Comments on news posted 2011-08-18 12:03:57: Last week a law firm working on AT&T's planned $39 billion acquisition of T-Mobile accidentally shot the company's primary merger benefit talking point in the foot, after publicly posting a largely-unredacted document to the FCC website. ..
My post says it all.Caught now in more than one lie.First they lied and got caught with a document red handed and now they lie again telling us the document was blah blah blah. I do not like any of these big telcos but I think I have a bigger hate for ATT.
"It's fairly astounding, even in the modern age of public relations, that there is absolutely nothing in that statement that's true."
Is it really astounding? The corruption and deception by the tcom biggees is expected nowadays. And unfortunately, it will have no impact on the merger.
Government is bought and sold by these guys. As long as there's donation money to be had, any claims or actions contrary to blessing the deal is a sham and only for show.
The document was redacted for our viewing only. That means the government has been able to view this document all along in its full form.
This just screws up the public PR campaign that AT&T is attempting. "Hey Mr. Senator, get this approved for us and we will ensure that our PAC slides a little brown envelope under your door next election cycle."
So this little "miss step" will force the government to do more public grandstanding to look like this was a shock to them.
Judge Greene is rolling over in his grave with this nonsense.
Ars actually had a recent article on how results of a new poll on telecom experts puts AT&T's chances of approval at 50%, down 5% from the last poll (»arstechnica.com/tech-pol ··· eril.ars). I wish more news sites had reported on this gaffe on AT&T's part. If AT&T can just brush it away... sigh.
Karl has done a very good job explaining that ATT is not buying T-Mobile for the subscribers (although that's certainly nice to have), ATT is buying T-Mobile to ensure that there is a duopoly with them and Verizon for the next decade.
It doesn't matter. This merger will go through. Know why? Because NOT ONE mainstream media outlet has picked this BIG story up! Why is that? We all know the answer, don't we: GREED AND CORRUPTION!
Congress wants the $$ that AT&T will bribe them FOR it to go through.
Yesterday I read that the Joplin, MO schools are re-opening, and that the United Arab Emirates has donated every middle and high school student there a laptop. What did our govt. do? Eric Cantor came out and said NO MONEY FOR JOPLIN unless we cut an equal amount from the federal budget. He cares more about his rich buddies then the school kids and others in that devastated community.
Fact is, the uber rich only pay 15% of their income in taxes, while the rest of us pay 35-40%! But that's just fine with the republiturds in Congress.
It's all about corruption today in the Corporate States of AmeriKa!
I agree and as a T-Mobile customer is the reason I do not want to do business with AT&T. I realize companies are in the business to make money (lots of it if they can) but I resent being lied to. I would have more respect for them if they just came out and said "We are buying T-Mobile to eliminate the competition and raise prices. It is all legal and called Capitalism.". Instead they feed us BS and that I cannot stomach.
Yesterday I read that the Joplin, MO schools are re-opening, and that the United Arab Emirates has donated every middle and high school student there a laptop. What did our govt. do? Eric Cantor came out and said NO MONEY FOR JOPLIN unless we cut an equal amount from the federal budget. He cares more about his rich buddies then the school kids and others in that devastated community.
FEMA has already paid out $32m in aid. The SBA has done $38m in loans. This is in addition to private insurance. Nearly 700 federal employees are in the area performing various tasks. The tab of a variety of tasks is being performed by the federal government is expected to be in excess of $262m. Maybe you can read some of the other things that our government did.
Maybe it's me, but getting an entire town literally back on the map seems slightly more important than making sure 2200 laptops are there for the first day of school. I'm sure if they really needed them, they can probably find some old text books in neighboring school districts, counties, or states that could at least get them started.
Fact is, the uber rich only pay 15% of their income in taxes, while the rest of us pay 35-40%! But that's just fine with the republiturds in Congress.
Your assertion is not supported with reality. There are always going to be statistical outliers to one extreme or the other, but when looking at the population as a whole, it's not the case.
Fact is, the uber rich only pay 15% of their income in taxes, while the rest of us pay 35-40%! But that's just fine with the republiturds in Congress.
