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Sprint Files Suit Against AT&T T-Mobile Merger
zacharye writes with a news post in BGR. From the article: "Sprint ... announced that it has filed a lawsuit with a federal court in the U.S. District of Columbia in an effort to block AT&T's planned $39 billion acquisition of T-Mobile USA from Deutsche Telekom. The suit is related to the Department of Justice's lawsuit, which was filed on August 31st. 'Sprint opposes AT&T's proposed takeover of T-Mobile,' Sprint's vice president of litigation Suzan Haller said. 'With today's legal action, we are continuing that advocacy on behalf of consumers and competition, and expect to contribute our expertise and resources in proving that the proposed transaction is illegal.'"
No, the Justice Department has blocked the merger. AT&T could take that to court. Sprint is trying to get a court ruling first. By going to court before AT&T challenges the Justice Department in court, Sprint is attempting to get the case judged from a perspective that they believe is least likely to favor the merger. Sprint would prefer to see T-Mobile go out of business to seeing it gobbled up by AT&T (or Verizon).
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Better idea, mandate they sell each other transport at cost + X% profit.
Even better idea, don't let the same company own the network and provide the service.
The reasons I use T-Mobile:
They have reasonable prepaid plans. I can get unlimited text, voice, and data (throttled, but meh) at 50$ a mo. I can get unthrottled data at 70.
The android phones they offer can make use of my home wifi to make and recieve calls, even if the cellular coverage is spotty. I live in the boonies, and this is a major perk. It allows me to keep a big city number where the phone company would charge me long distance otherwise.
They actually give a shit about their customers, or at least appear to more than ATT does.
They are the only other US carrier that is GSM besides the bloated whore that is ATT. The last thing I want to see is ATT shove another cellular carrier up its chancre riddled snatch.
That said, ATT does NOT need T-Mo's spectrum. What they need to do is deploy the spectrum they have more sensibly. Rather than trying to shove 10 thousand subscribers on a single tower, then bitching when they all use the maximum allowed bandwidth-- they need to deploy 10 reduced power output towers that each service 1000 subscribers. They can go ahead and deploy the high power towers in rural areas to maintain their "We have the best coverage!" nonsense (because it is a lie, but meh), but for urban areas such persistent signal is deleterious due to reflections off buildings causing multipath issues, in addition to the obvious one of trying to satisfy the data demands placed on such a network.
So, rather than buying T-Mo, patching the problem in a manner that would require most ATT customers to buy new phones (that have the T-Mo/UK frequency antennas), and then using the GSM monopoly to play king of the mountain-- they need to use the money they would have spent on buying T-Mo, decommission the high power transponders on the urban area towers they have, replace them with lower power ones, and then build more total towers in the poorly serviced urban areas.
Oh, but that is that whole "Invest in infrastructure" thing that they dont want to do.
Fuck ATT. Fuck them with an iron spike on a jackhammer.
VP of litigation?
just... wow...
The Justice Department has not blocked the merger. They filed suit with the goal of blocking the merger. They can still lose, and the merger could still go through.
As a T-Mobile customer I would just like to say "Go fuck yourself."
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
The parent company, Deutsche Telekom, wants to sell them off. that seems like a significant danger of going out of business in a few years. Maybe sooner.
This detail is commonly overlooked.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Is it now illegal for a company to simply become too big?
Yes, as long as you understand that by "now" you mean since 1890, and specifically this kind of merger since 1914. Both those laws were created because of large firms engaged in various forms of price gouging and other efforts to artificially inflate prices on commonly used goods such as gasoline and steel.
I am officially gone from
So yes becoming too big is a problem since that leads to a communist system aka the opposite of capitalist,
Communism has a very distinct meaning and it has absolutely nothing to do with a company becoming too big.
A monopolistic company is basically the most extreme result of pure capitalism - it's just that over time we've discovered that pure capitalism kinda sucks - hence why we have laws against monopolies and other such things that capitalism tends to promote. On both extremes of the scale, both capitalism and communism are terrible economic models - you have to strike a balance (the optimal balance leaning more towards capitalism, but not all the way over).
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
Amen. If I wanted to switch from T-mobile to AT&T, I'd do it myself.
You can't reduce the # of nationwide GSM carriers in this country from 2 to 1 and try to pretend that somehow 'improves competition'.
"There are laws that enslave men, and laws that set them free. " - Sean Connery as King Arthur
Well let me propose to you that in fact this merger is an act of free market at work, if this merger goes through, then Sprint will have a formidable competitor, covering very large area, and this competitor will be able to bring prices down and hold off against inflation longer.
Get out of your ivory tower and get back in the real world.
There is NO WAY IN HELL that AT&T would lower their prices. The rest of your argument is invalidated by AT&T's greed. Expecting them to lower their prices and/or provide better service is like expecting a crackhead not to smoke crack when presented with more crack.
AT&T was broken up in the first place because your arguments do not apply when monopolies occur. If there is a monopoly the free market gets fucked.
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
ATT isn't buying T-Mobile in order to get a corner on the market. They are buying them to expand their network so they can have a hope of competing with Verizon.
You believed that line too? Too bad it's not true
Naivete and ignorance in one post. It has already been made public that expanding AT&T's network would cost about 1/4 (IIRC) of the cost of buying T-Mobile. This merger is all about taking out the competition, not improving AT&T's service to make it competitive.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
WHO GETS HURT?
If Sprint gets hurt because they see more competition, that is GOOD for the customers.
Do customers get hurt? How do customers get hurt? Nobody forces customers to get out of Sprint and if what AT&T and T-Mobile merger creates is more expensive and worse quality, then it's just better for Sprint.
I get hurt. My monthly cellphone bill will go up 5 fold. Admittedly, I have a sweetheart deal. I bought my smart phone outright and went on my parents' plan as an extra line. And unlike AT&T, T-Mobile does not force smart phone users to pay for a data plan if they own the phone outright. So I'm currently playing 5 bucks per month to my parents for phone service. That would go up to $25 per month under AT&T. I have better things to do with the extra $240 annually.
It's probably true that not that many people bought a Nexus One intending to pay as little as possible by forgoing the data plan. However, I'll bet that many T-Mobile customers are in my parents' position. Years ago, when their old contract ran out they opted to continue to use their older phones rather than start a new contract and get new, subsidized phones. That maneuver saves them around 20 bucks a month. With AT&T, they will not have the option of lower cost using existing phones, and with no other GSM providers around, they can't jump ship to another carrier without getting into another high cost contract.