AT&T Issues Scathing Response To FCC Report 215
An anonymous reader writes "AT&T has issued a scathing letter in response to the FCC's decision to release a staff report on its findings surrounding AT&T's planned $39 billion acquisition of T-Mobile USA. 'We expected that the AT&T-T-Mobile transaction would receive careful, considered, and fair analysis,' Jim Cicconi, AT&T Senior Executive Vice President of External & Legislative Affairs, said. 'Unfortunately, the preliminary FCC Staff Analysis offers none of that.'"
Unimpressive. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Unimpressive. (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah they can use that $39B to pay for a gigantic waaaaahmbulance.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Unimpressive. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Unimpressive. (Score:5, Interesting)
You took the words from my mouth, the last few days the only impression I've been getting from AT&T is one of a crybaby.
My favorite part of TFA was Sprint's comment, they're basically using fancy words to point and laugh.
sniffle (Score:3)
I'd rather hear a fat man fart than a rich man whine about money.
Re:Unimpressive. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yup. The only reason they withdrew their application is so that the report would not be published. They're pissed because their ploy didn't work.
Re:Unimpressive. (Score:5, Interesting)
You could try reading it, then you would see they bring up some good points.
Of course, nothing showing that this merger is not a stupid idea for consumers, but they do make some decent points about why ATT wanted this merger, problem with spectrum, and running out of space.
Re:Unimpressive. (Score:5, Insightful)
AT&T's response, now, is basically a "How dare they call our mass of outrageous lies and mendacious fabrications a mass of outrageous lies and mendacious fabrications! Do they know who we are?" response, couched in the always-cloying language of injured innocence and shock, shock, that those mean meanies at the FCC could be so mean. I honestly can't decide whether nausea or contempt is winning in my reaction to it...
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Jim Cicconi, AT&T Senior Executive Vice President of External & Legislative Affairs, said. 'Unfortunately, the preliminary FCC Staff Analysis offers none of the things we paid for.'"
There, I fixed that for them.
Newsflash! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Newsflash! (Score:5, Funny)
Hell, even the UN's firmly worded letter get's them nowhere :|
Re:Newsflash! (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course not.
The firmly worded letter is for appearances.
The bribed senators and congressmen are the ones that will actually move things for them.
Re:Newsflash! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Newsflash! (Score:5, Interesting)
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say it often enough, it starts to sound true (Score:5, Insightful)
at this point, i wonder if AT&T has actually bought its own story, or if they have to practice keeping a straight face in the mirror every morning.
Two megers away from "The" Cell Phone Company (Score:5, Insightful)
AT&T buying T-Mobile is a bad thing for consumers. The original cell phone plan was that there would be two providers, the local Ma Bell and a start-up. AT&T as SBC bought up the East Coast start-ups, Verizon bought the West Coast ones, and T-Mobile and Sprint came to the party as national big-city carriers on at the time open space adjustments.
AT&T of the 1980s was busted up as a monopoly. If AT&T is allowed to have T-Mobile, what's stopping Verizon and Sprint from joining up? Less competitors always leads to higher prices. Anybody remember what cellphones cost in the early 1990s?
Re:Two megers away from "The" Cell Phone Company (Score:5, Insightful)
AT&T of the 1980s was busted up as a monopoly. If AT&T is allowed to have T-Mobile, what's stopping Verizon and Sprint from joining up? Less competitors always leads to higher prices. Anybody remember what cellphones cost in the early 1990s?
Look, I'm not going to argue that we shouldn't prevent a cell phone service monopoly, but using the cost of cellphones in the early 1990s as an argument against it isn't even remotely valid.
Computers cost upwards of $2k for a typical desktop in the early 1990s and there were *way* more PC manufacturers back then (remember Computer Shopper magazine?). One could just as easily say "More competitors lead to higher prices. Anybody remember what PCs cost in the early 1990s?" and be equally wrong.
--Jeremy
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Oh? Say you pay $70/month for your phone. 2 year contract. $200 phone. That's $1880.00.
Oh, you have more phones and lines...
Uhmmmmmmmm...... (Score:5, Insightful)
The argument that monopolies raise the price of cell phone service is well-supported.
