Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
I'm pretty sure that AT&T's response is simply a toddler's temper tantrum with a midlife crisis and an expensive suit.
AT&T is not the United Nations. And even if they were, a firmly worded letter is getting them nowhere here.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
at this point, i wonder if AT&T has actually bought its own story, or if they have to practice keeping a straight face in the mirror every morning.
AT&T buying T-Mobile is a bad thing for consumers. The original cell phone plan was that there would be two providers, the local Ma Bell and a start-up. AT&T as SBC bought up the East Coast start-ups, Verizon bought the West Coast ones, and T-Mobile and Sprint came to the party as national big-city carriers on at the time open space adjustments.
AT&T of the 1980s was busted up as a monopoly. If AT&T is allowed to have T-Mobile, what's stopping Verizon and Sprint from joining up? Less competitors always leads to higher prices. Anybody remember what cellphones cost in the early 1990s?
For Sprint's short and sweet response, compared to ATT's long-winded vague casting of aspersions against the FCC staff.
Imagine if Apple bought T-Mobile, then refused to sell their phones through any other service provider?
Yes because locking yourself out of potential vast amounts of profit is what Apple prefers to do right?
http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/ATT-Top-Campaign-Contributor-Since-1990-110351
I guess giving quite a bit to Obama didn't help them out... makes sense to change sides.
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
Ohhhh, poor AT&T. Your regulator has some teeth and is preserving the bit of competition that still exists in wireless? We all feel so very very bad for you.
Since things didn't go their way, did anyone really expect a different response from AT&T? Can you imagine this?
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Hmmmm .... guess I shouldn't just assume the first link has all of the info.
http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/summary.php?id=D000000076
They should break that company up again, it seems the first time wasn't enough to curb their arrogance.
I'd love to see just one video of "Obama's screaming Bolsheviks." Can you provide one? Please include a historic screaming Bolshevik video for comparison. I bet the Russians are just darling in those little furry hats.
AT&T can use that money to upgrade and expand their broadband circuits. I'm in south Texas and AT&T openly admits that our lines are over subscribed. Every Tech sent to check low signal strength has confessed to over subscription. Well use that money to improve the service they are collecting for and not providing!!
ATT: "We didn't get our request rubber stamped like we expected it to be after we spent all that money to get the current crop of legislators and executives elected. We spend money on campaign contributions for a reason people! The FCC's review of our proposed acquisition of T-Mobile totally neglects to take these facts into account, and instead harps on things like abusive monopoly paractices and leaked memos from our executives. Obviously the FCC is not doing its job as a captured regulator, and we are voicing our displeasure publicly so as not to oust our purchased politicians. We fully expect them take action against this FCC ruling, and further insist that they take the DoJ to task on the pending antitrust case, if they want any more of our money; we understand that elections are just around the corner. Just a reminder guys. We don't get what we want, you don't get what you want."
Sprint: "We applaud the FCC for finally doing what it was really supposed to do, and appreciate its dedication to fact finding and for ensuring a balanced economic foundation for the telecom industry. We strong urge everyone to read the FCC's report."
AT&T hates business, since business means competition.
Gone!
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. You know why? Because there wasn't one. So the FCC decided that they could not support the merger.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
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?
Notice that every rebuttal made by AT&T is simply a statement by AT&T that they PROMISE not to do what is in their own best interest!
For example, if there is 1 fewer wireless company, there WILL be less total job positions needed. That is an obvious truth of economics : one fewer company means more consolidation, fewer independent cell towers needed, etc. Yet AT&T PROMISES to hire more Americans as CSRs, despite the fact that it would be cheaper for them to keep outsourcing.
AT&T will find it easier to raise prices with the merger because with 1 fewer competitor, the Nash Equilibrium inches closer to monopoly prices. AT&T PROMISES to do otherwise.
AT&T has no competitor to fight for rural broadband market share, yet they PROMISE to build the wires anyway.
And so on and so forth. Every rebuttal basically says "well, maybe it doesn't make market sense, but we have plans to do X if we get our way".
Think about who made this report : some lawyers and marketing folks in AT&T's executive branch. Those people are not going to be unbiased.
It'll be back up soon enough.
Besides, you could have sold a couple of months ago when it became pretty clear what the result was going to be. And this decision is likely to save you more money, if you carry your own cellphone. (As oligopolies aren't known for keeping prices low.)
'Sensible' is a curse word.
Did AT&T really think they could do this anti-competitive $39 billion dollar move? When the provider with the most expensive plans buys out the provider with the cheapest plans it can't be anything but anti-competitive.
