As T-Mobile Deal Dies, AT&T CEO Keeps Lying

Should have sent more cupcakes to the FCC...

AT&T lost a lot of goodwill and capital in this town.

Completely tone-deaf campaigning by AT&T to get this merger done... not to mention the billions of dollars that went flying out the window.

What a screwup....

Trying to get this turkey through was just way too expensive for many big T stockholders tastes and really took their eye off the ball of their competitor's movements. Now they now find themselves behind both sprint (clearwire deal) and Verizon (cable frequency holdings purchase) in the wireless bandwidth game.

No way. THIS is news!

dont blame at&t as a whole for the lies, blame the stockholders.
greed, working at its best for you and me.

"AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson continues to pretend that the deal will lower prices, improve competition, and improve service..."

AT&T can do this on their own.... But they haven't.

What they've done pre-merger....

- Gotten rid of unlimited data plans for the iPhone
- Pulled the unlimited no-contract data plan for the iPad 3G about 40 days after launch
- Gotten rid of tiered texting plans... Now it's zero or unlimited for 20 bucks per month (with lots of minutes)
- Has built out its LTE network to only 15 cities compared to 190 LTE cities which Verizon managed to accomplish in a year...

Heck of a job AT&T...

Meanwhile, the Washington Post is running what's essentially an obituary for the deal. The piece notes how AT&T has spent more on campaign contributions than any company since 1990, and as a result hasn't been told "no" by a regulator since the original Ma Bell breakup.

It should be noted the warmed over dung calling itself "at&t" IS NOT the "Ma Bell" AT&T of years past but rather SBC Communications renamed "at&t". The former "Ma Bell" AT&T was a heavily regulated monopoly that did do some good; Bell Labs and Western Electric are two notable divisions and their contributions to electrical engineering and the physical sciences are well represented. The mere fact that SBC now calls itself "at&t" does not change the fact that it is a lousy corporate citizen and they are finally learning the lesson "payback is a bitch".

..... until they have added to the damage that they have already done to T-Mobile.

TMO has been bleeding customers, in part due to throngs not wanting to become customers of the Deathstar.

TMO becomes a better competitor the minute it gets AT&T's breakup-fee cash & spectrum (and maybe an AWS iPhone model), so AT&T will stall the inevitable announcement of a dead deal for as long as possible for those reasons.

Hopefully TMO will then sue AT&T for some anti-competitive behavior once the check clears the bank.

overall still its funny but i am happy it happen. about dam time

Hey don't blame stockholders. The exec's and board had some of us fooled, but it became very clear (mostly through the media) that the costs of the effort and massive lobbying checks being written were negating any real value of pursuing the purchase.

What does LTE have to do with anything ? I don't see Sprint or T-Mobile with it, and VZW is the largest wireless carrier.

Speaking of LTE.. is Verizons LTE still down ?

Did AT&T piss in your cereal at some point? You seem to be right there with each and every article that pops up.

LTE has to do with the fact that AT&T hasn't made itself competitive with its own resources and capital.

- Verizon was able to accomplish an LTE network buildout to 190 cities in about a Year, with construction going on nationwide.

- For comparison, the Empire State Building was built in 1 Year and 45 days, with construction all on one site.

The best that AT&T can do is LTE to 15 cities? Seriously? With the Billions they've got and the "cupcake" lobbying army?

The best thing that could happen right now is a T-Mobile iPhone...
Please bring it Apple...

I do. WAY too mnay times stockholder looking for a quick buck instead of long term gains (like the way it USED to be ) fuck things up. Quit being in such a hurry to make a trillion $$$ think BIG PICTURE and long term. Are you going to die tomorrow? Nope. And if you are you don't need the money you will be dead. Even if you're 50 you still got 16 years until retirement. What is the fucking hurry?

- Unlike with other devices they carry, has stated they WILL NEVER unlock an iPhone even after the customer contract is finished thus forcing you to pay their expensive international roaming charges.

Yes, the deal to swallow T-Mobile whole may in fact be dead, but there are other ways to accomplish the same thing. This is what AT&T might try to do:

1. Enter into a spectrum-sharing deal with T-Mobile. Essentially, both companies' customers could roam on either network, at least on GSM. 3G is a problem because of incompatible bands, but there's no problem with GSM roaming.

2. Start buying unused spectrum from T-Mobile. Start out in more rural areas so it's less likely anyone will notice and complain.

3. Start buying small T-Mobile markets, especially in areas with a regional competitor, so there won't be as much of a competitive shift by losing a player.

4. Work with DT to harmonize bands. That means T-Mobile's 1700 3G goes away and gets replaced by LTE. At the same time, T-Mobile will start selling phones that work on AT&T's 3G and LTE bands.

