AT&T Purchases T-Mobile in Surprising Move - Associated Content

AT&T announced March 20th that it had entered into an agreement to acquire T-Mobile USA from Deutsche Telekom for $39 billion dollars. Although it has yet to go through completely it is pretty much a done  deal. After the deal is approved (the U.S. Department of Justice, who along with the FCC will need to give approval for the merger), T-Mobile expects that it could take up to 12 months for the merger to become complete.

This deal comes as a surprise because just a few weeks ago it was Sprint that was in talks with T-Mobile for a merger. Apparently AT&T had the price that T-Mobile wanted. The merger between AT&T and T-Mobile makes more sense being that they both use GSM technology. For those thinking about unlocking their iPhone and hopping over to T-Mobile, there is no point after today.

So all of you T-Mobile users who are thinking you are now stuck with AT&T's crappy service, don't panic. If AT&T, or any other provider, really wanted to improve their coverage, what better way to do it then to merge your company? Adding or upgrading existing cell towers takes a great deal of effort and is entirely constrained by federal, state, and local regulatory approval. Not to mention that most of these regulators have proven themselves to be too slow to allow the improvements that the carriers want to make. So why not buy another companies towers to do the job for you?

AT&T also benefits by adding 33 million subscribers to it's already 95.5 million, creating a grand total of 132.5 million subscribers for AT&T. Now if you want to use GSM phone technology you are going to have to go with AT&T. One question remains, will AT&T live up to T-Mobile's standards and top notch customer service or will they continue to run things as usaul?

Read what T-Moblie has to say at T-Moblie.com

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