Bribes don't work anymore if they don't believe you'll stop. Both sides get lots of corporate money from all sides. The corporations will fund both parties, hoping for favor. Until the parties punish those who fund the opposition, forcing single-party donations (which they'll never do), the practice will continue. The only point in question is do they fund who they want to win more, or the one they hope won't win in an attempt to curry favor?
Learn to love Alaska
SEVP? Jesus christ why not either just call him a "president" or something. The tech industries titles today are extremely out of hand. VP, SVP, EVP, SEVP, President, Cxx...
They give money to both parties, but I do see it being more likely under GOP rule. The only thing they like more than deregulation is privatisation.
Maybe they can use other Room 641A-esque things as leverage.
Sent from my PDP-11
This is awesome. A few posts ago I got to read about how Obama is pro-AT&T and pro big business because they gave him so much money during the '08 campaign.
Could you dipshits make up your minds and at least keep your rhetoric consistent?
--Jeremy
Jesus was a liberal
The difference between a politician and an honest politician is that an honest politician stays bought.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
The FCC's mission is to "make available so far as possible, to all the people of the United States, without discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, or sex, rapid, efficient, Nation-wide, and world-wide wire and radio communication services with adequate facilities at reasonable charges.".
You may notice that it is not their mission to ensure full employment.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
What country do you live in? Here in America, regulation of the telcos by the government pretty much ended in 1996. Now we have the "magic of the free market" as promised by the politicians - NOT. We have an "oligopoly", which is a few bricks shy of a cartel.
Perhaps they'd get some sympathy if they hadn't burned all their bridges with anyone who might listen. Even their own customers hate them.
Maybe they should spend that $39 billion on upgrading their infrastructure instead of eliminating competition.
One interesting thing to look at is the percentage of an individual politician's money that comes from small donors. Contrary to what some would expect, it doesn't split by party lines (nor by candidate sanity). Instead it gives you a good, non-partisan view of just how beholden a politician is to their corporate donors. Because while the corporations may always give lots of money to both sides, if (for example) Generic Democrat #1 pisses them off, they'll just stop giving to him, and give to Generic Democrat #2 instead. Assuming Generic Democrat #1 wants to keep his job, he either needs to play nice with the big donors, or bring in lots of small ones.
Obama, Ron Paul, Gingrich, and Bachman (I told you sanity didn't matter) all get around 50% of their money from small donors. Rick Perry and Mitt Romney get 90+% of their money from major corporations and billionaires. That should tell you all you need to know about those two.
Huntsman is also in the 90+% camp, but in his case it might just be lack of name recognition. This method really only works for the big names, since the small players have trouble reaching out to individual donors through no fault of their own.
I was really worried that we were going to run out of 'T's.
We thought we had this one bought and paid for.
Maybe their lobbyists should have gotten receipts....
Check your premises.
Won't somebody please think of the children?
This is likely to cause AT&T trouble down the line. Pissing off the officials who oversee your business is never a good move.
Having utterly unaccountable people everyone has to toady to is an even worse move, for the people of the U.S.
With every year the FCC grows more intolerable.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The argument that monopolies raise the price of cell phone service is well-supported.
Cell phone service voice and data plans are extraordinarily high in the U.S., Japan and Canada, compared to other nations. America is way above the international average. We're the most expensive when it comes to texting. For the whole package of cell phone service America and Canada are the most expensive. Guess which countries keeps coming up as among the most expensive? The U.S. and Canada.
http://newamerica.net/publications/policy/an_international_comparison_of_cell_phone_plans_and_prices
As for PC prices, the number of competitors had very little effect compared to the power of Moore's Law. Had we had more competitors, PC prices might be 25% less right now. A huge part of what we pay for PCs is Windows. If we had more competition there we certainly would see lower prices.
So yes, oligopolies mean higher prices. And Jesus WAS/is in fact a liberal. :D
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
one sandpit i wouldn't want to be in...
The old AT&T was broken up before ISDN to homes came along. It was the "baby bells" offering you ISDN. Although in my area I had DSL in 1996 or 7, I can't remember which. From a baby bell (Pac Bell).
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
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.
With every year the FCC grows more intolerable.
To whom? They got rid of their bad apple and now seem to be finally talking some sense.
AT&T, easily the countries biggest Service disappointment is hurt. What's it going to do? Move its operations to Ireland?
snap google.
Who does AT&T think they are fooling?
They think, and are correct, that they are fooling the people who believe that Fox News is fair and balanced.
This is a technique used regularly in controlling public opinion about policy. The further out you can pull one side of the argument, the further out you can pull the middle. This is a very effective approach, because so many people believe that justice means being reasonable, and that being reasonable means giving each side half of what they are asking for.