Cell phone service voice and data plans are extraordinarily high in the U.S., Japan and Canada, compared to other nations. America is way above the international average. We're the most expensive when it comes to texting. For the whole package of cell phone service America and Canada are the most expensive. Guess which countries keeps coming up as among the most expensive? The U.S. and Canada.
http://newamerica.net/publications/policy/an_international_comparison_of_cell_phone_plans_and_prices [newamerica.net]
As for PC prices, the number of competitors had very little effect compared to the power of Moore's Law. Had we had more competitors, PC prices might be 25% less right now. A huge part of what we pay for PCs is Windows. If we had more competition there we certainly would see lower prices.
So yes, oligopolies mean higher prices. And Jesus WAS/is in fact a liberal. :D
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A huge part of what we pay for PCs is Windows. If we had more competition there we certainly would see lower prices.
Actually, no. Currently, the cost of the Windows license for an OEM is (more than) offset by the kickback that OEMs receive for pre-installing crap/bloatware on the new machine.
It has actually gotten so bad that some machines without Windows are actually -more expensive- because they can't pre-install bloatware on it.
Sorry, no. (Score:3)
AT&T didn't offer home ISDN (Score:5, Informative)
The old AT&T was broken up before ISDN to homes came along. It was the "baby bells" offering you ISDN. Although in my area I had DSL in 1996 or 7, I can't remember which. From a baby bell (Pac Bell).
Re:AT&T didn't offer home ISDN (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, ISDN was like fusion. It was the super futuristic up and coming new thing in the '70s before the break-up (that's what the video phone was supposed to use). And in the '80s. And in the early '90s. For some of that time, it was in theory possible to order it, but they set the price to discourage it and if you ordered anyway, it wasn't "yet' available in your area most of the time (but, Oh yes, it will be RSN! Pinkie swear!)
Then DSL came along and ISDN went away.
Re: (Score:3)
This isn't fucking AT&T.
This is fucking Southwestern Bell after a few acquisitions; one of which included AT&T.
Re:AT&T didn't offer home ISDN (Score:4, Insightful)
By that rationale, IBM isn't IBM because it's run by different people than when it was founded. Likewise, I'm not the person in my driver's license photo because cell turnover has rendered an almost completely new person.
In other words, they bought AT&T, they market themselves as AT&T, and they behave like AT&T. What's that saying about a duck?
Make sure to read the bottom of the page (Score:5, Informative)
For Sprint's short and sweet response, compared to ATT's long-winded vague casting of aspersions against the FCC staff.
Re:Make sure to read the bottom of the page (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Make sure to read the bottom of the page (Score:5, Insightful)
The main problem I see with what you say is this: very few people believed the AT&T-T-Mobile merger was a good thing before the Analysis. I only skimmed it briefly, but it seemed to approach the issue from the point of view that the onus is on AT&T to show that the merger is in the public interest, and not just AT&Ts (which they seem to grant.)
The "commitments" of a company with AT&T's history are worth less to me then the photons my screen used to display them to me. It should come as no surprise that the report is unbalanced: the truth is this merger is a bad idea, at many levels. If AT&T wants it to go through, they basically need to show that both companies absolutely needed it. The report seems to say they didn't show that, but only made broad claims.
In other words, the FCC is calling AT&T liars, and I agree. AT&T doesn't like that, and their response is laden with innuendo and falsities. For example, "The document is so obviously one-sided that any fair-minded person reading it is left with the clear impression that it is an advocacy piece..." So if you don't agree with AT&T's interpretation, you clearly aren't "fair minded." Yeah, that sort of language is only going to make me like you even less. If they really have valid points, fine. But even if they do, using that language is going to make me discard it as manipulative marketing.
Add in the fact that AT&T tried to withdraw the merger application so the report wouldn't be made public, and it really is a poor showing overall for AT&T.
Of course it's a good thing (Score:3)
I was really worried that we were going to run out of 'T's.
Re:Make sure to read the bottom of the page (Score:5, Insightful)
what shit? what's funny about it is that at&t says that fcc is making shit up and that shit they're making up is that at&t would increase their network coverage regardless of if the merger happens - at&t is implying they wouldn't increase their lte coverage if they can't buy out their competition. basically at&t here is saying they're sitting on a pile of money and will not invest it if there's competition and that they would "commit" to creating more jobs only if the merger went through, otherwise they wouldn't bother to try to compete.
also at&t seems to go to great lengths to explain how _neither_ company, tmobile or at&t has sufficient spectrum to serve their current customers. how is putting them together going to help with that, exactly? they should increase the fucking cell-count and bitch less.
