Drewbot • AT&T to Acquire T-Mobile USA

AT&T to Acquire T-Mobile USA

A few thoughts:

AT&T is making a cash-and-stock transaction worth $39 billion. Just think about that for a second.
With this move AT&T will leapfrog Verizon in total subs. Sprint remains the lone outsider. In this case, the ‘independent’ telco sports a mere 50 million subs. Our nation’s network is quickly reverting back to Ma Bell.
Speaking of Ma Bell, AT&T is stealing a trick from the monopolistic AT&T of old. In their press release their 3rd headline stresses that this move will allow them to bring 4G LTE to 46.5 million Americans, “including in rural, smaller communities.” This is very important, as resonates with Obama’s goal to connect “every part of America to the digital age.” Theodore Vail, AT&T’s president in the late early 20th century, used the same argument to convince the government to allow AT&T’s monopoly. With this rider in the deal, AT&T hopes to coast through government approval of this purchase.
Also, Sprint is now the only US company that doesn’t carry the iPhone. In fact, Google gets screwed every which way in this deal as they’re losing a valuable partner (T-Mobile), have to compete with iPhone directly for every purchase (save pay-go and Sprint…where the majority of pay-go customers are anyway),and now have two controlling networks who have little incentive to upgrade phones or let Google innovate.

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