AT&T to buy Tmobile for $39B
 

In The Race For More Spectrum, AT&T Is Acquiring T-Mobile For $39 Billion

Yikes.

Looks like Tmobile will have to pull the commercials with the cute chick in the red/white dress:

Wow! Aside from the interesting change in advertising strategy T-Mobile will have to undergo ("Um, all that crap we talked about AT&T, well we were just playing around!"), I think it is bad for us little consumers. If we're left with AT&T and VZ then they'll really have us by the nuts. Sprint will be an outsider and while they offer the best prices, they'll get run over by the two giants.

Technically speaking, how will things go down? T-Mobile boasts the largest 4G network against AT&T's slow and crappy service. How will the two networks integrate in terms of coverage and speed?

IMO - AT&T just bought themselves a 4G network and 45MM customers and won't have to upgrade their own crap network. It was a no brainer. AT&T bridges the 2 networks and turns off their legacy network. Done.

Damn...she is good, although not as good as CZJ. ;)

Wonder how it effects the coverage map as compared to VZ. My guess is, not much.

Looking at T-Mobile and AT&T coverage maps, it's tough to say what they'll do with the networks beyond bridging them. They'll have to figure out the best way to optimize the 2 so that they don't have to maintain 2 parallel networks.

AT&T Coverage Viewer

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Well, as much as I love the low prices I have with Sprint, and have no issues in the city... I have little to no voice coverage at the Tickfaw house and no data coverage there. Had some friends up there yesterday, Verizon has full voice and 3G data coverage up there... I'd might end up having to switch, ironically enough the final move time will be just about when my contract is up with Sprint, go figure.

And not only does ATT not have any more coverage than Sprint up there, T-mobile has less/no coverage... so this buyout/merger doesn't help them at all in my case.

looks like the monopoly is almost done. I thought they broke up MA Bell so consumers would have competitive rates and choices? So much for that idea.

Actually what AT&T has bought is valuable spectrum and the 45MM customers. T-Mobile uses the exact same 3G technology as AT&T (GSM), although in some cases at slightly different frequencies. And both have gone to the same approach of implementing HSPA+ as a graceful (and speedy) path to LTE. But the bottom line is the integration of these two wireless networks is going to be a piece of cake.

What T-Mobile customers gets out of this is a path to LTE, which they didn't have before now.

I look for Verizon to take a shot at acquiring Sprint as a response to this move by AT&T. Both Verizon and Sprint use CDMA with EVDO for their existing 3G networks, although Verizon is going with LTE for its 4G network while Sprint has placed its bets (a losing one, in my opinion) on WiMax.

Will be interesting to see how it all shakes out, and whether the FCC and DOJ will allow AT&T (or Verizon) to acquire one of the other top 4 national wireless carriers.