[ilovedessert]

Hi all,

FYI.

Take care,

Jay

T-Mobile responds to opponents of AT&T merger
by Marguerite Reardon, June 21, 2011 3:39 PM PDT

T-Mobile responds to opponents of AT&T merger | Signal Strength - CNET News

T-Mobile USA has finally responded to opponents of its proposed merger with AT&T.

Since the $39 billion merger was announced in March, AT&T has taken the lead in explaining the benefits of the merger, which has sparked opposition from competitors as well as consumer advocates and some states. But today it was T-Mobile that added its voice to the debate.

"The opponents of the AT&T, T-Mobile merger have had their final say as part of the FCC's formal leading cycle," Tom Sugrue, senior vice president of government affairs for T-Mobile, said in a statement. "And, not surprisingly, they have failed to offer any credible arguments to support their view that the Commission should deny the transaction."

[LCGuy]

Pardon my candor, but, that is BS.

That, folks, is an executive of a large corporation trying to falsely label the actions that don't benefit his intentions and personal goals as inconsequential, and hoping that "sound byte" is repeated enough so that people won't research it any further and find out just how wrong he is, and just blindly believe him, instead.

Similarly, when FDA clinical trials for drugs are reported on, many times, the headline of the report literally lies about what is inside, and those drugs can, often times, be approved by the panels if they are too lazy (or too biased, as many of them work for the drug companies, as well) to read the actual report, which, in many regards, would force them to vote otherwise.

Let's see what the public response to this is, and who is awake at the wheel that is actually looking out for the public's best interest.

I dare say that Sprint might be one of the first to respond.

[Targon]

As someone who lives in an area where T-mobile just has virtually no coverage, having a larger coverage area would benefit T-mobile customers when they travel, and at the same time, would provide AT&T with new towers, so it would increase AT&T coverage areas and improve service, so from that perspective, it is a big positive. Increasing the number of towers in any area would also increase the need for fiber to that area as well, so AT&T as a part of the merger would need to lay more fiber to support areas that had both AT&T and T-mobile coverage, again, a positive since it costs pretty much the same(on a practical level) to lay a large amount of fiber as a smaller amount. This would also be a positive.

T-mobile has used different frequencies for 3G than AT&T, which is why on an unlocked AT&T phone, it won't work at 3G speeds on T-mobile at the moment, so the merger eliminates this issue.

Now, when it comes to cost of service, any large carrier will have more overhead, simply because rural areas(or areas of lower population density) are less profitable. How many POTENTIAL customers are there per cell phone tower in a place like Kansas? Now, look at a city, and you will see why cities will be more profitable. The only business reason for providing service in rural areas is for those who are traveling, so companies provide service in non-profitable areas ONLY to service customers from profitable areas. The end result is that the cost of service needs to be higher just to support all of those unprofitable areas. You want cell phone coverage 200 miles from the nearest city along the Interstate, that is raising the cost of doing business for the provider, and those costs have to be passed down to the customers. If the profit margins are high enough, companies will eat the cost in many cases, but this is why AT&T and Verizon have nearly the same price when you compare the cost of service.

You can complain about losing T-mobile meaning there is less competition, but really, T-mobile is NOT competition if you consider the difference in overall coverage area. The only way that cell phone service costs can possibly go down would be if the government wants to subsidize and support putting up cell phone towers all over the country where the carriers only need to worry about the cost of maintaining the equipment and adding more fiber to connect their equipment.

Remember, the US Government PAID to make sure that every home in the USA had access to telephone service, no matter how remote it may be. The government still pays for those old lines, and some of that money has been re-purposed by Verizon for the cellular network(which I feel should be illegal). If cellular is going to go the same way, where every person is expected to have access to a cell phone, the government will have to step in to cover the costs, and that might bring down the cost of service from AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, and any other company.

But, unless that happens, more cell phone towers will mean better quality of service for AT&T, and isn't that the only real complaint, other than service cost that MOST people have about AT&T?

[laoh]

Why deregulate telephone and airline companies in the 70s & 80s, then let them merger their way back to a monopoly? Are the consumers fools?

[ilovedessert]

As someone who lives in an area where T-mobile just has virtually no coverage, having a larger coverage area would benefit T-mobile customers when they travel, and at the same time, would provide AT&T with new towers, so it would increase AT&T coverage areas and improve service, so from that perspective, it is a big positive. Increasing the number of towers in any area would also increase the need for fiber to that area as well, so AT&T as a part of the merger would need to lay more fiber to support areas that had both AT&T and T-mobile coverage, again, a positive since it costs pretty much the same(on a practical level) to lay a large amount of fiber as a smaller amount. This would also be a positive.

T-mobile has used different frequencies for 3G than AT&T, which is why on an unlocked AT&T phone, it won't work at 3G speeds on T-mobile at the moment, so the merger eliminates this issue.

