At & t buying out T Mobile

[Aironz]

Key points from the article:
At & t to buy out T Mobile for $39 Billion.
The consumer loses BIG TIME.
The wireless industry will be dominated by three big companies: At & t, Verizon, and Sprint.

http://gigaom.com/2011/03/20/in-att-t-m ... ody-loses/

[Ikri]

Shit. This is horrible news. I specifically went for T Mobile to avoid Sprint, ATT and Verizon. Now I'll have to find another quality cellular service that doesn't fuck with customers, track them (GPS, web browsing) and limit their open-source content.

[CaptainTripps]

You mean dominated by 2 big companies, and Sprint.

[Haymakers9th]

Shit. This is horrible news. I specifically went for T Mobile to avoid Sprint, ATT and Verizon. Now I'll have to find another quality cellular service that doesn't fuck with customers, track them (GPS, web browsing) and limit their open-source content.

you likely won't find that


at&t is building itself back up to the fucking monopoly it was before it was broken down back in the day, but now our government is even more corporate friendly than before so I don't see anything being struck down or broken up anytime soon.

this pissed me off, T mobile was the last not-evil cell provider out there.



N-N-N-N-N-NINJA EDIT: http://mobile.slashdot.org/story/11/03/ ... he-Telekom <-- slashdotters are pretty smart and already have a thread up about it, look there for everything smarter than anything I could ever say.

[Ikri]

Hmm. Anyone know when the transfer will take place and/or if canceling the plan is permitted if the company merges? I still have 8 months left on this contract and I'd prefer my money and data didn't end up in ATT's creepy hands.

[Nightwolf]

FFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

[Jason]

Fucking fuck AT&T. Seriously fuck them so hard. Fuck.

[Haymakers9th]

(according to Slashdot) the deal won't be put through for another year and the FCC has a chance to strike it down. Unfortunately there will likely be a lot of lobbying and bribing between now and then.

[renesis]

Probably won't effect consumers till 2012 at least. Maybe 2013 if there is enough political backlash.

[Grndslmhttr3]

T-Mobile sucks anyway.

[joe]

at&t has a long history of being a terrible company. none of you are old enough to remember when they were a monopoly and you could not buy a phone - it was illegal to sell them or make them because at&t owned the patents. so instead of selling phones, they rented them the same way comcast rents a cable box, except for pretty high rates like $20/month, which was a LOT of money 50 years ago. finally the government had to get involved to allow other companies to make phones and overnight you could BUY a phone for $5 that used to cost $20/month. they abused their monopoly so much in other ways the government actually had to step in and break them up - ever heard of "baby bells"? those were the 7 companies AT&T was split up into. imagine the republican reaction in 2011 if the government announced they were breaking up a monopoly. glenn beck would look like that scene from scanners where the guy's head explodes

[stabbyclaus]

none of you are old enough to remember

I remember.. wasn't THAT long ago.

[CaptainTripps]

Yea I think most people would know about it at least, it's pretty much the contemporary definition of a business monopoly in America. It was the example used to teach us what monopolies were, why there are anti-trust laws, and how they can be applied. Maybe kids these days learn about Microsoft v the EU? I dunno.


Also I've been with ATT/Cingular for a decade, no real complaints. Then again I don't have a contract and been on the same plan for half that time.

Been buying smart phones off of Ebay to avoid the whole mobile internet scheme.

[joe]

ah i didn't know it was still common knowledge. i expected stuff from the early 80s to be obscure to most of the people here

[Nightwolf]

I think we can all agree that AT&T CEO's are turds.