AT&T has gobbled up T-Mobile for hefty $39 billion and the US telecom landscape has taken a different shape.
As expected, the deal
has garnered its fair share of criticism. Until now, the telecom segment was dominated by two behemoths, Verizon and AT&T, whereas the two underdogs, T-Mobile and Sprint kept them on their toes. However, now with T-Mobile out of the way, the competition is likely to tilt in favor of big players, thereby making customers more dependent on their whims and fancies.
On the other hand, AT&T will acquire a large number of towers under the deal and thus will be able to provide wider coverage. Arguably, T-Mobile also has better reception and thus may help AT&T in fighting the menace of 'dropped calls'. We also expect AT&T to take a leaf out of T-Mobile's customer care service book, which is much smoother and is more user friendly than AT&T's service. It would also be interesting to see if AT&T will retain T-Mobile's pocket friendly rate plans, although, there are more chances of AT&T scraping these plans rather than adopting them.
And then there is the big question of iPhone! Well, T-Mobile did not take a long time to dash our hopes. The company officially announced that it would be remaining an independent company for the next one year. In other words, T-Mobile customers should not expect the magic phone anytime soon. Even after that, the transition is not likely to be smooth since both the companies run their 3G services on different frequency bands, therefore until or unless Apple comes up with a new hardware, compatible on both the frequency bands, the chances of getting T-Mobile branded iPhone are not very bright.
The deal is yet to be approved by the regulators and there are very high chances of its getting stuck in the clutches of Antitrust czars. The deal would create the largest telecom entity in the US, surpassing Verizon. Sprint has already made it clear that it is not happy with the acquisition which will "dramatically alter" the industry. Sprint pointed out that the merger would translate to two telecom giants, AT&T-T-Mobile and Verizon, controlling 80 percent of the market share. For the latest developments, keep watching this space.
One thought on “AT&T Buys T-Mobile: What it Means to You”
I’m a T-Mobile customer but this purchase will not have any effect on me whatsoever. That’s right, zero.
That’s because AT&T only bought the T-Mobile USA division, not the entire worldwide operation. Nope, I don’t live in USA so What It Means To Me is Nothing.