Some poor paralegal published a document containing some AT&T secrets to the FCC website, and a lot of analysts think that it destroys the rationale for the AT&T/T-Mobile merger.
AT&T wants us to believe that it needs to spend $39 billion to buy T-Mobile in order to build out its 4th generation (LTE) network. But the leaked letter shows that the cost of the buildout is $3.8 billion. Spending 10 times that amount to acquire T-Mobile is a roundabout, more expensive way to accomplish AT&T’s stated goal.
I’m not the world’s biggest fan of any US cell provider, but AT&T seems a hell of a lot more focused on corporate tricks (iPhone exclusivity and this merger) than they are on just putting up more cell towers.
JPL
Corporations are people!
me
I live in an AT&T black hole in the middle of a medium sized city and no amount of complaining from their customers (not me) does anything about it. Such a terrible cell provider.
Maude
Read also that if AT&T and bought T- Mobile, it would cost customers a lot more for the service.
Too much m and a going on.
gene108
More cell towers don’t come with an already established customer base.
AT & T would be paying for customers, their accompanying revenue and profit, as well as more towers.
gene108
@Maude:
M&A is one way to expand revenues and profits, in an already saturated market place.
I doubt the USA is a hot spot for growth in the cell phone industry, versus developing nations.
The biggest problem with the U.S. cell phone market is the fact we are on a different standard than the rest of the world.
It makes it impossible to keep your cell phone with you, when you travel abroad, which could be possible, if there was one international standard.
GMF
So, I guess even though they showed up to the merger hearings and lied about all of this, they won’t be getting the Clemens treatment.
Why not, you ask?
Because, fuck you – that’s why.
wrb
AT&T will come out of this unharmed if it wears magic underwear
Maude
@gene108:
This is like epub and Amazon. Kindle is going to do library book lending which will need, as far as I can tell, epub or pdf.
The problem with some tech is the lack of standard “formats” and such.
Didn’t know about the cell phone limits.
Look at Kraft. That has people at Cadbury (sp?) very nervous.
In the late 80’s a lot of companies were destoyed by ma and a.
jeffreyw
Those bastards, I watched a local news video where an exec sat down with the Ed. board of the local paper. He said LTE would come to our rural area if the merger went through. He was hoping the paper could mention this to the pols next time they had a chat. Be a shame you yokels wouldn’t get good service if the deal fell through
WyldPirate
ATT has pitiful coverage just about everywhere i’ve been. I wish I had listened to my friends with Verizon. But no, I had to have a Ssmsung Infuse (which rocks despite being a battery hog).
I don’t expect that their corporate shenanigans will improve service at all.
I certainly don
BBA
@gene108: Not quite true. Although most cell networks use CDMA, which is rare outside North America, the global GSM/UMTS family is used by AT&T and T-Mobile. Now, the market for cell phones that work overseas might be small, but AT&T will have a monopoly on it when the merger goes through, not that it’ll stop the FCC and FTC from approving it.
me
@BBA: Some unification though as AT&T and Verizon go LTE albeit on different frequencies. I wonder if they will obstruct phones that work in both bands so people can’t switch providers without buying a new phone.
polyorchnid octopunch
You sure they’re not a Canadian telecom?
batgirl
@Maude: As far as I can tell, the library lending model for Kindle will be the specific Kindle format file not an epub or pdf. The good news is that libraries won’t need to purchase the Kindle format, when they purchase the title, the Kindle format will be made available as well. I could be wrong because the details haven’t been released yet but this is the impression I get from what has been said so far.
BruceJ
iPhone exclusivity was not a ‘corporate trick’ of AT&T; Apple insisted on a (still) unprecedented level of handset control, and pretty much all the other telcos said ‘f*** off!’.
Basically the telcos wanted to lard up the phone with THEIR apps and restrict access to the App store, limit what could be installed, etc. Apple said, ok we’ll go somewhere else. AT&T needed the subscribers. Apple wanted the control, hence AT&T got the iPhone.
Maude
@batgirl:
Kindle will be using overdrive, that’s why I wondered.
It will be interesting to see how they do this.
batgirl
@Maude: I work at a library and the buzz from Overdrive seems to be that they will be providing the Kindle format for titles we purchase. Like I said, they haven’t said this clearly, but it is the impression I am getting. I would think that Amazon would be weary to opening up their platform to epub. Once they do that it no longer ties Kindle customers to Amazon.
