AT&T Will Not Buy T-Mobile
by Andrew Cunningham on December 19, 2011 5:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- AT&T
- Mobile
- T-Mobile
AT&T has dropped its plans for a proposed $39 billion buyout of T-Mobile, citing interference from the FCC and the U.S. Department of Justice, the latter of which filed to block the merger back in August. AT&T will pay Deutsche Telekom, T-Mobile's parent company, $4 billion in recompense, and will enter into a "mutually beneficial roaming agreement" with the company at an unspecified future date.
AT&T will continue to invest in its network through a series of smaller deals, and calls on the FCC to approve its standing request to purchase unused Qualcomm spectrum - Verizon has taken similar steps to buy wireless spectrum from other companies in a series of smaller transactions, rather than buying out its competitors outright. AT&T also claims that regulatory interference is hindering its ability to meet its customers' needs, and calls on legislators to both "enact legislation to meet our nation's longer-term spectrum needs" and get out of the way so that "companies are allowed to react quickly to customer needs and market forces."
While AT&T says that the buyout's dissolution is bad for consumers, the government sees things differently - when the DoJ filed to block the AT&T merger, it said that T-Mobile represented an important competitive force in the cellular market, and its purchase would make it next to impossible for Sprint, the U.S.'s third-largest carrier, to compete with Verizon and AT&T.
Source: AT&T
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
27 Comments
View All Comments
'nar - Tuesday, December 20, 2011 - link
yes, but you have Long Term Evolution(LTE) GSM, and you have LTE CDMA. Both are, yet neither actually are, 4th Generation(4G). There are some improvements, yes, but they certainly are not the next full generation of wireless technology. that is still a ways off. Most of those terms are just marketing drivel now.Black1969ta - Tuesday, December 20, 2011 - link
LTE has nothing to do with GSM or CDMA, all American LTE networks are in the 700 MHz Spectrum. If Memory serves right LTE is based on TDMA, like GSM, but each carrier will use the same frequencies and technology. IMHO, This will open the door to make Cellular service a commodity, like electricity distribution. Meaning that when a phone comes out it will work on any carriers service and all carriers will be able to roam on all the other carrier's Towers (not that agreements will necessarily be made, but they could.)If I remember right there is a secondary frequency for LTE that has shorter range but better (building) penetration, that will be used in Urban environments, but all LTE networks will essentially be the same.
foodchem - Tuesday, December 20, 2011 - link
This article is too hard for me to read. My website is can someone tell me whether the website is right?xavisancho - Tuesday, December 20, 2011 - link
xaavi sancho es un hijo de puta.xavisancho - Tuesday, December 20, 2011 - link
sancho tio em caus com el putu cul enserio todiocode65536 - Tuesday, December 20, 2011 - link
T-Mobile's has the best pricing of any of the carriers. And on top of that, they are the only ones to offer non-subsidized plans like what the rest of the world uses (where you pay for the service and pay for the phone separately instead of having the two lumped together in an opaque pricing structure).So as a T-Mobile customer, I am immensely relieved that this takeover has been scuttled.
Zap - Thursday, December 22, 2011 - link
That's not true. Pretty much all companies (yes even AT&T and Verizon) have non-subsidized plans. Most of them are the pre-paid style like Net10 & TracFone does that you just buy talk minutes, but some (Boost Mobile & Virgin Mobile) offer unlimited plans with data and even smart phones.