In the top 10 list of Richest Congressman 7 are Democrats, Harman at 435 million, Kerry at 249 million, Polis at 285 million, Warner at 283 million, Kohl at 231 million, Rockefeller at 136 million at Feinstein at 108 million. So maybe you should talk to your Democrap leadership before going after republiturds.. ya know, keep your own house clean.
Did you even bother to read the link I posted? I'm well aware of that article. And Buffet's 17.4% is below the "super-rich" average. My link even points to this statistical outlier. Buffet makes reference that he is the lowest in his office, and others range from 33-41%. I'm going to bet that there is more than one person in his office that is regarded as being "rich" and they apparently are paying 33% or more.
83% of the country's households earn less than $100k. Presuming married filing jointly, that's max 17.25% effective tax rate. Filing single, it's 21.68%. And that's before any additional deductions, credits, exemptions, etc. That's just the standard 10-15-25-28 tax brackets. So when qworster said:
quote:the uber rich only pay 15% of their income in taxes, while the rest of us pay 35-40%!
apparently he clearly wasn't referring to 83% of the country when he mentions "the rest of us".
There are about 75M att wireless customers currently. If att spent the $39B on these existing customers, instead of buying tmobile, it turns out to be about $520 per customer. So on a typical 2 year single line contract, $520 is about 25% of the contract. Heck if att is going to offer a 25% discount to all existing or new customers, i think they will put sprint under, effectively doing what they want to do with this merger.
Because they're an inferior company! They've been bleeding customers for years. You get what you pay for, people. Government intervention might give you a lower price tag, but it's going to hold us back overall.
We should have known from the beginning that AT&T's 97 percent claim for LTE was a fig leaf for something more lucrative. So what? Instead of spending your time nitpicking and whining about well-crafted PR arguments, get the government to mandate 100% coverage! We could charge a Universal Service Fee (USF) to make sure it happens. We do that for landlines, why not wireless?
So much fuss about nothing. Basically, the weaker companies are getting swallowed up by the larger ones. Let the free market work and let the survival of the fittest happen. T-Mobile is selling to AT&T because it has been cut off by its German corporate parent. It's not able to make a profit on its own. That's why even if the merger is canceled AT&T will still have to pay T-Mobile money, and they will have a roaming agreement that lets their customers use each others' networks.
Airlines do the same thing when the government prevents them from merging. They keep the brand name in name only to keep regulators and the public happy. But in reality, antitrust concerns aren't really being satisfied. At the end of the day, the big money wins. And now United and Continental are one company, Delta and Northwest, Southwest and AirTran
There is no duopoly. You people act like Sprint doesn't even exist. Not only is Sprint in a very good position they have incentive to compete on price. As long as Sprint remains in the game there is no duopoly. Sprint will be at a disadvantage for a period until they roll LTE out, but with Lightsquared paying for the upgrade they are very well positioned to seriously degrade pricing and steal customers. Many of you might not even realize that Boost and some of the cheaper prepaid cellular providers are using Sprints network.
Sprint is a very good network these days, after a decade of mismanagement and the botched nextel merger they've finally brought customer service in line and fixed many of their problems. With unlimited data and the cheapest plans in the country they are very well positioned to compete (they also roam on verizon).
I had so many problems with ATT, that's why I went with T-Mobile and was happy with it (till they refused to offer a phone I needed) and then I tried Verizon. However, after my contract expires, I am considering to go back to TMO, but something is telling me that it won't happen....
Though technically you are correct it is not a full duopoly, if they merge the 2 companies will combine for around 80% market share and Sprint will simply be the bigger player sharing the remaining 20%. So for all practical purposes it will be a duopoly system and those that control 80+% of the market will get to dictate a lot of the market.
Sorry but no government (not ours, theirs, or anyone elses) should be doing any charity work. That should be left to the compassionate people of the world.
I had so many problems with ATT, that's why I went with T-Mobile and was happy with it (till they refused to offer a phone I needed) and then I tried Verizon. However, after my contract expires, I am considering to go back to TMO, but something is telling me that it won't happen....
If you dont' travel much outside of the NY Tri-State area, sprint (mvno Boost Mobile) & metro pcs will also have decent coverage... I even recommend a month-to-month prepaid option since you can well-afford a post-paid account...(assumption).