even get usable spectrum to save your butt in an emergency. Its well known that cops and firefighters couldn't even be alerted to leave one of the towers.

And this problem has still not been solved. But they can buy land with no problem.

Leaked AT&T Letter Demolishes Case For T-Mobile Merger

Related Stories