The AT&T T-Mobile Deal Is Officially Dead > Extremely unfortunate

Extremely unfortunate

reply to BiggA
lol

i'll take my bill not going up $500 over two years with AT&T

reply to renegade 1
yeah, BiggA is pretty much working on the 'most obvious troll ever' award. There's so much wrong with his posts, it's to the point of just being downright laughable.

reply to renegade 1

reply to tiger72
I'm not a troll, I'm a real AT&T customer, and real AT&T customers were irreparably harmed by the government's interference with the AT&T- T-Mobile merger.

How are you harmed? According to you, you already get broadband speeds even in lead-lined rooms in the middle of the desert and its so cheap you pay the bill with change from the sofa! BWAHAHAHAHAHA!
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Teabaggers: Destroying America is Priority #1

As long as AT&T doesn't cannibalize spectrum for LTE, that will still be true. However, we would have benefited hugely from T-Mobile sites and spectrum to run extra HSPA+ channels. Those two things combined would have massively increased the capacity and efficiency of the combined network.

There is absolutely no evidence to support your claims, nor those that AT&T has made. Stop trolling, please.
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Teabaggers: Destroying America is Priority #1

reply to BiggA
ATT's customers were irreparably harmed by ATT's refusal to deploy spectrally efficient HSPA+ until after T-Mobile had deployed it successfully - even in the light of slow data and dropped calls for YEARS on ATT's 3g network.

ATT's customers will be irreprably harmed by ATT's refusal to deploy even more spectrally efficient 42mbps HSPA+ as T-Mobile has, or 84mbps HSPA+ as T-Mobile will next year.

ATT's insistence on not using the most spectrally efficient updates for its deployed technologies has, does, and will continue to harm their customers.

And as an ATT customer, you should demand that they use their (supposedly limited, ha!) spectrum in the most efficient way possible, rather than trying to buy out the competition. Why? Because those upgrades directly correlate to the quality and speed of your voice and data service.

Do you know how many cellular towers $39 billion can build? About 200,000. Yet ATT refuses to upgrade its own network for its customers because investment expenditures are just too much. Right.

Have fun paying more for slower speeds and dropped calls!
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"What makes us omniscient? Have we a record of omniscience? ...If we can't persuade nations with comparable values of the merit of our cause, we'd better reexamine our reasoning."
-United States Secretary of Defense (1961-1968) Robert S. McNamara

That's an ignorant and oversimplified load of crap. You can't just build your way out of a spectrum shortage, and you need more customers to help maintain more towers. AT&T has been upgrading to more efficient forms of HSPA+, and now they are running on HSPA+ 21, although many phones are still running on 7.2 or 14.4.

I have a piece that I wrote before the merger when someone asked why it was a good idea, and I may post it tomorrow, it's a good read, and spells out very clearly for those who can't seem to understand basic economic, business, and scientific principles, why the merger was a good idea until the government over-regulated it out.

blah blah blah blah blah. Your propaganda campaign died, NOBODY but you believed that crap. Suck it up.
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Teabaggers: Destroying America is Priority #1

I didn't believe anything, being an intelligent person, unlike you, I analyzed it for myself, and came to the logical conclusion that the merger was an excellent idea.

reply to BiggA

reply to BiggA

reply to tiger72
If you are interested in better service than AT&T in your area, or with 4G LTE, you'd be using Verizon, in which case you wouldn't care about the merger.

Now AT&T doesn't have the spectrum to build out 4G LTE. Verizon, on the other hand, now has a ton, and as a result, Verizon will effectively have no competition in the future with their nationwide 4G LTE network. If the AT&T- T-Mobile merger had been approved, then there were have been much better competition at Verizon's level.

reply to BiggA
Here is why I support the merger, as I explained to someone on Hofo who messaged me asking why my signature said that I supported it:

As for AT&T&T, Well, first of all, I have a little bit of bias. I am an AT&T customer, and I live in an area that, while technically served by 6 networks owned by 5 carriers (Cellco/Verizon, AT&T Mobility, Sprint PCS, Sprint iDen, T-Mobile USA, and MetroPCS), the only viable options are Verizon and AT&T, as the others lack decent coverage.

There are several reasons that I support the merger:

1. Currently there is an ironclad duopoly in the US market if you want wireless coverage that actually works. The two companies, as of a few years ago, were virtually perfect mirrors of one another. Monkey see, monkey do. There were a few exceptions, like Rollover, but they were few and far between. There was some market differentiation as data became more prevalent, both on the device side, with Verizon marketing the DROID against AT&T's iPhone, and Verizon's 3G EVDO network with wider coverage going against AT&T's faster UMTS/HSPA network. However, as much as these have created small points of differentiation, they are still largely monkey-see, monkey-do.

The AT&T&T merger will throw this duopoly off-balance, by making AT&T much larger, with more spectrum holdings, requiring Verizon to differentiate themselves, and hopefully creating a back-and-forth between the two companies, even if it is still somewhat limited and slow.