Re:Make sure to read the bottom of the page (Score:5, Insightful)
More than that, Ars Technica actually has an interesting quote from the FCC report:
AT&T claims it cannot now build enough additional sites and obtain sufficient additional spectrum in a few localities to expand an existing and successful business. Yet AT&T simultaneously argues that the smaller providers would solve any competitive problem by installing entirely new networks over most of the country, a task that would require substantially more cell construction and integration than AT&T's claimed requirements absent the transaction.
Basically they're claiming that they can't expand their business because they can't get enough spectrum or build enough sites, but that smaller regional competitors with less money and less spectrum available to them than either AT&T or T-Mobile alone would somehow miraculously be able to expand enough to become a meaningful competitor.
Re:Make sure to read the bottom of the page (Score:5, Insightful)
I disagree. I'm no lover of AT&T, I got screwed by them once on international calls and had to fight for a couple of months to get my money back. This was at a time when money was in really short supply, and the $500 or so that I had to get back would have made a big difference. If you actually read FCC's Analysis, and look at what AT&T disagrees with, you can't but agree with AT&T. Their rebuttal is backed by facts, and an hour of googling later you will see for yourself that they are certainly right in the issues they have enumerated. I would have personally really wanted AT&T's response to turn out to be made up shitty troll, but it turns out not to be so.
Sprint's "short and sweet" response turns out to be completely unfounded. It essentially translates to "yeah, yeah, we don't like AT&T either, kudos to FCC for sharing in our dislike". FCC did a pathetic job in their Analysis, that's all there's to it.
Calling AT&T's response "scathing" is uncalled for. We have a saying in Polish: the truth stings you in the eyes. As far as I'm concerned, the submitter takes "factual" for "scathing". It's silly. People often take a defensive stance when presented with facts that clearly contradict whatever they previously claimed, so I can at least understand the psychology in the mostly negative reaction to AT&T's rebuke to FCC. What I don't get is why people side with FCC without spending the time necessary to verify the sources. It only takes a couple of hours.
It sounds like you only read the rebuttal and didn't consider the context. In this case the context is reality. The assertions AT&T makes and the way they try to cherry pick their issues just don't jive with reality. Even if they can factually tell us that they'll create N jobs in the U.S., that doesn't mean it's a good thing when independent analysis done months ago (and common sense) concluded that in addition to creating those N jobs they'll be eliminating 3N jobs.
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In any merger, there will be a loss of middle management and operational jobs, that's a given. The problem is how people try to spin it. The FCC has not done a very good job trying to make the playing field level by forcing all towers to be open for any carrier that wants to use it(if they can run their own fiber of course).
Basic fact here, T-mobile is going to go away in the next few years, if AT&T gets them or not. This means there will be an automatic reduction in competition, no matter what.
Re:Make sure to read the bottom of the page (Score:5, Interesting)
We agree with AT&T on one point however: the public should read the Analysis and Findings on AT&T’s proposed takeover.
So, who else might buy T-Mobile? (Score:5, Funny)
Imagine if Apple bought T-Mobile, then refused to sell their phones through any other service provider?
Re:Terrible idea... (Score:5, Interesting)
That's kinda what they did when they went AT&T exclusive at the start.. there's a whole big argument to be made regarding what would've happened with iOS vs. Android had Verizon not been left out of the iPhone sales fest early on and decided to retaliate with pushing and marketing the Droid the way they did.
Re:Terrible idea... (Score:5, Interesting)
On the other hand, it's possible that Android would never have been able to make it to market without Apple first muscling their way into the game the way they did. One of the benefits they got by going exclusive was that they were allowed a lot more control over their hardware and what could be installed on it than any other phone manufacturer was. You could make an argument that the smartphone market wouldn't be as big as it was without Apple showing what was possible.
Hard to tell. It's all guesswork at this point.
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"had Verizon not been left out of the iPhone sales fest early on" That's an odd way to characterize what happened. The folklore is that Apple tried to recruit Verizon but insisted that the iPhone not be screwed up by the carrier and Apple would manage all the apps. Verizon told Apple to take a hike and AT&T got exclusivity in return for accepting Apple's unprecedented demands. Way too many people don't recall that the cellphone market was utterly controlled by the carriers before the iPhone was launched
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>T mobile is dead. Period. Let the sell off of assets proceed.
