At&t buys T-Mobile

[ChipsHH]

...The title says it all, as I don't really have much to say about it at the moment. Thoughts on the crossover? What it means for the world? Thinking of switching in a year?

[ilovetights]

for the WORLD?? They're seemingly phone companies but that aside I have no clue what you are talking about!!

[legs777777]

I think i'll stick with O2 for now!

[BoyLegs]

This means Catherine Zeta-Jones will be replaced by Ernestine (the Lily Tomlin character).

[Waisted_Giraffe]

does it really matter? T-Mobile in UK used to be Mercury one 2 one until bought out by the parent company. From a UK point of view the big boys have been around for at least 20 years in a market that is near saturation and are all struggling to keep market share and make money; there have been various name changes and joint ventures along the way and I think we can expect some more. The issue therefore is for current users and whether existing levels of service will remain but because the market is still competitive to keep customers, I highly doubt they can afford to lose custom. R

[wood&metal]

If you can't beat em', buy em'...

[karen]

Wow, I haven't been on here in like a long time!! My first post just happens to be talking about cell phones, lol. I love it as much as I love shoes. I can tell you now that there is no change at all at T Mobile. My boyfriend is a sales associate there and business is as usual. He was tellimg that if there was going to be any changes, it won't be until next year. For now, T Mobile is acting independently despite of the merger.

[roniheels]

He was tellimg that if there was going to be any changes, it won't be until next year. For now, T Mobile is acting independently despite of the merger.

This is usually the case with any merger. Sadly, like many mergers, next year there could very likely be cutbacks and layoffs based on the consolidation of the merger. That happened with the company I was with many years ago.

[ChipsHH]

I personally don't want this move to happen, whether it's for the good of the world or not (I believe AT&T's exact words were based on that concept). I kinda like how it is right now, and definitely don't want to live in a growing AT&T world If they really want a 3-company war going, then I see other smaller companies like Boost Mobile, Cricket, and U.S. Cellular being bought very soon. I saw somewhere that AT&T's reception would be improved if the move happened, though..

[HighNHeels83]

I'm thinking about switching. I used to be a senior tech for Apple working for the iPhone project. I hated AT&T and could not stand the way they worked or treated their customer base. I also hate Verizon and now T-Mobile has been bought by AT&T... It would be awesome if we had some of the European carriers over here, like Orange, Vodafone or O2.

[hhboots]

I personally don't want this move to happen, whether it's for the good of the world or not (I believe AT&T's exact words were based on that concept). I kinda like how it is right now, and definitely don't want to live in a growing AT&T world

Outside of the US, there's many other very large phone companies too. But anyway, I just wanted to give you a brief history of AT&T and what you see now is in fact the third version of AT&T that has once again become a massive powerhouse company.

Originally, AT&T was pretty much the only phone company in the US for several decades. It was forcibly broken up as a monopoly in the early 80's into 7 "baby bell" regional companies and what remained of AT&T "Ma Bell" was a somewhat bruised core company that limped along through the rest of the 80's. In the 90's, the core company reinvented itself and started to grow heavily through several acquisitions, by the end of the 90's they were a large wireless, broadband, cable, computer and network services company that was so unwieldy and poorly organized that they essentially fell apart when the 2000 "dot com bubble" burst and split into 3 smaller companies again, the broadband and cable portion was bought up by Comcast, the wireless portion was merged and became Cingular Wireless, the remnants of the core company was then bought up by one of the original baby bells, called SBC.

SBC then took the AT&T name for themselves, and started to build back up for a third time. They re-purchased Cingular Wireless and bought out several smaller wireless companies and other baby bells to now become the once again giant company you know today.

The Colbert Report show did a hilarious take on the history of AT&T around the time Cingular was bought up by SBC(AT&T), it is pretty fun to watch. http://www.phonenews.com/images/2007/1/colbert-report-roasts-att-cingular.mp4 (you might need quicktime to view it).