2. T-Mobile can't survive on it's own. It is either going to be bought by AT&T, or bought by another company (I think Wal-Mart is the next company that would buy T-Mobile), but either way it is going to get bought. Having it get bought by Wal-Mart would be neat and all, but ultimately, it wouldn't help network capacity and spectrum positions very much. If T-Mobile is bought now by AT&T, it's resources will be put to good use, but if it continues to bleed subscribers before being bought up by someone else, then it will be worth a lot less, and it's spectrum will be even more under-utilized than it is now.

3. T-Mobile has not been disruptive. While they have offered some interesting plans with no contract, or discounts for not offering a device subsidy, fundamentally, they haven't been disruptive. They have offered similar plans to AT&T at a 20% discount for far less coverage. They just don't have a compelling set of plans, and now they are at even more of a disadvantage without the iPhone. They do offer several pre-paid plans, but in order to get a decent amount of minutes and data, you have to get up to the $60 level, which is getting close to the cost of the bigger players anyways. Virgin Mobile, on the other hand, has offered several low-cost plans below $50 that have a lot of minutes and data, in addition to low up-front costs on the phones without huge mark-ups.

4. From a spectrum position, it just makes sense. AT&T screwed up in the spectrum auctions, and didn't get a nationwide chunk of anything. As a result, they don't have spectrum for LTE in many places in the eastern half of the country, where they are strongest in 2G and 3G services, including much of Ohio, West Virginia, Michigan, and patches throughout the south. T-Mobile would get them a full nationwide license of AWS, which, combined with SMH licenses offers a decent lath to LTE, even if it is not as good as Verizon's nationwide 10mhz C block chunk. If you look at the PCS, it makes even more sense, however. T-Mobile is currently using all of their PCS for 2G, which is not a good use for the spectrum. AT&T could take it and almost immediately convert it to HSPA+, with T-Mobile 2G customers going to AT&T's existing CLR or PCS GSM blocks that are becoming under-utilized anyways as very, very few customers are left on the legacy GSM network. The overall result is two networks instead of 3, with increased spectral efficiency and use, with T-Mobile's AWS block being partially reclaimed for LTE. There are also two reasons why the reclamation isn't as bad as people are making it out to be. The first is that the areas that AT&T actually needs the AWS, T-Mobile doesn't have Faux G running on it, so T-Mobile's existing Faux G network could run on for a while in a semi-abandoned state. Secondly, even if it were shut off, the customers would be give upgrades to AT&T devices, and if they chose not to, their phones would continue to work with EDGE in the PCS or CLR bands.

To be continued...

Continued...

4. From a site position, it just makes sense. We are currently running 5+ redundant networks in every major city, with different site locations (unlike in the suburbs where they are typically co-located on 5-8 deck towers), and slightly different coverage patterns. This type of redundancy requires each carrier to build out their own network, with their own backhaul, their own site surveys, etc, and it just makes no sense to have this many companies all trying to do the same thing. T-Mobile and AT&T's sites actually complement each other well. Because T-Mobile has historically been focused on urban markets and has used PCS spectrum, they have smaller and more closely spaced sites, which AT&T now needs to deal with the data boom. The combination of sites will add multiplicatively to the increase in spectral efficiency, making the overall network much more efficient. In certain areas, like in the bay area, T-Mobile has many, many more sites, making them hugely valuable to AT&T, given that the two big California markets are two of the last places where AT&T seems to have never-ending capacity problems (in my experience, Manhattan has rock-solid AT&T coverage outside of the subway or Macy's). Having a total 130 million customers with a fewer number of total sites will also free up more capital for construction of 4G LTE to compete even with Verizon's. Hopefully, it would also allow AT&T to finish building out their native network in rural areas that they currently roam, like northern New England, which is currently only well served by CDMA carriers.

5. Ultimately, there isn't enough capital in the country to support more than 3, if even that many, world-class 4G networks. There can't be 4, and in my opinion, there can't be 3. Thus, something has to happen to support 4G development. I think Sprint made a mistake going for WiMAX and now LTE, I think that they should focus on cheap prepaid, and reclaiming their SMR spectrum for CDMA and expanding their CDMA network, but we'll see what happens there.

6. It would create the ultimate network. The combination of T-Mobile's urban sites and spectrum, and AT&T's massive network would create effectively the ultimate network, with insane coverage and speed virtually everywhere, both at the Faux G and the 4G levels.

Again, not one bit of factual information in your entire verbose diatribe. Your misinformation didn't work for AT&T and doesn't work for you, now. Give it a rest and move on, maybe you can spend your energy and time to move out of your mom's basement eventually.
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Teabaggers: Destroying America is Priority #1

I don't live in my mom's basement, and I find it weird that you care. What exactly is not factual in there? You can't seem to name anything in particular and why.