Joey Maloney
How to view .epub files on your Kindle
Mojotron
@BBA: This, plus Verizon has some phones that are GSM capable and have a SIM card slot.
There are no T-Mobile customers looking forward to this. None. Higher prices, crappier customer service, the whole “we have a room where we have the government monitor your communications” thing, and this is not the first time they’ve been caught lying regarding this merger/acquisition. If reason prevails this deal won’t go through, but unfortunately reason doesn’t have a real good track record recently.
Villago Delenda Est
It’s about eliminating competition, and monopoly power.
Pure and simple.
Dollared
@Villago Delenda Est: Yes. and no other reason whatsoever.
Although firing a few tens of thousands of productive, technically savvy middle class Americans is a bonus!
Ten days after the firing, the WSJ will be complaining about their lack of skills…..
Dollared
One more thing: Nobody at the federal government could do a calculation such as: Coverage gaps equals XXXXXX square miles in certain areas, to cover that requires XXXX cell towers, the average cost of a cell tower, including site acquisition, electronics, deployment and testing is $XXXXX, so the cost of the build out is $YYYYYYYYYY.
Pity the government keeps cutting salaries so they can’t hire a recent MBA grad with a cheap laptop with Excel on it.
Corner Stone
@Dollared:
So some govt funded for profit “training -scammer- center” can retrain. them..to..work as…uh.
What were they going to get training to do, again?
Corner Stone
@Mojotron:
Agreed. None.
AT&T and Sprint are tied for the absolute worst reception in buildings for downtown Houston. More than once I’ve had to walk down to street level lobby with a customer so they could get reception while waiting for something.
Martin
2 things:
1) As BruceJ correctly pointed out, the iPhone exclusivity was a deal Apple agreed to because it was the only way to get onto a carriers. The reason why Motorola is currently offering 50 different handsets and recently carried 100, as opposed to Apple’s 2 – is that handsets are virtually co-designed by the carrier and so each carrier gets their own models. Want to know why they struggle to compete with Apple on profits? Because they have to design and manufacture 50 different phones compared to Apple’s 2.
2) The cost of building out a network doesn’t tell you anything about whether there’s enough revenues to keep that network running. Because our mobile network situation is so horrendously fucked, it’s possible that AT&T simply doesn’t have enough rural customers in those place to cover the costs of building out LTE, which is entirely possible because Verizon also has to cover the costs of building out LTE in exactly the same area on a slightly different frequency, and Clearwire will cover the costs building on behalf of Sprint to build out LTE in exactly the same area on yet another slightly different frequency. In other words, these arguments would all go away if Congress would legislate to allow the FCC to choose ONE LTE network and have everyone else lease time. The cost to build out would be 1/3 less, the required user base would be 1/3 less to cover those costs, they could mandate vastly more coverage in exchange for the leases and it’s not like it’s a solution we haven’t been doing for electricity and water and gas and every other bit of infrastructure in this nation.
That said, AT&T is indeed horrible and should DIAF. All of the carriers should.
Martin
Oh, but in the world of getting caught, it pales compared to Google.
The emails in question were produced by Google, and then taken back when they discovered how damaging they were. Oracle is demanding they get reintroduced. When you archive virtually every scrap of information on earth, I suppose fuckups like this are predetermined to happen.
But if Google loses this, it’s going to have to pay for every Android handset out there, and everyone in the future – a product that Google only generates revenue from through advertising and a bit through app sales. There’s 130 million units out there growing at a million every few days.
Amanda in the South Bay
I know that recently AT&T recently tried to put a new cell phone tower in Palo Alto, but the rich fucking NIMBYs there stopped it.
Martin
@Amanda in the South Bay: I have the same problem in my neighborhood. All of the providers have been trying to put up a shared tower (inside a shopping center structure where nobody would ever see it) and the NIMBYs are freaking out over it too. I think that’s been going on for almost 5 years now.
KG
I’ve been with Verizon (twice) and AT&T. I switched from Verizon to AT&T when I got my first iPhone (side note: I thought it was Apple that drove exclusivity early on). Yes, there were some problem but it was never that bad. When Verizon got the four, I decided to switch back, and am not happy. I actually liked my service with AT&T better… But that’s just me
Maude
@batgirl:
Late on this, but I was thinking that they may get an app like iPad, an overdrive app.
I manage one computer at a library. They don’t do ebook lending yet.
