The iPhone's Role In Crippling T-Mobile

GMGruman writes "The feds may be blocking AT&T's buyout of T-Mobile, but T-Mobile is in poor shape to continue as is. Parent company Deutsche Telekom's decision not to invest in U.S. spectrum a decade ago constrained T-Mobile's ability to grow, especially through 4G networks now finally emerging. But from a customer point of view, it was the iPhone that has threatened the company the most. Or, more precisely, its lack of the iPhone."

Comments

"to invest in U.S. spectrum"

[Hazel Bergeron]

Even the most arch-capitalist of pre-welfare-state Western thinkers a century ago would have laughed at the idea that you could sell radio frequencies to private groups. "I get exclusive right to send waves of THIS length."

They'd also laugh at the idea of intellectual property as opposed to temporary copy right.

What exactly is our current regime, anyway?

Re:"to invest in U.S. spectrum"

[Hazel Bergeron]

There's a mile of difference between regulating usage for the benefit of a particular service and selling to private bidders according to who pays the most.

Re:Either way, its the end of T-Mobile

[ScrewMaster]

T-Mobile does not have terrible cellular. That is a myth that anyone on T-Mobile can verify.

I agree ... I've been on them for about three years now, and where I live I've had no problems whatsoever. I've had AT&T, U.S. Cellular and Sprint, and I've had the best coverage on T-Mobile. Period. And actually manage to pull in about 10 mbits/sec on my data channel, so I'm a happy camper. And the GP's talk of "incompetence"? Where did he get that from? I experienced an incredible degree of incompetence dealing with AT&T and Sprint: billing error after billing error to the point that I switched to T-Mobile. If nothing else, the Germans know how to run an accounting system.

On top of that, for the $25 I'm spending each month on 3G/4G, I get unlimited data and voice roaming. So I can go anywhere in the U.S. and not worry about coverage. Drove cross-country last year through a dozen states, and had data, voice, tethering and Google Nav all the way, and I lost track of how many different networks I went through.

AT&T and Verizon can take their pretty little floating colored maps and stick them where the Sun don't shine. This merger is certainly not in my best interests, I'll tell you that. All this talk about "savings" and "scaleability" and "service" is a smoke screen. AT&T doesn't do anything like this to benefit the consumer. They do it to benefit AT&T, and that letter that got accidentally posted to the FCC's Web site last month made that pretty damn clear. AT&T can go to hell in a handbasket so far as I'm concerned.