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AT&T To Acquire T-Mobile From Deutsche Telekom
teh31337one writes "AT&T and Deutsche Telekom have entered into a definitive agreement for the sale of T-Mobile USA for $39 billion in cash and stocks. Press release here." Gripes one anonymous reader: "Americans will have even less choice now when it comes to cell phone carriers. Say good-bye to the one that had the best customer service and was most friendly towards Android and rooting."
This is bad.
The free market will save us!
Any minute now...
It's the abysmal telecommunications sector. Around here I've got 5 choices, 3 of them would require me to buy a new phone, and only T-Mobile and AT&T allow the use of random phones with a SIM. Sprint won't activate a phone that doesn't have it's logo silk screened on it, and none of the major providers competes for anything other than being somewhat less sucky than the others and depending upon inertia to carry them through.
It's been getting progressively worse over the years. Even with GSM, AT&T uses a different portion of the spectrum for 3G than T-Mobile does, meaning that there's going to be a lot of people without 3G or having to buy new phones prematurely if this goes through.
Surely AT&T could fix up their own network for less than the cost of T-Mobile.
This acquisition isn't about subscribers or network equipment. AT&T is spending $39B to purchase T-Mobile's frequency spectrum in the US so that they can ensure that they have enough spectrum to roll out LTE and continue to upgrade their 3G HSPA+ network. Any subscribers that opt to stay with AT&T post merger is just an added benefit to them.