My T Mobile serviced cell phone still works fine. So it's a newer, shiner kind of dead I suppose.
Poor AT&T (Score:5, Funny)
Ohhhh, poor AT&T. Your regulator has some teeth and is preserving the bit of competition that still exists in wireless? We all feel so very very bad for you.
Expectations. (Score:5, Funny)
Since things didn't go their way, did anyone really expect a different response from AT&T? Can you imagine this?
Re:Expectations. (Score:5, Insightful)
No, but I can imagine silence. Or a one-sentence 'we respectfully disagree'.
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Since things didn't go their way, did anyone really expect a different response from AT&T?
Did I expect them to suddenly agree? No. Did I expect them to disagree in a way that wouldn't antagonize the FCC? Yes. And it's gotten noticed already, as Ars Technica's article [arstechnica.com] points out in an update:
The FCC doesn't appear to be very happy about AT&T's comments. In a comment made via the FCC's Twitter feed, Joel Guerin, the chief of the FCC's Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau said he was deeply concerned about AT&T's response to the release of the report.
This is likely to cause AT&T trouble down the line. Pissing off the officials who oversee your business is never a good move. Congress is unlikely to be impressed either.
Bad news for the country (Score:2)
This is likely to cause AT&T trouble down the line. Pissing off the officials who oversee your business is never a good move.
Having utterly unaccountable people everyone has to toady to is an even worse move, for the people of the U.S.
With every year the FCC grows more intolerable.
Intolerable? (Score:2)
With every year the FCC grows more intolerable.
To whom? They got rid of their bad apple [wikipedia.org] and now seem to be finally talking some sense.
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Precisely why shouldn't they have a twitter feed? By that logic they probably shouldn't have a website or phone number either.
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I thought that this shit would be obvious.
That's a rude response (Score:5, Insightful)
They should break that company up again, it seems the first time wasn't enough to curb their arrogance.
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The proceedings would take too long, and before it would be finished we'd have a Republican in the White House again.
Re:That's a rude response (Score:4, Insightful)
We already have a Republican in the White House.
Re:That's a rude response (Score:4, Informative)
While I agree that AT&T should be broken up, the "again" part isn't really correct. The company that now calls itself AT&T isn't really the same company as the one that was broken up.
Re:That's a rude response (Score:4, Interesting)
The company that now calls itself AT&T isn't really the same company as the one that was broken up.
Considering that the AT&T which remained after the original breakup was bought out (largely for the name) by one of the Baby Bells, and that's the AT&T we have now, I'm not sure how much difference there really is. The old Ma Bell culture stayed alive and well throughout. Monoplies like Standard Oil and the original AT&T are like goddamn T-1000s: break them up all you want, they'll just reassemble and keep coming after you.
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Better yet, appoint Arnold to be the CEO. He can do to AT&T what he did to California.
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Well, one part of the original AT&T culture was not maintained by the company calling itself AT&T today. The original AT&T funded Bell Labs, one of the most significant research labs of the twentieth century which did research worthy of multiple Nobel Prizes. Nothing like that from the current company calling itself AT&T.
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actually, the company is very worried about becoming only a carrier, and not having any products. The people putting products across AT&Ts network are making piles of cash, and AT&T wants in on it. They are suffering from the big company issue of having too many pieces. The wireless division here is totally separate from DSL and home lines, which is separate from innovation. The issue with innovation is that a big company runs more on politics than ideas, and will never be nimble enough to truly inn
Re:That's a rude response (Score:5, Interesting)
Recently (tough economic times and all) I decided to really have a look at what I was paying for and what I was getting. I found out that more of my "rollover minutes" simply decayed after non-use than I ever actually used. I never used more than 20% of my "evening and weekend" minutes. I never used more than 10% of my Internet bandwidth cap.
Basically, I was paying $85 or so per month and letting most of the value of it go to waste.
So, I switched to pre-paid TracFone. I bought a decent Motorola that has a touchscreen and a decent collection of features. I lost GPS navigation, but that's ok because I have a GPS in my car now. Other than that, I can still talk, text, browse, play games, and anything else I could do before.
The phone came with a "triple minutes for life" deal. Basically, that means that so long as I use that same phone, I buy my pre-paid minutes at $0.047. If I browse the Web, it charges me for the time in minutes, instead of metering my bandwidth. Text messages are about 1.5 cents apiece to send and receive.
