You know. Life is so hard for AT&T. I feel for it. It’s really gotten a bum ride. It’s the number one wireless carrier in the United States and the 12th largest company in the country, raking in almost $125 billion in revenue and $20 billion in profits last year alone. It has so much money, in fact, that it decided to buy one of its biggest competitors, T-Mobile, for $39 billion. I mean, why not? It’s okay to want a golden goose, right?
Of course, it is fine to want things, but why is it that the 12th largest company in America so routinely sounds like a whiny rich girl? Since when did AT&T become Veruca Salt?
T-Mobile brings out the worst in AT&T
On numerous occasions throughout the 2011 T-Mobile merger talks, AT&T has released snide remarks unbecoming of any company, let alone one of the largest in the US. It accused the FCC of being incompetent, found the Department of Justice lawsuit ‘disappointing,’ and often hinted that if the deal didn’t go through there would be big job losses and that it would have to hit its users with much higher prices due to “spectrum crunch.” Half or all of its accusations could be true, but it’s the boldly rude way AT&T has gone about making high profile statements that is continually odd and shocking.
Just today, on AT&T’s Public Policy Blog, AT&T’s executive vice president of legislative affairs, Jim Cicconi, said that the 1,900 layoffs T-Mobile announced today are the fault of the FCC. AT&T, he argues, would have saved these jobs.
“Normally, we’d not comment on something like this. But I feel this is an exception for one big reason – only a few months ago AT&T promised to preserve these very same call centers and jobs if our merger was approved,” said Cicconi. “We also predicted that if the merger failed, T-Mobile would be forced into major layoffs. At that time, the current FCC not only rejected our pledges and predictions, they also questioned our credibility. The FCC argued that the merger would cost jobs, not preserve them, and that rejecting it would save jobs. In short, the FCC said they were right, we were wrong, and did so in an aggressive and adamant way. Rarely are a regulatory agency’s predictive judgments proven so wrong so fast.”
He goes on to further insult the FCC and say that it should not be “omniscient,” as if it were the only party against AT&T during the merger. The US Justice Department, Sprint, seven states, and even a group of AT&T subscribers all filed suit in opposition to the merger. And regardless…it’s over. It didn’t happen. AT&T is essentially releasing a “gotcha” statement. Worse, it’s one that is entirely misleading. AT&T promised to retain these jobs and certain other jobs if the merger had gone through, but the overall result of combining the two carriers could have resulted in huge job losses in other areas. A combined AT&T and T-Mobile may have had thousands, maybe tens of thousands of redundancies that would have been weeded out. Many people would have been laid off, in this scenario. But hey, even supposing I’m wrong, it’s still unbecoming to release statements like this.
A few other rude statements AT&T has made
AT&T insults Sprint
When Sprint filed suit to block the merger, AT&T issued this bold statement:
“This simply demonstrates what we’ve said all along – Sprint is more interested in protecting itself than it is in promoting competition that benefits consumers. We of course will vigorously contest this matter in court as AT&T’s merger with T-Mobile USA will: help solve our nation’s spectrum exhaust situation and improve wireless service for millions; allow AT&T to expand 4G LTE mobile broadband to another 55 million Americans, or 97 percent of the population; and result in billions of additional investment and tens of thousands of jobs, at a time when our nation needs them most.”
AT&T insults Department of Justice
When the US Department of Justice filed suit to block the merger, AT&T issued this statement:
“We are surprised and disappointed by today’s action, particularly since we have met repeatedly with the Department of Justice and there was no indication from the DOJ that this action was being contemplated. We plan to ask for an expedited hearing so the enormous benefits of this merger can be fully reviewed. The DOJ has the burden of proving alleged anti-competitive affects and we intend to vigorously contest this matter in court….”