300baud
@gene108:
That’s one reason AT&T might want to do it, but it’s definitely not a reason for the FCC or the DoJ to approve the merger.
N W Barcus
Er, AT&T hasn’t had exclusivity since the beginning of the year…
Linnaeus
I can’t say right now that there’s a single cell phone service provider that I like (I’m with T-Mobile now). All of them suck but for slightly different reasons.
me
@Martin: Oracle doesn’t have clean hands either. Quote from Mike Dillon’s, legal council from Sun, before the Oracle purchase but after Android appeared
creature
I’ve been with AT&T (Cingular, before that marriage occured) and have lived in various parts of the US. Decent coverage & service overall. I had Verizon breifly, while in FL- company-supplied phones. We (the poor bastards inflicted with Verizon’s failures) implored a change to Cingular. There was probably a kickback deal going on with The CFO, but, everything worked great. Good enough for me to retain them when I moved back to the DC area, and then when I went west to CO. That AT&T has designs on becoming the giant of cellular systems in the US is not an aberration- it’s just business as usual.
Martin
@me:
Well, that doesn’t mean their hands are unclean, just that they’re greedy douchebags. Name one company that isn’t?
Yeah, software patents are a cancer on innovation, but that’s the game right now and you can either play the game or you can cheat the game. It’s looking like Google got caught cheating the game.
But any defense of Google here is just crap. They’ve taken profits from the advertising business and cut corners on developing a language/API in order to undermine the entire rest of the smartphone market. Everyone else has either built their own language (Apple), gone with open alternatives (Palm/HP), or licensed from Sun/Oracle (RIM). Nokia got so fucked with developing two smartphone platforms on their own that they’re running to Microsoft for help, at the very real risk that Nokia my die before completing the effort. They are all competing in a market where they need to charge enough money for the product to pay for its development costs. Google is the only player not doing that, and they’ve got the brass ones to complain about everyone else acting uncompetitively while they steal Oracles IP and then proclaim themselves virtuous and ‘open’.
Mnemosyne
I’m perfectly willing to wait for technology to become cheap, which is why I’m coming to you from a ZTE Peel that fits my 3rd gen iPod Touch. From Virgin Mobile, it’s $29.99 for the Peel and $20 a month for 500mb.
And, yes, my phone is still a flip phone, not a smartphone.
Yutsano
@Martin:
The Finnish government could bail them out as well. They are one of the biggest employers in Suomi. Defending an economic engine like that would be worth it, although I can’t see them shouldering the whole burden.
300baud
@Amanda in the South Bay:
My new plan for dealing with the people who block cell towers out of fear of radiation is to claim that they are polluting the mental environment by radiating negative energy.
Martin
@Yutsano: Even if they’re bailed out (or more likely bought out) it’s going to be a hell of an uphill fight for them to compete with one vendor that benefits from economy of scale that is orders of magnitude greater than what they’ll be able to meet (Apple) and all other vendors that have a free OS not digging into unit costs.
Honestly, even with MSFT helping, I think they missed their window unless Google gets hung out having to charge for Android as a result of this lawsuit or some other problem like their antitrust investigation.
hondamikesd
Pick your poison, consolidation with AT&T or anti-union fuckery at Verizon. Of course you could always get Sprint (lol)…
koalaholik
hondamikesd
Wait till next April. I work for AT&T (wireline side) and our contract will be up then. Whatever Verizon gets away with, AT&T will try. Last year our raise was 2.5% but my medical went more than that, so I am currently working for less (net)than a year ago. Since we were bought by SBC, out of Texas, customer service has gone to hell and the treatment of employees has gone along with it. They won’t be happy until the entire company is non-union or outsourced to India (where all my IT support is located).
Cap'n Magic
@me: The providers have already said that they won’t allow for interoperability in the respective LTE bands.
Why AT&T doesn’t wait out while T-Mobile bleeds customers and get all of that at a much cheaper rate rather than blowing 10 times the amount in taking T-Mobile out shows the short-term thinking that goes on.
What’s totally missing is that in the last 5 years data rates have already gone up and caps have been instituted on top of that. Nowhere in AT&T’s docs do they show that prices will actually drop due to the supposed scale they gain by acquiring T-Mobile.
randiego
Mistermix – I don’t know who you are, but you don’t appear to know dick about telecom.
You only posted 3 paragraphs and I can count at least 3 examples of knownothingness about telecom, Apple, and AT&T.
Why bother?