And all of it goes over AT&T's network. I have the same service provider as before. Same signal quality. Same Internet bandwidth.
Another thing I did was invest $30 in a decent headset for my computer. When I'm at home, I now use Google Voice to make outgoing phone calls. I get great sound quality and don't pay a penny for it. These are my new "evening and weekend" minutes...
I paid $90 for the phone, and I charged it up with a little under 1300 minutes at a price of $60. That was 2.5 months ago. I still have 430 minutes remaining. That basically means I'm using my phone for a hair under $16.50 per month now. That's a savings of about $70 per month. The cheaper service has already paid for the phone. Anybody want to buy a used iPhone 3GS?
If you use the hell out of your smartphone, you might be getting your money's worth. But if you're a more "casual" smartphone user, then you're getting seriously ripped off.
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Text messages are about 1.5 cents apiece to send and receive.
..and that's still a rip-off. Consider:
Basically, that means that so long as I use that same phone, I buy my pre-paid minutes at $0.047. If I browse the Web, it charges me for the time in minutes, instead of metering my bandwidth.
1 minute of voice with a data rate of ~4kbps is about 512 bytes. The largest text messages are about 1/2 of that with overhead. So, one minute equivalence of text messages, 120 messages, you pay $0.047 for voice, and $1.80 for text messages, around 4000% more.
That doesn't even touch on the fact that voice has a MUCH higher QoS requirement (at a premium for quality) than a text message.
Text messaging is nothing but a sacred cash cow for the telcos. I refuse to use it.
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Sorry, that should read 512 bytes per second, or 30,720 bytes per minute, which is 7200 text messages, or $108.00 compared with $0.047 for the same amount of voice data, about 23,000% more.
Such a bargain, eh?
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Man, I am having trouble with math tonight.. the 120 message figure was right. :P
overcorrections :P
AT&T spending money they need (Score:5, Insightful)
AT&T can use that money to upgrade and expand their broadband circuits. I'm in south Texas and AT&T openly admits that our lines are over subscribed. Every Tech sent to check low signal strength has confessed to over subscription. Well use that money to improve the service they are collecting for and not providing!!
translation: (Score:5, Insightful)
ATT: "We didn't get our request rubber stamped like we expected it to be after we spent all that money to get the current crop of legislators and executives elected. We spend money on campaign contributions for a reason people! The FCC's review of our proposed acquisition of T-Mobile totally neglects to take these facts into account, and instead harps on things like abusive monopoly paractices and leaked memos from our executives. Obviously the FCC is not doing its job as a captured regulator, and we are voicing our displeasure publicly so as not to oust our purchased politicians. We fully expect them take action against this FCC ruling, and further insist that they take the DoJ to task on the pending antitrust case, if they want any more of our money; we understand that elections are just around the corner. Just a reminder guys. We don't get what we want, you don't get what you want."
Sprint: "We applaud the FCC for finally doing what it was really supposed to do, and appreciate its dedication to fact finding and for ensuring a balanced economic foundation for the telecom industry. We strong urge everyone to read the FCC's report."
Re:translation: (Score:4, Interesting)
(cite) [dailycaller.com]
They just love appointing foxes to guard the henhouse, don't they? It sure worked out well for the banking industry, why not telecoms?
Question: Are these committments binding? I doubt! (Score:5, Interesting)
It's good the government did not approve this merger. Here's why:
First, behind all these statements will be legalese that I describe after each one of them.
AT&T should know that public commitments are not legally binding.
How many are these? You will not be surprised that there could be a handful of them in the USA. Even then, you could find that these so called call center employees are not directly employed. Many times, companies will outsource services to the extent that there are pay disparities for employees doing the same job.
Over what period of time may I ask? AT&T could later argue that they meant returning these jobs "over a period of two or three decades!" Imagine that.
What they do not tell you is that the offered position will be at a significantly lower pay, or that these positions will not be permanent, or that they will have conditions attached to them such that employees will fire themselves.
Who does AT&T think they are fooling?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The FCC's mission [wikipedia.org] is to "make available so far as possible, to all the people of the United States, without discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, or sex, rapid, efficient, Nation-wide, and world-wide wire and radio communication services with adequate facilities at reasonable charges.".
You may notice that it is not their mission to ensure full employment.
