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Cingular Wins bid for AT&T Wireless
Newer Guy writes "Cingular has won the bidding war for AT&T Wireless with an offer of $15 a share, or about $40.5 billion." This means Vodafone is out, and the number of competitors for wireless devices in the US is down by one.
that I'm canceling my AT&T wireless phone as of today.
the number of competitors would still be reduced by one. Vodafone is a major player in Verizon Wireless.
Less carriers means less competition means higher prices.
In the end, it's the consumers who will lose out with this consolidation of mobile providers.
I have been pwned because my
Beings aspergers AND pulling chicks... I enjoy the challenge!
The mobile phone industry is one industry that could actually benefit from consolidation. Running redundant networks with redundant cell towers is very expensive. 3-4 major players should provide enough competition to keep prices down.
I've been a customer of AT&T Wireless for about five years. Up until about a year ago, I never had a complaint about them and thought that they were a pretty tight service.
Then I moved and they renewed my contract without telling me. I didn't know until the end of the year when I called to renew and get a deal and found out that I wasn't up for renewal for another five months.
Over the course of the past year, my bill has been incorrect on three different occasions, two of them, I just paid because I had absolutely no desire to deal with the customer service team. Long hold tiimes, RUUUUUUDE people and some of the worst double-talk about their policies.
I just thought it was interesting how they started to go down the tubes and now this. I'm not saying that one less competitor is a good thing, but AT&T wireless customers really don't have anything to lose here. It can't get much worse...
albeit at frequencies incompatible with most of the rest of the world.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
Can you hear me now...
(wait for it)
(wait for it)
NO CARRIER.
SHIT!
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
Beings aspergers AND pulling chicks... I enjoy the challenge!
horrid coverage reputation? odd, i've never heard of it. care to elaborate?
Which provider were you with again? The phone I was looking at had a built-in camera, but nothing as extravagant as a cocksucking device and an espresso machine. Wow. Just... Wow.
Why gripe about a reduction in the number of wireless providers, when the last mile of copper is still a legal monopoly?
Every wonder why wireless phone service is becoming cheaper than wired? Ever wonder why your wired service is a few decades behind in technology?
Ever wonder why you can get a broadband cell phone set up immediately, but you often have to wait a month for DSL installation?
Say what you want about the wireless market, it will soon offer better services at cheaper prices than wire. And the difference isn't technology, it's regulation.... it's the legislated monopoly that claims to protect consumers. But nowadays, poor folks who talk a lot are using wireless phones, because it's cheaper.
Is it inherently a bad thing to have one less competitor? Isn't competition supposed to only be the path towards customer satisfaction? In the world of wireless, where the end is good coverage, an excellent infrastructure, and flexible plans, as long as competition fosters these things it's good to have one more carrier in the fray. However, AT&T has arguably the worst network and worst coverage of any provider. Having them swallowed into a much larger network with much broader coverage is not inherently a bad thing.
This is not to debate the merits of Cingular's network or to compare their coverage or plans with Verizon, T-mobile, or Sprint's--this is simply to say that beleagured AT&T customers serve to gain from the acquisition.
I'm a friend of a friend of the working class.
... rallied after it was announced that they had lost the bid for purchase of that ATT segment to Cingular.
A lot of relieved Vodafone investors (or potential investors for that matter) then who it seems didn't have much confidence in the ATT buyout.
Now, next try for Vodaphone: Vivendi.
Creeping toward monopoly, or only a (smaller) handful of key players in the mobile phone market might not be so bad in terms of quality of service. For some markets consumers benefit from conglomeration of resources. Think about long distance service. There are 3 major players and a handful of tiny players. I don't feel particularly ripped off on my long distance service. If there were 45 different long distance companies, then they would all be charging each other fees to go from network to network, there would be incompatibility problems which would cause decreased quality and also slower adaptation of new technology.
:-)
Don't get me wrong, the reason it's like this is because the government doesn't step in and regulate the industry as much as it "should". If we were magically fully utilizing all of the state of the art fiber optic line that we had in the ground and it was all seamlessly available on the free market for any provider to rent at a standardized price, then having 100 bandwidth/long-distance companies would indeed be a good thing for consumers.
But like the wording of my example might suggest, I don't think it would be possible for the technology to stay state of the art AND fully regulated at the physical layer even if the government wanted to. Governments are (reasonably...) good at taking something economically tangible, like value-units of food or healthcare, and distributing it pretty much fairly (not that they always do this, but if they do then they are capable of succeeding).
But even if the US government regulated the network, and had a board of domain experts constantly auditing the state of the system, the fact of the matter is they would not have the motivation to maintain a state of the art network to support bandwidth and voice. Greedy corporations are good for that.
And 100 greedy corporations would never be able to interoperate and also provide state of the art and fairly priced services.
Lawrence Lessig, are you reading this? Set me straight!!
You Now what, customers are gonna pick up the bill. That's right. Here in Europe everybody got frenzy when the governments put teh 3G licenses on auction. Well all our operators forked out Billion$. How are they paying for it? Well we are! Altough there are ever more susbcribers to their service prices have not come down. Forget about the whole economies of scale and inversed moores law for telecommunication prices. We have kept a steady Price tag. Every time we text we have to pay roughly 20 Us cents for a 160 caracter SMS! Beter yet whenever we travel abroad (to another EU country) we end up paying calls for about 1.2$ per minute. That's for inbound calls too. I'm sick of it and have decided to ease off on my phone. Email is massively back in my live. Welcome to the club America
Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity
Let`s just get these out of the way now...
"I for one welcome our new Singular overlords!"
"Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Netwerk!"
and wait for it...