People are social animals and have a natural tendency to believe that both sides in a debate are being fair in their assessment and sincere about what they believe is just. They believe that each viewpoint must have merit. They believe, therefore, that any point roughly halfway between the two views must fall on reasonable ground. Trusting to this belief, they believe they do not have to know he details to know a fair solution. Any entity with a stake in public policy -- corporations, politicians, power-brokers -- knows about this mechanism. The big guys all have public relations people whose job is to manipulate this, and many other similar flaws.
This results in self-feeding bias. Left unchecked, it creates a disadvantage for entities that do not exploit the problem. In an otherwise competitive system, this selects for the entities most willing and capable of exploiting the flaw. This naturally breeds ever stronger abusers of such flaws.
Eventually, there comes a correction. If it happens early, it can be mild and the problem will be abated without a significant disturbance. The longer it goes, the stronger the distortion becomes -- as does the associated correction and disturbance.
If one believes in the value of economic stability as a path toward economic advancement, it is important to seek to avoid such extremity and correction.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
I'd rather hear a fat man fart than a rich man whine about money.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
By your definition, you would have better Service if you changed carriers. By the court's decision, AT&T getting bigger is not cool. I would hope that AT&T's investors would take more pride in their ownership. Instead, its customers are billed for what is to all intents and purposes is contrite lie. Like you came to them because no one else would take you, I think not.
And what's to stop AT&T from doing to T-Mobile customers what its doing to its current customer base? This event is an "AT&T the Hutt" assimilating a smaller competitor to become even more bloated. If Service were an issue, I think with 39 Billion dollars, AT&T the Hutt could put up one or two more towers. Hell, with 39 Billion, they could make a move to make themselves improve their Service, which would give back to the community. Instead, its Investors want to abuse more people with their "business plan." I just don't see anyone shedding a tear if AT&T were to file for "Chapter 7". It just might be the right direction to go to, for them.
I can't help but wonder if the current Telco's are obsolete? All americans pay $2 to 3$ a month just so someone in the middle of nowhere can have phone service. That's mechanical, not entrepreneurial. Do we really need such "creative minds" that have not offered anything new in the last 15 years?
AT&T's choices are theirs, and their ambivalence to community is needlessly endured. AT&T's Service is the worst, by multiple evaluations. If "AT&T, the Hutt" were to not be here tomorrow, the loss would be easily recoverable, and with improvements that would be a healthy by-product.
The problem of 'lack of usable spectrum' is actually a problem of sharing.
There's plenty of spectrum. It's just carved up inefficiently between the carriers. Take your US phone to Europe, roaming and you will get great reception because it will roam on any of the available carriers.
If the US carriers chose to share their spectrum and tower infrastructure, they'd all get better coverage for less cost. However this won't happen since they're too busy trying to crush the competition to attempt cooperation.
Evil people are out to get you.
Then how didn't this merger get approved?
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
Surely AT&T wants to acquire T-Mobile so that consumers can have more choices, and AT&T has a harder time charging whatever profit it wants because there's more competition.
--
make install -not war
Right, the whole American mobile market should have fewer choices because rural Alaska's indoor coverage is more important than the whole country's major cities.
I know who you voted for governor last time.
--
make install -not war
I guess you haven't been to Europe lately. I lived in Germany the last 3 years. Any thought that cell phone service in the EU is cheaper than anywhere in the US is just laughable. Or, wrong, if you need the word. Happy Holidays.
The small donors are only really good for advertising before being elected. I found it very interesting that Obama bragged so much about the changing face of politics while he was running for president, and collecting massive amounts of small donations from young crowds, and then last week went to wine and dine with the ultra-elite in New York to raise cash while the OWS protesters are getting rolled up in a fairly obvious nationally coordinated effort ( using local cops as muscle ).
Congress needs something to do other than actually fix things... since ATT is big donor to LOTS of them... maybe we can see Congress act, gut the FCC and put the power where it needs to be... (in corporate hands)
http://consumerist.com/2011/09/att-donated-nearly-1-million-to-legislators-supporting-t-mobile-deal.html
http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/summary.php?id=D000000076
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Comment removed based on user account deletion
We threw so much money at them, we expected they roll over and do what we say
I'm usually against biting the hand that feeds, but fucking way to have balls for once FCC.
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
Don't allow telecoms to buy other telecoms. Allow them to bid for the assets if no suitable replacement is found for a floundering agency, sure. But no mergers or takeovers.
Well, not anymore, apparently.
"200 Quatloos on the newcomer!" "300 Quatloos against!"
F#ck you AT&T. You're not fooling anyone. As soon as you think no one is looking you're going to break the company apart, keep what you want and dump the rest. Even the FCC saw through you're plan.
