AT&T Officially Ends Plans To Acquire T-Mobile USA

An anonymous reader writes "AT&T has officially announced that it no longer plans to purchase T-Mobile USA from Deutsche Telekom. In a press release, the company said, 'The actions by the Federal Communications Commission and the Department of Justice to block this transaction do not change the realities of the U.S. wireless industry. It is one of the most fiercely competitive industries in the world, with a mounting need for more spectrum that has not diminished and must be addressed immediately. The AT&T and T-Mobile USA combination would have offered an interim solution to this spectrum shortage. In the absence of such steps, customers will be harmed and needed investment will be stifled.'"

Comments

And there was much rejoicing !!

[Anonymous Coward]

A t-mobile subscriber.

Re:And there was much rejoicing !!

[lanner]

If the kind of service that I've gotten with TMobile over the last 10 years is "second-class", I'll have to say I like it. What would that make ATT customers? Fifth-class citizens?

Remember that TMobile is a PROFITABLE company. They are actively making money. If DT would just cut them lose and give them the freedom to succeed or fail, I am willing to bet that they would do pretty well.

Re:And there was much rejoicing !!

[danlip]

Why is that delusional? He paid T-Mobile for service. He got service. Why does he care who owns the towers?

What says they won't try another way?

[sethstorm]

It just seems odd that AT&T would let a leak stop them from acquiring T-Mobile.

As a very satisfied T-Mobile customer with flat-rate 3G, I'm not going to put it beyond AT&T to try some less-visible route to get rid of the only national carrier that doesn't try to meter data.

Best news for a while

[squiggleslash]

T-Mobile is the ONE operator that's pro-openness. GSM (bring your own device) from the start, no restrictions on how you use data, until the AT&T stuff started they even offered low cost, subsidy free, contract free talk plans. There's a reason it was T-Mo, and not AT&T, Verizon, or Sprint, who Google picked to launch Android.

HA!

[autocracy]

Bite me, AT&T. Auto repair is competitive.

  * Cell phones in the US have a small pool of providers, especially the nation-wide crowd.
  * They primarily operate with 2 year contracts, and it's hard to get a phone without one.
  * There's a financial disincentive for buying a phone without a contract.
  * Text message rates (for which there is very little data usage, being measured in bytes) have been increasing.
  * Data plans have been increasing in price and providing tighter bandwidth restrictions at the same time.

I loathe AT&T, and I'm stuck with them. Competitive? I'd get out in a heartbeat if I felt I had somewhere to go. T-Mobile has been the closest saving grace to AT&T, so I really don't want to see that absorbed.

Thanks to the Fed did -- they did one right there.

T-Mobile USA is not sliding towards bankruptcy....

[Shakrai]

T-Mobile will still get bought, or will go under.

To say nothing of the assets that will come available when T-Mobile declares bankruptcy

T-Mobile USA makes money. It just doesn't make enough money for the corporate overlords at DT. They don't view the United States as a growth market without billions of dollars in capital investment they've thus far been unwilling to make. Absent that investment T-Mobile USA will remain what it has always been: an urban focused value carrier.

T-Mobile will still get bought, or will go under.

Vodaphone is a possibility if they divest their 45% share of Verizon Wireless. Verizon would love to buy them out; the question is would they be willing to sell to jump into the US market with both feet or does it make more sense for them to keep cashing VZW dividend checks?

Re:T-Mobile USA is not sliding towards bankruptcy.

[SecurityFocus]

Right. T mobile is a very pervasive player in the Telecommunications landscape. SBC or AT&T as they like to be called, LOVES to buy out direct competitors. They saw Tmobile as a very large player in the space and coupled with T-mobile's 4g network and affordable prices, it was a natural fit for them. I worked for AT&T both before and after they where purchased by SBC. Which I detailed some of my experiences at http://whyattdestroysjobs.wordpress.com/ ... Let's just say while I was there, ATT management as well as Sales Managers such as myself while I was employed with AT&T where constantly going up against T mobile.. Simply because they T-mobile offered affordable plans, greater flexibility in devices, and more affordable and faster service(s) and CUSTOMER SERVICE that was hands down better than AT&T/SBC. Only what ATT did not bargain on- which frankly they should of KNOWN is the current economy and state of affairs in DC - that proposing a Merger in an election year when unemployment is at record highs and their is further economic uncertainty around the world, that a deal like this that would stifle innovation, lead to higher consumer prices, et al could not of been proposed at a worse time!

Re:Good news

[drinkypoo]

Too bad the current AT&T isn't the AT&T from the 1970's. It is SBC, which was one of the baby-bell spinoffs from when AT&T was broken up. [...] So, the current AT&T is actually one of the spin offs that AT&T that you hated was broken up into....

So you're saying that the current AT&T actually is the old AT&T, since it's made up of one of the splinters of the old AT&T which has bought most of the other pieces of the old AT&T? Thanks for clearing that up for us.