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T-Mobile to acquire most of U.S. Cellular in $4.4B deal
- thfuran 2y agoI hope AT&T buys up T-Mobile soon. I've been yearning for the halcyon days.
- impulser_ 2y agoT-Mobile is almost twice the size of AT&T.
- yial 2y agoA quick Google search says t mobile has about half the customers of att. But 75% of the revenue.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- advisedwang 2y agoThey're just making a comment about the consolidation reversing the anti-trust breakup of Bell/AT&T.
- Aloha 2y agoI think Legacy AT&T made the wrong choices in divesture - they should have held on to WECo (and the labs) and the local BOC's - and spun off Long Lines - I dont know how they would have worked culturally though (or if it would have passed DOJ muster) because Long Lines was part of the core identity of AT&T.
- tivert 2y ago> T-Mobile is almost twice the size of AT&T. But if T-Mobile bought AT&T, the back-to-the-future telephone monopoly wouldn't be so obvious.
- notatoad 2y agothis says AT&T is twice as big. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mobile_network_operators_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mobile_network_operato... are you measuring by something other than subscriber count, or is wikipedia wrong?
- echoangle 2y agoYou measure by market cap. Acquisitions are paid in money, not subscribers. Edit: Also wikipedia says that the AT&T stat includes "connected devices". If that really means they count all individual connected devices, thats a useless comparison. One customer can have multiple devices.
- NewJazz 2y agoAlso those connected devices can be cars and things that nobody gives a fuck about.
- lotsofpulp 2y agoATT spends its money paying for debt used to buy DirecTV and Time Warner at obscene prices, even though anyone with half a brain cell would have known those were legacy businesses were on their way out.
- tracker1 2y agoYou would literally have a hard time paying me enough to deal with AT&T ever again. Worst CS experiences ever, and I've managed to cancel XM-Radio and AOL before.
- paul7986 2y agoTotally agree i was an ATT customer for nine year who paid on time each month and then their network went down almost nationwide and the next month they reported they were hacked. Probaby both events are separate from each other but i felt uneasy and reached out to ATT for decent customer svc to find none exists as.. - You want customer svc in person at a ATT store they say call customer service - You call and you have to wait 30 to 60 minutes to speak with someone - You can speak with someone quicker by saying cancel service yet they offered me only a $30 savings and the temporary rate would take affect 3 months later(?). - If you cancel your service in a billing cycle they force you to pay the full month (just snatched the money they didnt deserve as i left them in beginning of the month from my account).
- tracker1 2y agoMine was similar but worse than your last point... They messed up my billing three months in a row, then they cancelled it 3.5 weeks into a billing cycle for being "late" 3 months in a row, and billed at a pro-rated by the minute billing that was over a thousand dollars, when the full month was under $200 at the time. No negotiation, just "pay us."
- thfuran 2y agoBut Ma Bell was a different matter altogether. They were so great that everyone was their customer.
- bilal4hmed 2y agoLina Khan still wasting her time on big tech (to prove out her paper) while other industries like this, glasses etc slip out from under her
- rayiner 2y agoMonopolization in big tech is far more economically significant. The Big 3 cell carriers make $250 billion in annual wireless revenues combined. Their profit margin is about 15%. Google alone makes $300 billion in revenue, and has a net profit margin of 25-30%. Meta’s revenue is $130 billion and its profit margins are even higher, over 30%. The tech industry is extracting vastly more monopoly profits from consumers than any other industry.
- Scoundreller 2y agoBetter at extracting monopoly profits from consumers or from the advertisers?
- tgma 2y agoMost of Google revenue is not made from US consumer. Telecom revenue on the other hand is mostly attributable to the US consumer, whom FTC is responsible to protect.
- bydo 2y agoMonopoly is about choice, not revenue. I don't care how little Comcast or Spectrum makes compared to Google or Facebook when I'm forced to use their terrible service because there are no other options available.
- flyingfences 2y agoUS Cellular has great coverage back home (Maine) but shoddy coverage where I live now (New York) and T-Mobile vice versa. I've been on Google Fi for the past ten years because it is the only option (at least when I last looked) that jumps seamlessly between the two, and at a reasonable enough price (for a guy who doesn't use much data). If this merger makes another carrier that has good service throughout the northeast, that could change the game for a lot of customers. I'm not optimistic, though; the T-Mobile - Sprint merger was supposed to improve their service but ended up [0] jacking their prices. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40379028 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40379028
- cognaitiv 2y agoAt least as of 10-15 years ago US Cellular owned their rural markets and leased their urban markets. In NYC they are likely reselling Verizon’s network.
- synergy20 2y agoisn't google fi using t-mobile network as the backbone?
- toomuchtodo 2y agoYes, Google Fi is an MVNO of T-mobile's network.
- timw4mail 2y agoBasically exclusively at this point.
- flyingfences 2y agoGoogle Fi used T-Mobile, Sprint, and US Cellular behind the scenes. At least, they did at the time I signed up, which was why I signed up. Sprint merged into T-Mobile a few years ago; Fi dropped US Cellular last spring. Since then, I've stayed on from inertia. I'll probably switch to T-Mobile's $15 / 5 GB plan soon, since it's half the price I'm paying for now-no-better service from Fi and I rarely use more than 1 GB per month.
- move-on-by 2y agoAh yes, more consolidation. I’m sure this will in no way end up being anti-consumer. Maybe they can rebrand as Bell System as well.
- _mlbt 2y agoWhat’s the alternative? Continue to have worse rural coverage than Verizon and AT&T and hope for the best?
- Retric 2y ago4.4 billion could also pay for a lot of rural cellular infrastructure. As in most of the US, but it wouldn’t directly bring in customers.
- _mlbt 2y agoThis deal makes a lot more sense from a business perspective. They simultaneously improve coverage and acquire customers. Building out is much more time consuming with uncertain return on investment.
- Retric 2y agoSure but only if regulators allow it. Currently US Cellular and T-Mobile are profitable so they can each grow their business and make cellular service even more competitive. But post merger there’s few reasons to add a bunch of cell service anywhere.
- _mlbt 2y agoWhy wouldn’t regulators allow it? Since the Sprint merger this industry has been a three horse race. This doesn’t meaningfully remove competition for the average American consumer. What it does accomplish is strengthening T-Mobile’s rural coverage, which is really their last remaining major weakness. Now they can hopefully compete with Verizon and AT&T on more equal footing.