"All your network are belong belong to us!"
davejenkins.com |
I tried to buy a phone and service from AT&T Wireless last November, only to find that their store literally was incapable of selling me one because "their computers were down." This was the case for days. I've seen postings online by their employees detailing what a mess their internal systems are. Hopefully Cingular knows what they are getting into in terms of merging their operations.
Also it's important to remember here that AT&T Wireless hasn't been a part of AT&T proper since 2001. They are a separate company with rights to the name and logo.
I have heard various "learned" sources state that there is little point in having more than 3 serious competitors in any market.
4 7255,00 .asp
Fishing around on the web for a synopsis of this theory, I came across this:
"So why three? The authors contend that markets are inherently efficient, and three competitors is the best number to promote and sustain that efficiency. Having two companies will lead either to monopoly pricing or to the two destroying each other, and more than three leads to overcapacity and perpetual price wars.
Thus, when faced with three established competitors in a field, you want to think long and hard about whether you're willing to spend the money to knock one of them off. Consider instead becoming a product specialist ("We make the world's best X") or a niche player ("We only serve the Y market"). Trying to force your way in either by taking on a market leader directly or by expanding outside of your niche just doesn't seem to be a wise use of resources, according to the research."
The source of this article can be found here:
http://www.cioinsight.com/article2/0,3959,
I switched from Cingular to Verizon some months back, and pay MORE for the "same service" under Verizon. Except I'm getting tons more service, the dead spots are almost non existant, and when they are, it's usually only for the span of 100 yards or so, not miles like Cingular.
Also, Cingular screwed up my billing on almost a monthly basis. They kept claiming that I was delinquent on my payments, only my payments go out automatically 5 days in advance (I never incurred extra charges, so it was a flat fee every month). I know they got the payments on time, but they'd feed me the "You have to allow us 5 business days to process your payment" BS. My bill is paid the day you receive the check, not the day you get around to telling your computer system that it's paid. Heck, they cash the checks before they enter them in to their system, all of my checks were cashed 1-2 days before the due date, but they still told me I was delinquent.
I'd call every month, and every month, they'd take off the late fees when I complained about it, but do you know how old this gets? Every single month calling them to get them to correct their errors. I switched off of them and evaluated AT&T and Verizon as potential new service providers, and decided on Verizon only because of the glowing testimony given by a coworker, who also lent me his phone for a day so I could check to see if those dead spots (eg, my house and my work) in Cingular's network were there for Verizon, when they were non existant under Verizon.
If I had switched instead to AT&T, I'd be canceling my service right away even if it meant I had to suck down the early termination fee.
Slay a dragon... over lunch!
Is SBC just determined to piece together what the courts broke up twenty years ago?
I go from the company with the absolute worst customer service in the world to the company with the absolute second worst customer service in the world, who just inherited the title of "worst" as the worst is now gone....
Not to, uh, sound selfish or anything, but who were you thinking of going with next?
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
Its a good thing I only opted for a one-year contract with AT&T Wireless when I switched from Cingular back in November. There is no way I'll resubscribe this year with the merged entity unless the FCC forces SBC to spin off Cingular (doubtful). I do not want to be forced into signing up for a residential landline with SBC just as they do with DSL. My rule of thumb is I do not do any business with SBC and I don't intend to break this now. I don't reward shoddy service providers like SBC.
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
I turned down a job with those ATTWS clowns back in Feb. It just didn't feel right.
The worst part? As I interviewed numerous architects and asked the question "What do you worry about most?" EVERYONE said "more layoffs".
Those were mainly sr. contributors with 7+ years experience in the company. Normally, I'd expect concerns about not meeting schedule, etc.
Also amusing was that nobody knew (including the managers) who 'owned' system performance. These clowns had tens of millions of HP servers running customer service and they didn't even have a performance manager, strategy, etc.
And then they wondered why the system collapsed during the number portability fiasco.
Good luck to everyone at ATTWS.
Oh yeah.. They were also cheap bastards. The funny thing.. During the week of the interview I was staying in a $2M condo at Whistler that was owned by a VP at ATTWS.. I can assure you that those guys are doing Just Fine no matter how much they pressure their 'lackies'.
If you have AT&T Wireless, get out NOW. Cingular has the most awful, broken billing system ever. They will shut down your account if your bill is one day late and charge you an activation fee to turn it back on. Their highest national plan still does not give you anywhere near unlimited national service. Not to mention it takes them about a day to get a phone activated right. Unfortunately, AT&T Wireless, one of the better (but still not good compared to what Asia has) wireless providers will most likely cease to exist as we know it. This can be a really good thing for Cingular, as they were the most logical buyer, but they will likely botch this. I have AT&T Wireless; as soon as I saw they were up for sale I started looking for another provider and am now in the switch process. Good luck.
I am feeling fat and sassy
" I bet we see Vodaphone or Verizon grab T-Mobile now. "
Wrong technologies. Verizon Wireless would more likely grab Sprint - which uses the same carrier technology. Its also one of the reasons Sprint's stock raised on the news of the AT&T merger - rampant speculation that they would be "plan B".
GPL'd web-based tradewars themed space game
AT&T's TDMA network had great nationwide coverage, and they were the first major provider to offer a nationwide no-roaming plan. My understanding is that their GSM network isn't nearly as good yet.
Vodafone (which is a major provider in Europe, where everyone is GSM) is also a major shareholder in Verizon, which uses CDMA.
Here's the list of the major providers and their network types:
AT&T TDMA-->GSM Cingular TDMA-->GSM Verizon CDMA Sprint CDMA T-Mobile GSM Nextel iDEN Alltel CDMA US Cellular CDMA