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Leaked AT&T Letter Damages Case For T-Mobile Merger
An anonymous reader writes "Yesterday a partially-redacted document briefly appeared on the FCC website, accidentally posted by a law firm working for AT&T on the $39 billion T-Mobile deal (somewhere there's a paralegal looking for work today). While AT&T engaged in damage control, telling reporters that the document contained no new information, a review of the document shows that's simply not true. Data in the letter undermines AT&T's primary justification for the massive deal, while highlighting how AT&T is willing to pay a huge premium simply to reduce competition and keep T-Mobile out of Sprint's hands."
No, really there isn't. Corporate takeovers to stifle the competition is normal practice ( hell its the primary reason they exist ), so nothing 'new' was really released here.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
They'll just get a slap on the wrist for lying. Worst case, the CEO will "resign" (aka: early retirement w/benefits) for good PR and the whole thing forgotten in a month.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
So can anyone name a merger that the government has successfully stopped?
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
'Leaking' a statement of that magnitude was 100% intentional by someone who didn't want it 'going down without a hitch'. You know it's true.
But clearly you have something better to say...
I was a recent visitor to the USA and was astonished at the 3rd world nature of its cell system. I had never imagined it was so bad, before visiting. Why USAians don't demand better regulation is a mystery to me. They seem intent on defending the very thing that makes their lives miserable compared with most developed nations.
This was also the impression I had of its subway system. I've ridden subways in Moscow, Tokyo, London, and other major cities. All were clean, safe, and the sort of system a developed nation can be proud of. The subways in the US smelled of urine (!!), were infested by RATS (!!), covered with trash, and had the feel of a thing you'd only want to use if you do not value your personal safety. This was my first exposure, and really changed the view I used to have of the USA as an advanced nation. It really is on par with some very poor and undeveloped countries in terms of civic infrastructure.
No, say it isn't so! My reality is crashing down on me. I suddenly feel so disillusioned and jaded. I'm either going to go write emo poetry, or kill myself.
No, wait, that would just be a huge overreaction. Suicide it is, then.
The enemies of Democracy are
It's no new information because we knew it already.
Law of Capitalism #1: Customer value directly conflicts with corporate income. If more value goes to the consumer, less value will go to the corporation.
Mergers are never for the benefit of the consumer.
AT&T is willing to pay a huge premium simply to reduce competition and keep T-Mobile out of Sprint's hands
Law of Capitalism #2: Monopolies win.
But the problem isn't with our understanding of these laws. It's with the FCC not doing it's job, and everyone involved being paid off.
...in the paralegal getting an "involuntary career path adjustment". But I doubt much will come of this. The only way anything significant will happen is if someone in congress latches on and runs with it. But that will only happen if they're from the district of a competitor and can count on their "support" in the upcoming election.
Sprint had (has?) a substantial problem when they bought Nextel, since it meant that they had to maintain two incompatible networks: CDMA and IDEN. Now they're going to buy a GSM carrier too? Seems silly.
Reference is made to it, but where is it? I'd like to see it... anything that can prevent the T-Mobile buyout would be welcome news for me. I am a T-Mobile customer because they are the best for service and AT&T and Verizon are both evil as hell. Sprint burned their bridge with me as a previously long-term customer when they created a atmosphere where you had to threaten to leave their service in order to get what I needed. And before long, they started disconnecting "troublesome customers" to reduce their support call burden... I did not wait for them to disconnect me -- I just left for T-Mobile and never looked back.
As a happy T-Mobile customer let me just say, woohoo!!!!!
Even if T-Mobile ends up not being able to survive on their own, i'd be happier getting subsumed into Sprint or Verizon. They certainly couldn't be any worse than AT&T. Not to mention that aside from all the other issues i have with AT&T, as someone who is also an Android owner i'm very happy with what T-Mobile has been doing with the platform. AT&T seems to be the company least likely to carry on in that spirit after acquiring T-Mobile.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
The sad thing? Almost every person who stood up disclosed that they had received grants, money or deals from AT&T. Two hours later, I walked of the forum disgusted. I've been an ATT customer before, and I don't want to be again, and people must agree with me, because 50k people jumped ship from T-Mobile last quarter.
I'm bummed because T-Mobile has historically been a great company to work with. Any company that rings you up to make you aware of and retroactively pay for an overcharge is okay in my book. For some reason, I couldn't see ATT doing that kind of thing. Oh well, at least I'll be able to jump ship to Sprint when ATT officially acquires T-Mobile. I don't trust the FCC or the FTC to lift a finger to stop this merger.