5. T-Mobile will raise its prices to at least match AT&T's prices. At the same time, those harmonized phones will s-l-o-w-l-y roll out, but they won't come out fast enough to allow everyone to get one. And the price hike might even come first, just for good measure.

6. Once enough markets have been sold off to AT&T, T-Mobile will be a shell of its former self. And, with its higher prices, fewer and fewer people will want to use it. It'll be a carrier on a downward slide.

7. AT&T will make another offer for a smaller and less viable T-Mobile. Naturally, DT will accept, and it will be pitched to regulators as a way to put the assets of a dying carrier to good use. As for the loss of competition, well, it's obvious that the market couldn't support the existing number of carriers, as evidenced by T-Mobile's troubles. And, with luck, by this time there may be a more friendly administration in office.

The deal might take a bit longer this way, but, in the meantime, T-Mobile's frequencies will have been reconfigured to match AT&T's, which had to be done anyway, and prices will have been raised to match AT&T's, so there will be fewer customers potentially grandfathered on cheaper plans. And, if AT&T and DT really wanted to get rid of those customers, DT could simply shut down T-Mobile right before the new buyout deal is announced. Customers would be allowed to leave without an ETF, which means no grandfathered customers, and it has the added benefit of making T-Mobile look like a dead carrier, which all but assures the deal of going through.

You read it here first, folks.

Good point. Exactly.

I am not sure it is dead either. Sharing agreements, partnership, TMO becoming a MVNO on AT&T system, etc are all possible outcomes. As long as DT wants to unload TMO, anything is still possible.

I'd personally love to see a T-Mobile 3G/4G iPhone.

If AT&T wasn't competitive... they'd be losing customers, not gaining them. It'd be better to say that AT&T is not consumer friendly. Can companies like AT&T deploy more LTE.. sure. Do they 'need' to - hell no. Does Verizon need to - hell yeah. VZW's (as well as Sprint) are at the end of the life cycle of CDMA 1x/EVDO.

T-Mobile may not but I have no problem downloading at over 30Mb/a on my 4g galaxy tab 10.1 and amaze 4g. it may not be lte but its good enough for me!

Too bad several things of what you mentioned has already been reported or talked about at some point and even over the past few weeks.

So no we didn't read it here first ... lmao

Yes , something could still happen but the odds are getting more slim by the day and every time AT&T opens it's mouth in a tantrum fashion.

I'm a T-Mobile USA customer, and I'm very excited about the 5 to 6 billion USD worth of spectrum, roaming and cash from AT&T to improve our most affordable 3.75G network.

The deal has been dead since long ago; I'm surprised people didn't believe it's not going to go through.

They'll build a new, far more powerful Death Star next time around... and yet, it will still have a single point of failure.

Would have been nice if at&t would have just spent all that money on their network to make it less crappy.

I mean c'mon! LTE? Really? at&t still has a terrible 3G network to deal with first! Their plan to charge us 200 dollars a pop for the privilege of using our broadband connection to take strain off of their crappy-ass network seems to be failing.

I'm an avid DSLR reader....

Being in DC and doing what I do has enabled me to see lobbying flacks for what they really are.

Believe me, AT&T has egg on its face in this town... bigtime.

The phony astroturf campaign is what really irks me personally.

Of course they do.
So what is it that you do?

Stakeholder engagement....

You don't have to live in DC to know what the flacks really are.

Ain't that the truth. Couldn't agree more.

Verizon seems to have a very different corporate culture than AT&T. AT&T has at times made changes to their network that have negatively impacted existing users. Moving GSM off cellular bands and onto PCS for instance. Some people went to bed with four bars and woke up with none because of this change. They did the same when they were in the process of transitioning away from the TDMA network. I can't recall Verizon ever doing anything like this.

Verizon also seems to make more of an effort to invest in their infrastructure. 190 cities with LTE? FiOS deployments? What has AT&T done?

I'm not a Verizon shrill by any means -- I dislike their arrogance a great deal. It's just that the choice between them and AT&T is not a particularly hard one to make. Both will bend you over but the difference is Verizon won't skip town when you get pregnant...

Anyway, AT&T may be competitive amongst the masses but for those in the know it's a different story. Hell, even non-technical folks in certain markets have wised up to AT&T's nonsense. You don't have to be a techie to understand dropped calls and a congested network (ever known an AT&T user in New York City?)...

BF69, Piss Off, not all stock holders are like that, the oes you speak of are the large investment banks and hedge funds that hold T stock in their portfollios that cause this garbage, while those of us that have it in our 401Ks are in for long term.