REVscene - Vancouver Automotive Forum

FerrariEnzo · 03-20-2011, 01:27 PM

AT&T to Acquire T-Mobile USA from Deutsche Telekom for $39 billion

http://www.businesswire.com/news/hom...utsche-Telekom

willystyle · 03-20-2011, 01:48 PM

Monopoly much?

AT&T bought out Cingular a few years ago, now T-mobile, and the article mentions that competition will get more fierce? LOL.

FerrariEnzo · 03-20-2011, 03:56 PM

so whos left to battle with AT&T.. Verizon, sprint are left out if the big companies..

i think verizon and sprint should just merge.... otherwise AT&T would eventually buy them out too...

bcrdukes · 03-20-2011, 04:08 PM

Whoa. Scary.

Then again, AT&T is backed by General Electric. They got the big bucks.

willystyle · 03-20-2011, 04:32 PM

This won't be good news for Mobilicity and Wind, if rumors are true that AT&T is planning to phase out the AWS spectrum (of T-mobile) in the US, to further advance LTE.

gars · 03-20-2011, 05:58 PM

Interesting news - lots of big buys in the telecom business. Wind was just sold as well.

pastarocket · 03-20-2011, 08:45 PM

Not good news for the Canadian consumer. All these big telecom mergers means less competition in this industry. Less competition means less attractive pricing for cell phone plans. Bloody monopolies!

willystyle · 03-20-2011, 09:08 PM

Let's hope the FCC will not approve the merger.

FerrariEnzo · 03-21-2011, 12:13 AM

man.. if AT&T does phase out AWS, theres going to be a lot unhappy TMobile costumers...

on a side, that means theres going to be a flood in AWS equip phones for sale

Sp0r3 · 03-21-2011, 01:51 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by pastarocket

Not good news for the Canadian consumer. All these big telecom mergers means less competition in this industry. Less competition means less attractive pricing for cell phone plans. Bloody monopolies!

Doesn't affect Canadians unless you are planning to get a plan from the states.

Besides, I doubt AT&T would want to annihilate T-Mo's AWS band. The AWS band makes a great addition to the AT&T network. It can reduce the congestion of their current network (and allow "better" service for its customers). And if AT&T decides to fully utilize AWS network, they will push for more pentaband smart phones. That would be great news for us Canadians as then people would reconsider going to the new entrants like Mobi and Wind (more revenue, more funding to expand and improve).

bcrdukes · 03-21-2011, 02:00 AM

I don't believe AWS in itself will reduce congestion on their existing network. It's the spectrum they're more interested in.

willystyle · 03-21-2011, 02:28 AM

Here is a bit more insight from a user over at HoFo that think what AT&T will do, if and when, the transaction completes.

Quote:

Originally Posted by torontocolin

It makes no sense for AT&T to decommission T-Mobile's network. It makes far, far more sense for them to integrate it into their own, increasing capacity by far, and then pressure manufacturers for pentaband chipsets. Here are a few reasons decommissioning the T-Mobile network would be foolish:

They'd have to replace 30 million devices at their own cost.
They would have to throw away however many millions of phones with AWS T-Mobile has on hand
They would have to cancel all future orders of phones immediately, and with no new devices existing customers would leave when their contract comes up
Nobody would sign up for T-Mobile while they're waiting for regulatory approval when their device potentially won't work in less than a year
Even with new devices, existing customers would be upset for the inconvenience and potentially get far worse reception with AT&T
All of the above would essentially prevent them from continuing to use the T-Mobile brand, which has value
People forget (or maybe don't know) that T-Mobile has a LOT of AWS spectrum. Enough that AT&T can take that extra spectrum and combine it with their own AWS reserves and use that to complement their 700 band spectrum, making it unnecessary to take down the AWS network
AT&T's network is already congested. They need to expand, not add 30% more users to the existing network.

Think of when Rogers acquired Fido. They took Fido's towers which used 1900 and combined them with their own 850 network and ended up with a stronger combined network. Expect to see much of the same in this case. T-Mobile will continue to look independent to the average American, until you look closely.