It's funny, I read some where AT&T had announced that they predicted that they would have to divest $8 billion in various stuff to make the deal go through. The funny part is that I read it as "we need $8 billion to buy off the politicians for the deal to go through".
Agree. Got on TMo to get good service with phones that take a SIM card. (I still don't get phones with no SIM card --what do you people do when you travel? Buy and learn to reconfigure a new phone just because you're in Japan/France/Ecuador for 2 weeks? Keep your non-functioning phone and disappear from civilization?) TMo had no problem with me bringing my unsupported unlocked Treo onto the TMo network, and now I similarly have a N900 which does what I want, as opposed to what the phone's corporate master wants (thank goodness, since Nokia clearly has no idea what N900 owners want).
Here's hoping the deal doesn't go through, or at least that AT&T chokes and crumbles into little customer-oriented pieces.
And, the rest of the phone companies, can you sort of take a look around and realize that global compatibility and SIM card use is a good thing? Thanks.
404555974007725459910684486621289147856453481154 in hex is "You sank my Battleship?"
[GPG key in journal]
Just sayin'.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
gets the most business. He who gets the most business makes good profit.
He who supplies poor value to the customer ends up not having customers.
That is usually unless some external force, such as a government, interferes. The AT&T monopoly was created by the government. Even when monopolies do develop naturally, they don't last. Standard Oil was already starting to crumble before the forced breakup (and it had done some good for the consumer, vastly lowering the cost of oil products through various efficiencies).
Capitalism is not a zero-sum game. One person getting a bigger piece of the pie does not necessarily mean every one else gets a smaller piece. The pie can grow.
When they're for good reasons.
Apple bought a couple chip design firms, seriously helped Apple compete against the likes of Samsung in the mobile space.
Disney bought Pixar to revive its dying animation business and basically salvage a profitable relationship, gaining talented Pixar execs who could all-around revive Disney's creative side (I still think Pixar halfway bought Disney).
But this one was obvious. There is no logical reason for this purchase other than shrinking the choice of the consumer.
Well, subways pretty much are only in large metropolitan cities, and have been run by liberals for the past 50 years, which explains why they are degraded. Money stolen from "the rich" and wasted lining the pockets of corrupt officials. Explains why you see the FLOOD of people with MONEY, are leaving the cities like NYC, and heading to Florida & Texas, where taxes are LOW.
This is probably one of the most ignorant posts I've seen on Slashdot. And that's saying a lot. So much fail compressed into so few words.
Economists had found this hundred years ago: the ultimate goal of capitalism is monopoly. Without intervention, that is the destine.
Sure, regulation helped us get here. But it was poor regulation that was either ignorantly or maliciously written. I don't suppose you are advocating no regulation at all, however it appears as though many here assume that is what you mean. Limited regulation is a great thing for the free market if it is well written and designed to benefit the public instead of a few people in the industry.
Hey, if AT&T wants to spend all that money on buying an old 3G GSM network, I hope they do. Just like I hoped Microsoft would buy Yahoo. Many band LTE is the universal future standard. There will just be many small, local cell phone companies that can spring up with brand new LTE towers.
All those years ago it seems they went to great effort to break up AT&T. But now it's just clumped back together, a lot of the Baby Bells seem to just be part of AT&T again.
This takeover ought to be stopped not just because of the problems with competition it will bring now, but the work it'll bring later when AT&T has to be broken up a second time.
Perhaps there ought to be regulations that when a company reaches a certain size, it can't take over other companies (in other words, any new growth has to be by growing its existing business rather than taking over others) in case it becomes "too big to fail" and needs the taxpayer to bale it out, like what has happened with GM and Chrysler.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
Same with Teletext in Europe. I was impressed at the functionality of those Vic20 style graphics. Rudimentary WWW functionality all the way back in 1974... pages of information on vacation deals, traffic, weather etc. We didn't see anything like it in widespread use in N.America (and instead, for example had all the car ad small print uselessly flash by at the end of each advertisement ). We had to wait for the internet.
For a specific example check out Ceefax on wikipedia.
Standard oil had massive inertia, pretty much owned the market for oil products. And this wasn't just in the consumer space -- all of it.
Word Perfect once had lock-in. I think only lawyers use Word Perfect anymore.