"We are just a war away from Amerikastan. When god vs god the undoing of man." Dave Mustaine
I could rant like others about all the wrong things they do, but in the end, no matter what they say, 1) the proposed merger violated everything about the concept of anti-trust, and 2) why, when some corporation who tries to weasel their way into something they're not supposed to get, do we treat their complaints as news? Why does anyone listen at all? Convicted murderers complain that they're innocent, but we only hear about a few of those. When Manson comes up for parole, we hear that it was denied. Maybe he claimed innocence, I don't know, because if so it's buried way down in the article.
... I would have said "OK AT&T, you say costs will go down after you merge? All right then, fine, merge. But if costs go up, we'll nuke you from orbit."
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Actually, it's a bit more complex than that. The US (and Canada I think) have two incompatible cellular standards in use. So they can't share, at least not with Verizon, Sprint etc. Their only option is to either buy T-mobile or two share with them, but there is the obvious problem of the arrangement possibly being better for T-mobile than it is for ATT. ATT has the cash to invest in its capacity, but no spectrum.
That's because you're new, and have been mostly going on anecdote, media, and word-of-mouth.
Media sucks, but word of mouth is actually less accurate. Believe it or not.
Consider this... the vast majority of our "government" is people who work for a living. For the USA. When the President or congress change party, you don't get a new mail carrier, firefighter, or IRS auditor. They work the same job, under largely the same rules, from one year to the next. They are neither thieves or sell-outs, but workers. And most of them are patriotic. That is the government of the people, by the people, for the people.
Don't let the idiocy of the elected officials and a couple bad court cases make you excessively cynical. It is not only a personality flaw, it will bite you. Consider an IRS audit; if you assume that The Guberment wants all your money, you're going approach it as most people do, in an adversarial way. The IRS agent can only work against you. If you consider instead that this is probably just a worker who doesn't have any ill will towards you at all, and whose job it is to make sure the number are correct, who doesn't work for a company and isn't evaluated on "profit" then you can see that a cooperative approach can have this person helping you to make sure you did your adjustments correctly so that you can keep them. I've seen people take this approach and come out of an audit ahead of where they went in, because the IRS auditor gave them some hints about deductions they were missing.
At the level of the FCC, when the agency's primary duty is to manage communications for the companies it is no surprise that they typically look for a way to give the companies as much of what they want as they can. That is actually their purpose. Most regulatory agencies are tasked more with making sure the companies are fair to each other than anything else. Can't blame them for doing their job. In this case, AT&T was basically asking to do a merger that would make them bigger than is fair to the other companies, and their correct criteria in that case is to only allow it if it is clearly better for the average citizen. That's the only reason to let one company control more of the field than congress said, with consultation from the companies, would still allow competition.
Changing the mandate of some agencies to be more worried about the average American would be great, IMO. Of course, most of the "government workers" at those agencies would like that too, they're patriotic themselves!
I can't wit til my contract with t-mobile expires, going to drop them like a hot rock.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
I agree that most of your rank and file feds are decent people, but a look at recent history makes it painfully obvious that many of those at the top-who are political appointees--don't give a damn about the public and are deeply in corporate America's pocket. See Deepwater Horizon, Department of the Interior regulation, or rather lack thereof. Or the Comcast/NBC merger, with one of the FCC commissioners skating off to a cush job with the newly-merged entity.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
This whole thing if over LTE, though, which can be shared. We're no longer fighting over CDMA & GSM (or iDEN). Those standards still exist & are used, but will eventually be replaced with LTE.
Nothing prevents AT&T from investing more into its HSPDA+ that they call 4G, same as nothing prevents them from buying tower time from T-Mobile. They just don't want to spend that much money.
Grammer Nazis - I mod you "troll" unless you actually add something on-topic. Yes, I know I have mispellings in my sig.
...but it's gotten to the point where assholes-in-charge blatantly and flippantly do it right in front of us, and then stand back with a "yeah, what the hell are YOU gonna do about it" look on their face.
And the horrible reality with their attitude is they're absolutely right. Not a damn thing will be done against the 1%. Ever. Now that they know this, the game is pretty much over for the rest of us.
I wouldn't say "ever". I'm not advocating it, but France circa 1789 comes to mind as a clear rebuttal.
If the assholes-in-charge continue growing more blatant in their disregard for everyone else, eventually folks *will* get fed up. History abounds with examples.
Notably, in all of the examples that I can bring to mind, be they ancient or very recent and even ongoing, things had to get a lot worse than they are now for the common man in the US before the fires were lit and the barricades set up. I hope our assholes-in-charge are not quite so tone-deaf as to allow/cause things to get that bad.
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."