Wind probably doesn't have enough spectrum to do HSPA and LTE, but they can buy 700 spectrum which the new super AT&T will use. They don't need both of them. Meanwhile the Big 3 can use both spectrum bands for their LTE networks and we may finally see the network hegemony we need to migrate at will.

Also, T-Mobile has said on their website that their HSPA network will continue to exist post-merger.

http://www.howardforums.com/showthre...5#post14324815

Vulcan300 · 03-21-2011, 11:36 AM

No, at&t is going to phase out AWS for LTE. Since it will take awhile before things get changed over, people will need to acquire new phones anyways and they will be switched onto at&t's 3G network in that time.

Quote:

NEW YORK (AP) -- AT&T Inc. said Monday that if its deal to buy T-Mobile USA goes through, T-Mobile subscribers with "3G" phones will need to replace those to keep their wireless broadband service working. But there will be plenty of time to do that.

Dallas-based AT&T said Sunday it had agreed to buy T-Mobile USA for $39 billion. If approved by regulators, the deal would close in about a year.

AT&T said that some time after the closing, it plans to rearrange how T-Mobile's cell towers work. The airwaves they use for third-generation services, or 3G, will be repurposed for 4G, which is faster.

That would leave current T-Mobile phones without 3G. They would need to be replaced with phones that use AT&T's 3G frequencies. Ralph de la Vega, AT&T's head of wireless and consumer services, said this will happen as part of the normal phone upgrade process.

"There's nothing for them to worry about ... it will be done over time, in a way that's good for customers and good for AT&T," de la Vega said in an interview.

The whole process will take several years, he said.

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/ATampT...&asset=&ccode=

willystyle · 03-21-2011, 01:34 PM

In that case, Goodbye Wind and Mobilicity.

bcrdukes · 03-21-2011, 02:09 PM

The new entrants will still have roaming capabilities on AT&T. I personally don't believe this buy-out will change all that much other than AT&T's network infrastructure plans.

Their first course of action is to decommission and/or salvage T-Mobile's network and integrate their own network expansion strategy with LTE. The decommissioning process in itself will take at least 2 years. They're going to need all the spectrum they can get and its what hinders their performance as a network.

Culverin · 03-21-2011, 06:15 PM

Ouch, sucks for Wind and Mobilicity.
I wouldn't even consider them anymore considering that nobody would bring in an AWS band phone after this.

I never really thought Rogers was "good", but compared to AT&T:
Bloatware, bad customer service, no tethering, no side loading.

I've tried both Captivates from AT&T and Rogers.
At least rogers only has bad customer service.
There's so much less bloatware, tethering is allowed (no extra), and side loading is enabled.

willystyle · 03-21-2011, 07:14 PM

Yeah, it's a very dim day for new wireless entrants in Canada. If they don't get exclusive rights to bid for next year's 700MHz auction, they are pretty much done and can't expand to LTE (4G), as we know Robellus will pick up as much frequency as possible.

FerrariEnzo · 03-22-2011, 03:22 PM

there are AWS band wireless companies in other countries also... but TMobile is probably one of the biggest..

its unwise for them to scrap the AWS band... they can keep Tmobile as a low budget company like rogers/fido, bell/solo, telus/kodoo...

willystyle · 03-22-2011, 04:14 PM

There is already a lack of AWS 1700MHz spectrum worldwide, if you think the current AWS mobile lineup is scarce. This buyout of T-Mobile (T-mobile owns one of the largest amount of AWS spectrum worldwide) from AT&T will make the availability of AWS mobile devices even further limited. At the moment, there's only a year worth of AWS devices planned for rollout, after that, there will be very few devices available.

What makes this a very sad state is that Wind and Mobilicity has no plans to move to LTE within the next 5 years (even if they had 700MHz spectrum), during a time, where all the US carriers will be making that move, including Rogers, and the rest of the carriers worldwide.