Now, when it comes to cost of service, any large carrier will have more overhead, simply because rural areas(or areas of lower population density) are less profitable. How many POTENTIAL customers are there per cell phone tower in a place like Kansas? Now, look at a city, and you will see why cities will be more profitable. The only business reason for providing service in rural areas is for those who are traveling, so companies provide service in non-profitable areas ONLY to service customers from profitable areas. The end result is that the cost of service needs to be higher just to support all of those unprofitable areas. You want cell phone coverage 200 miles from the nearest city along the Interstate, that is raising the cost of doing business for the provider, and those costs have to be passed down to the customers. If the profit margins are high enough, companies will eat the cost in many cases, but this is why AT&T and Verizon have nearly the same price when you compare the cost of service.

You can complain about losing T-mobile meaning there is less competition, but really, T-mobile is NOT competition if you consider the difference in overall coverage area. The only way that cell phone service costs can possibly go down would be if the government wants to subsidize and support putting up cell phone towers all over the country where the carriers only need to worry about the cost of maintaining the equipment and adding more fiber to connect their equipment.

Remember, the US Government PAID to make sure that every home in the USA had access to telephone service, no matter how remote it may be. The government still pays for those old lines, and some of that money has been re-purposed by Verizon for the cellular network(which I feel should be illegal). If cellular is going to go the same way, where every person is expected to have access to a cell phone, the government will have to step in to cover the costs, and that might bring down the cost of service from AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, and any other company.

But, unless that happens, more cell phone towers will mean better quality of service for AT&T, and isn't that the only real complaint, other than service cost that MOST people have about AT&T?

Hi,

I think you have missed the point of many of us, as well as the reason why I posted the article in the first place. I'm not a customer of AT&T or T-Mobile, (I'm with V).

The problem is that this merger will grossly cut down on competition thus leading to high rates. This is not some ethereal thought that I'm conjuring from my imagination.

Canada has had to live with the aftermath of the same thing. They had 2 large firms and 2 or three small firms, (please correct this if I'm wrong about the number of cell providers, I'm an American living in Florida), one of the larger firms gobbled up one of the smaller firms.

Prices for calls & data skyrocketed for everyone, not just customers of those two firms....in addition now at least one of the Cell Providers “Rogers” is trying to cram THREE YEAR DEALS ON SMARTPHONES down everyone’s throats...two year deals are bad enough but in 3 years technology from 3 years prior in the smartphone arena is the equal to sending smoke singnals.

IE. 2 years and 9 months ago, I got a new smartphone it was & is a Palm Centro...in that period of time, Palm dumped it's popular PalmOS for WebOS, dumped it's entire line of smartphones for the Pre line of phones, was bought out my another firm, (due mostly to a problem with the quality of the handsets as well as the OS was rushed out before it was ready), it released or will release at least 4 phone models this year as well as the TouchPad.

In three years from now, I expect we will see less firms in the smartphone manufacturing arena. RIM will surely be bought out as will Nokia....

Why should all of society have to pay b/c AT&T is too cheap to build out its system and completely use it's frequencies that is has sole control of...when it is cheaper and better for them to buy out the competion. T-Mobile is just as cheap...their parent company which is a huge multinational provicer was too cheap to take on the competion, thus leaving as you pointed out, "(an) area where T-mobile just has virtually no coverage".

I dumped AT&T because the had crappy customer service....I was also at one time with Bell South which eventually became Cingular and then they bought out AT&T, (they had even worse customer service than AT&T).

Cingular's service was so bad and their name so sullied that even though they were the dominate partner in the merger, they changed their name to AT&T, (even though AT&T had a very bad reputation it wasn't as bad as Cingular's).

Do you really think we will get better customer service, better prices for both cell phone calls & data plans and get a better selection of phones/smartphones once this merger is complete? Do you really think that we will have any one year deals on smartphones even if you are willing to pay more for the phone? For that matter do you really think that the standard 2 year contract won't be upped to 3 years?

Take care,

Jay

[LCGuy]

Targon;

No one is saying that the additional coverage wouldn't be a benefit to both companies, however, trust me, they will charge dearly for it, and with less competition cell phone wise (2 other national companies) and NO competition GSM technology wise (that's it, no other GSM based provider in the US), they will have a monopoly - NO competition for those who want/need GSM based service.

Also, T-Mobile owns and operates 3G at 1700 frequency - that's unique around the world, exccept for one or two countries... that's a gold mine for AT&T.

[LCGuy]

Why deregulate telephone and airline companies in the 70s & 80s, then let them merger their way back to a monopoly? Are the consumers fools?

Loah;

Good point.

I've posted that, as I see it, we should break up all of the current mobile ISP's into separate companies that have customer base sizes that never exceed 1/6th of the population of the US at any given time period.

That would force them all to be competitive, and to license towers to eachother nationally at fair prices to one another, and the consumer will benefit, as they should always do, in a society that boasts "free market" and fiar trade ideology.