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AT&T Issues Scathing Response To FCC Report
An anonymous reader writes "AT&T has issued a scathing letter in response to the FCC's decision to release a staff report on its findings surrounding AT&T's planned $39 billion acquisition of T-Mobile USA. 'We expected that the AT&T-T-Mobile transaction would receive careful, considered, and fair analysis,' Jim Cicconi, AT&T Senior Executive Vice President of External & Legislative Affairs, said. 'Unfortunately, the preliminary FCC Staff Analysis offers none of that.'"
We agree with AT&T on one point however: the public should read the Analysis and Findings on AT&T’s proposed takeover.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
That's kinda what they did when they went AT&T exclusive at the start.. there's a whole big argument to be made regarding what would've happened with iOS vs. Android had Verizon not been left out of the iPhone sales fest early on and decided to retaliate with pushing and marketing the Droid the way they did.
On the other hand, it's possible that Android would never have been able to make it to market without Apple first muscling their way into the game the way they did. One of the benefits they got by going exclusive was that they were allowed a lot more control over their hardware and what could be installed on it than any other phone manufacturer was. You could make an argument that the smartphone market wouldn't be as big as it was without Apple showing what was possible.
Hard to tell. It's all guesswork at this point.
'Sensible' is a curse word.
It's good the government did not approve this merger. Here's why:
First, behind all these statements will be legalese that I describe after each one of them.
AT&T should know that public commitments are not legally binding.
How many are these? You will not be surprised that there could be a handful of them in the USA. Even then, you could find that these so called call center employees are not directly employed. Many times, companies will outsource services to the extent that there are pay disparities for employees doing the same job.
Over what period of time may I ask? AT&T could later argue that they meant returning these jobs "over a period of two or three decades!" Imagine that.
What they do not tell you is that the offered position will be at a significantly lower pay, or that these positions will not be permanent, or that they will have conditions attached to them such that employees will fire themselves.
Who does AT&T think they are fooling?
I had been using smartphones for over four years, until just recently. I had an iPhone for two years, and before that I used a Pocket PC that could do everything an iPhone could do except it didn't have such a slick interface. All that time, I had a basic voice package and a decent data plan.
Recently (tough economic times and all) I decided to really have a look at what I was paying for and what I was getting. I found out that more of my "rollover minutes" simply decayed after non-use than I ever actually used. I never used more than 20% of my "evening and weekend" minutes. I never used more than 10% of my Internet bandwidth cap.
Basically, I was paying $85 or so per month and letting most of the value of it go to waste.
So, I switched to pre-paid TracFone. I bought a decent Motorola that has a touchscreen and a decent collection of features. I lost GPS navigation, but that's ok because I have a GPS in my car now. Other than that, I can still talk, text, browse, play games, and anything else I could do before.
The phone came with a "triple minutes for life" deal. Basically, that means that so long as I use that same phone, I buy my pre-paid minutes at $0.047. If I browse the Web, it charges me for the time in minutes, instead of metering my bandwidth. Text messages are about 1.5 cents apiece to send and receive.
And all of it goes over AT&T's network. I have the same service provider as before. Same signal quality. Same Internet bandwidth.
Another thing I did was invest $30 in a decent headset for my computer. When I'm at home, I now use Google Voice to make outgoing phone calls. I get great sound quality and don't pay a penny for it. These are my new "evening and weekend" minutes...
I paid $90 for the phone, and I charged it up with a little under 1300 minutes at a price of $60. That was 2.5 months ago. I still have 430 minutes remaining. That basically means I'm using my phone for a hair under $16.50 per month now. That's a savings of about $70 per month. The cheaper service has already paid for the phone. Anybody want to buy a used iPhone 3GS?
If you use the hell out of your smartphone, you might be getting your money's worth. But if you're a more "casual" smartphone user, then you're getting seriously ripped off.
Fun with Anagarams! LADS HOST, SHALT DOS. HAS DOLTS. AD SLOTHS, HATS SOLD. ASS HO, LTD.
You took the words from my mouth, the last few days the only impression I've been getting from AT&T is one of a crybaby.
My favorite part of TFA was Sprint's comment, they're basically using fancy words to point and laugh.
The FCC's directive is not to ensure the value of your stock. The FCC asked AT&T why the merger was good for consumers and AT&T wasn't able to provide a reasonable one.
As someone who recently came of voting age, its kind of jarring to see our government function like this. I'm used to seeing the public interest railroaded to benefit a corporate interest, a corporate interest railroaded to benefit a different corporate interest, but I've never seen the public interest held above a corporate interest like this. Hell, they didn't even decide anything and I'm excited to see this, I know they would be able to jam up the merger eventually, but right now they've just presenting findings.
Is this what democracy is supposed to look like? I fucking love it. Shit, even if government decisions continue to be against the public interest, I'd be psyched if they just had the balls to admit it with reports like this. That would be a huge step forward from the bullshit "someone is making money, therefore its good, fuck off" level of analysis I'm used to seeing.
Or just bribe the people at FCC. It worked for NBC/Comcast. At first there was resistance, then the FCC person in charge of it approves of it, retires, and 'MAGICALLY' starts working for NBC all of a sudden. You can't explain that.
God spoke to me
You could try reading it, then you would see they bring up some good points.
Of course, nothing showing that this merger is not a stupid idea for consumers, but they do make some decent points about why ATT wanted this merger, problem with spectrum, and running out of space.