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Re:Question: Are these committments binding? I dou (Score:5, Insightful)
Who does AT&T think they are fooling?
They think, and are correct, that they are fooling the people who believe that Fox News is fair and balanced.
This is a technique used regularly in controlling public opinion about policy. The further out you can pull one side of the argument, the further out you can pull the middle. This is a very effective approach, because so many people believe that justice means being reasonable, and that being reasonable means giving each side half of what they are asking for.
People are social animals and have a natural tendency to believe that both sides in a debate are being fair in their assessment and sincere about what they believe is just. They believe that each viewpoint must have merit. They believe, therefore, that any point roughly halfway between the two views must fall on reasonable ground. Trusting to this belief, they believe they do not have to know he details to know a fair solution. Any entity with a stake in public policy -- corporations, politicians, power-brokers -- knows about this mechanism. The big guys all have public relations people whose job is to manipulate this, and many other similar flaws.
This results in self-feeding bias. Left unchecked, it creates a disadvantage for entities that do not exploit the problem. In an otherwise competitive system, this selects for the entities most willing and capable of exploiting the flaw. This naturally breeds ever stronger abusers of such flaws.
Eventually, there comes a correction. If it happens early, it can be mild and the problem will be abated without a significant disturbance. The longer it goes, the stronger the distortion becomes -- as does the associated correction and disturbance.
If one believes in the value of economic stability as a path toward economic advancement, it is important to seek to avoid such extremity and correction.
Read carefully (Score:5, Insightful)
Notice that every rebuttal made by AT&T is simply a statement by AT&T that they PROMISE not to do what is in their own best interest!
For example, if there is 1 fewer wireless company, there WILL be less total job positions needed. That is an obvious truth of economics : one fewer company means more consolidation, fewer independent cell towers needed, etc. Yet AT&T PROMISES to hire more Americans as CSRs, despite the fact that it would be cheaper for them to keep outsourcing.
AT&T will find it easier to raise prices with the merger because with 1 fewer competitor, the Nash Equilibrium inches closer to monopoly prices. AT&T PROMISES to do otherwise.
AT&T has no competitor to fight for rural broadband market share, yet they PROMISE to build the wires anyway.
And so on and so forth. Every rebuttal basically says "well, maybe it doesn't make market sense, but we have plans to do X if we get our way".
Think about who made this report : some lawyers and marketing folks in AT&T's executive branch. Those people are not going to be unbiased.
Really AT&T? (Score:4, Insightful)
Did AT&T really think they could do this anti-competitive $39 billion dollar move? When the provider with the most expensive plans buys out the provider with the cheapest plans it can't be anything but anti-competitive.
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Senior Executive Vice President (Score:4, Interesting)
If only they had made more friends (Score:5, Informative)
Maybe they should spend that $39 billion on upgrading their infrastructure instead of eliminating competition.
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Translation: (Score:4, Insightful)
We thought we had this one bought and paid for.
Maybe their lobbyists should have gotten receipts....
Oh Waaa (Score:2)
snap google.
Re:Money (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/ATT-Top-Campaign-Contributor-Since-1990-110351 [dslreports.com]
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Re:Money (Score:5, Insightful)
I guess giving quite a bit to Obama [opensecrets.org] didn't help them out... makes sense to change sides.
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Another thing Grandma used to say (Score:5, Funny)
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The difference between a politician and an honest politician is that an honest politician doesn't exist.
FTFY
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No, it was Grandma. The R.A.H. quote you're looking for though is:
“He's an honest politician--he stays bought.” Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land
Honest mistake. Very similar. Grandma didn't have his way with words, but she was good.
Re:Money (Score:5, Informative)
One interesting thing to look at is the percentage of an individual politician's money that comes from small donors. Contrary to what some would expect, it doesn't split by party lines (nor by candidate sanity). Instead it gives you a good, non-partisan view of just how beholden a politician is to their corporate donors. Because while the corporations may always give lots of money to both sides, if (for example) Generic Democrat #1 pisses them off, they'll just stop giving to him, and give to Generic Democrat #2 instead. Assuming Generic Democrat #1 wants to keep his job, he either needs to play nice with the big donors, or bring in lots of small ones.
Obama, Ron Paul, Gingrich, and Bachman (I told you sanity didn't matter) all get around 50% of their money from small donors. Rick Perry and Mitt Romney get 90+% of their money from major corporations and billionaires. That should tell you all you need to know about those two.
