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AT&T to acquire T-Mobile for $39 billion

By Emil Protalinski

On March 20, 2011, 2:15 PM Breaking News

AT&T has announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire T-Mobile USA from Deutsche Telekom in a cash-and-stock transaction currently valued at approximately $39 billion. With all of the rumors of Sprint and T-Mobile joining up, this may be a little surprising, but strategically it makes more sense since the two carriers have similar networks.

The agreement has been approved by the Boards of Directors of both companies. Deutsche Telekom will receive an equity stake in AT&T that gives it an ownership interest in of approximately 8 percent. A Deutsche Telekom representative will join the AT&T Board of Directors. The deal is expected to close, pending regulatory approval, within the next 12 months.

While AT&T certainly wants T-Mobile for its subscribers, it's also clearly interested grabbing its (Long Term Evolution) network assets, improving network quality for both companies' customers, and gaining more of the limited wireless spectrum. With this transaction, AT&T is committing to a significant expansion of robust 4G LTE deployment to 95 percent of the US population to reach an additional 46.5 million Americans beyond current plans – including rural communities and small towns.

"This transaction represents a major commitment to strengthen and expand critical infrastructure for our nation's future," Randall Stephenson, AT&T Chairman and CEO, said in a statement. "It will improve network quality, and it will bring advanced LTE capabilities to more than 294 million people. Mobile broadband networks drive economic opportunity everywhere, and they enable the expanding high-tech ecosystem that includes device makers, cloud and content providers, app developers, customers, and more. During the past few years, America's high-tech industry has delivered innovation at unprecedented speed, and this combination will accelerate its continued growth. This transaction delivers significant customer, shareowner and public benefits that are available at this level only from the combination of these two companies with complementary network technologies, spectrum positions and operations. We are confident in our ability to execute a seamless integration, and with additional spectrum and network capabilities, we can better meet our customers' current demands, build for the future and help achieve the President's goals for a high-speed, wirelessly connected America."


User Comments: 27

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  1. Honestly... do we even have an FCC anymore, how is this good for consumer's and not a oligopoly.

    Why doesn't AT&T fess up and just admit, it has oversold it's backbone (bandwidth) for many years and have neglected their infrastructure. Why not spend $39 billion on that? Then they could COMPETE for our dollar.

    As it stand, now they have what they want and the CEO has no incentive to build a future network, and just stair @ their portfolio's.

    This should be disallowed

  2. lawfer said:

    Hahaha, and the AT&T bashing continues. Because, you know, Verizon is amazing.

    If, and only if, people TRIED products, they would really realize what they're missing out. All this internet belief (because that's what it really is) that AT&T's signal is the worst, is all but a belief. Just like in some states Verizon is absolutely horrible, AT&T is equally horrible.

    But in competitive states, out of the two, AT&T is usually superior, mainly because it owns most of the cell towers than any other network, in most of the metropolitan areas. Because, you know, AT&T has the most telecommunication-based government contracts.

    Now, I do hate some of their business practices, such as the CEO treating that customer so bad through e-mail last year, the stupid data caps, or the exuberant prices of some of its services. But when people talk trash about AT&T's reliability (or speed) on states/cities where rival companies have a common ground, I just find it insulting because these allegations are always unsupported, and always based on what X person said on X forum or X website. Which is OK, because people are always going to complain about bad service, and rightfully so. But don't take the bad things 10 or so people (out of the 95 million) said about AT&T, and use it as irrefutable facts.

    AT&T really hasn't had any lack of service pretty much anywhere I've been(around certain parts of florida and indiana. i did loss signal a few times but 90 percent of the time i had signal). Now as for good quailty calls thats another story. iphone to pantech impact to sony ericson...the qualty is the same..far from what others provide. For some reason, ATT phones: worse speaker phones(that i've encountered), worse longtifity of the products, worst support(throught the companies them selfs not att), The internet on all the att phones i listed is not compareable to a any t-mobile 3g connected phone i've used.

    Yea, a lot of people pull crap on att from no where but if you want someone to complain at, you chosen the right thread lol. Overall AT&T is far from a good company. Bad Customer service(for internet, tv, and phone), their rates are steap for what they provide(internet: if you buy 6 mb internet they don't give you 6 mb.., cell: they charged 15 dollars in taxes...load of ***. t-mobile did not, uverse is ridden with problems that time and time again..happen and are not fixed. the company doesn't bother to even fix them, they provide missleading information regarding their instant messaging for cell phones, they charge two months prorating compared to t-mobile..which charged a month, must i really go on?).

    Well to close this, AT&T has been listed lowest on the customer satification surveys sense as far back as i can remember..as well as so many people complaining about them..People may be ****** at times but really? if you got that many people hating AT&T there must be a dang reason..would be best to find the reason rather than complain about people!.

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