Huntsman is also in the 90+% camp, but in his case it might just be lack of name recognition. This method really only works for the big names, since the small players have trouble reaching out to individual donors through no fault of their own.
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They give money to both parties, but I do see it being more likely under GOP rule. The only thing they like more than deregulation is privatisation.
Maybe they can use other Room 641A-esque things as leverage.
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Re:Shouldn't have expected once (Score:5, Insightful)
AT&T hates business, since business means competition.
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This is awesome. A few posts ago I got to read about how Obama is pro-AT&T and pro big business because they gave him so much money during the '08 campaign.
Could you dipshits make up your minds and at least keep your rhetoric consistent?
--Jeremy
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Won't somebody please think of the children?
Re:AT&T stock (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:AT&T stock (Score:5, Interesting)
The FCC's directive is not to ensure the value of your stock. The FCC asked AT&T why the merger was good for consumers and AT&T wasn't able to provide a reasonable one.
As someone who recently came of voting age, its kind of jarring to see our government function like this. I'm used to seeing the public interest railroaded to benefit a corporate interest, a corporate interest railroaded to benefit a different corporate interest, but I've never seen the public interest held above a corporate interest like this. Hell, they didn't even decide anything and I'm excited to see this, I know they would be able to jam up the merger eventually, but right now they've just presenting findings.
Is this what democracy is supposed to look like? I fucking love it. Shit, even if government decisions continue to be against the public interest, I'd be psyched if they just had the balls to admit it with reports like this. That would be a huge step forward from the bullshit "someone is making money, therefore its good, fuck off" level of analysis I'm used to seeing.
Re:AT&T stock (Score:4, Interesting)
That's because you're new, and have been mostly going on anecdote, media, and word-of-mouth.
Media sucks, but word of mouth is actually less accurate. Believe it or not.
Consider this... the vast majority of our "government" is people who work for a living. For the USA. When the President or congress change party, you don't get a new mail carrier, firefighter, or IRS auditor. They work the same job, under largely the same rules, from one year to the next. They are neither thieves or sell-outs, but workers. And most of them are patriotic. That is the government of the people, by the people, for the people.
Don't let the idiocy of the elected officials and a couple bad court cases make you excessively cynical. It is not only a personality flaw, it will bite you. Consider an IRS audit; if you assume that The Guberment wants all your money, you're going approach it as most people do, in an adversarial way. The IRS agent can only work against you. If you consider instead that this is probably just a worker who doesn't have any ill will towards you at all, and whose job it is to make sure the number are correct, who doesn't work for a company and isn't evaluated on "profit" then you can see that a cooperative approach can have this person helping you to make sure you did your adjustments correctly so that you can keep them. I've seen people take this approach and come out of an audit ahead of where they went in, because the IRS auditor gave them some hints about deductions they were missing.
At the level of the FCC, when the agency's primary duty is to manage communications for the companies it is no surprise that they typically look for a way to give the companies as much of what they want as they can. That is actually their purpose. Most regulatory agencies are tasked more with making sure the companies are fair to each other than anything else. Can't blame them for doing their job. In this case, AT&T was basically asking to do a merger that would make them bigger than is fair to the other companies, and their correct criteria in that case is to only allow it if it is clearly better for the average citizen. That's the only reason to let one company control more of the field than congress said, with consultation from the companies, would still allow competition.
Changing the mandate of some agencies to be more worried about the average American would be great, IMO. Of course, most of the "government workers" at those agencies would like that too, they're patriotic themselves!
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It'll be back up soon enough.
Besides, you could have sold a couple of months ago when it became pretty clear what the result was going to be. And this decision is likely to save you more money, if you carry your own cellphone. (As oligopolies aren't known for keeping prices low.)
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And what's to stop AT&T from doing to T-Mobile customers what its doing to its current customer base? This event is an "AT
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The problem of 'lack of usable spectrum' is actually a problem of sharing.
There's plenty of spectrum. It's just carved up inefficiently between the carriers. Take your US phone to Europe, roaming and you will get great reception because it will roam on any of the available carriers.
If the US carriers chose to share their spectrum and tower infrastructure, they'd all get better coverage for less cost. However this won't happen since they're too busy trying to crush the competition to attempt cooperation.
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