AT&T insults the FCC
When the FCC opposed the T-Mobile merger, AT&T came out with a half-insulting, but mostly conspiratorial statement:
“The FCC has recognized that it is required by its own rules to dismiss our merger application. This makes all the more troubling their decision to nonetheless release a preliminary staff report on the merger. This report is not an order of the FCC and has never been voted on. It is simply a staff draft that raises questions of fact that were to be addressed in an administrative hearing, a hearing which will not now take place. It has no force or effect under law, which raises questions as to why the FCC would choose to release it. The draft report has also not been made available to AT&T prior to today, so we have had no opportunity to address or rebut its claims, which makes its release all the more improper.”
But that wasn’t all. Cicconi weighed in as well:
“We have summarized here only a portion of the infirmities we see in the FCC’s report. We would encourage all observers to read the report itself. We believe that the utter absence of balance is clear, and demonstrates that the document lacks all credibility. The decision to issue such a report that has no legal status, without a vote of the Commission, and in a proceeding that has been withdrawn, was also without precedent, and underscores that this was intended more for advocacy and to impact public perceptions. And neither is a proper basis for action by a regulatory agency.”
AT&T threatens users of future price hikes
After the Web got upset at AT&T’s decision to throttle its users, the company came back with a statement basically arguing that the only way stuff like this won’t happen is if the T-Mobile deal goes through. Yes, really.
“The bottom line is our customers have options,” said AT&T. “They can choose to stay on their unlimited plans and use unlimited amounts of data, but may experience reduced speeds at some point if they are an extraordinarily heavy data user. If speed is more important, they may wish to switch to a tiered usage plan, where customers can pay for more data if they need it and will not see reduced speeds. But even as we pursue this additional measure, it will not solve our spectrum shortage and network capacity issues. Nothing short of completing the T-Mobile merger will provide additional spectrum capacity to address these near term challenges.” (My emphasis)
We’re sorry, now get over it
If I were AT&T, I’d be upset that the merger collapsed too. Especially considering that it, for some reason, agreed to pay T-Mobile $4-6 billion if deal didn’t go through, and portions of the precious spectrum it claims is “crunched.” Honestly, based on the company’s snidy attitude alone, I’d deny them, too. AT&T has gotten almost everything it wants, but it couldn’t buy the third largest US wireless carrier. Somebody finally said no.
wmdotell from digitaltrends.com said:
Right-on! I wish I wasn’t an AT&T subscriber. Your comparison of this company to Veruca Salt of ‘Willy Wonka And The Chocolate Factory’ is brilliant! I hope a class action lawsuit by unlimited data users gets approved and puts a large dent in their earnings. But ultimately, the shareholders need to rise up and sack the current lot of execs who seem alergic to humility.
Here is the problem I have with all this. Stopping AT&T and TMobile was like closing the barn door after all the horses had left. You want to preserve competiton don’t let Alltel and Verizon merge. You want to perserve competition don’t let Sprint and Nextel merge. You want to to preserve competion don’t let the myriad of mergers that have happened in the last 5 years happen. Don’t then say you want to preserve competion when you are down to 4 major carriers competition.
I agree, in a way, but its when we get down to 3-4 competitors that these mergers really start to impact things majorly. If we get more mergers, the market is almost a duopoly.
Jeff it was already impacted by the other mergers – That’s why Tmobile is losing business. They are losing on average one million customers per year because when the other carriers merged they bought up a lot of the bandwidth which is why they were able to roll out LTE service well in advance of what TMobile could do. That’s why Verizon and AT&T can charge higher prices than TMobile and Sprint. Tmobile now has the ability to put in a smaller LTE network but still it will not be on par with the others.
Good point. T-Mobile is struggling with spectrum but this is also because Verizon and AT&T have been buying it up in other ways as well. Should spectrum be evenly allocated to all 4?
no I don’t believe that but as a condition for the previous mergers they should have been forced to free up some of their bandwidth for others. regardless of how things end up having that much bandwidth in the hands of just 2 or three players does not foster competition. There should be a moratorium on those companies being able to buy additional bandwidth to allow for emerging companies to have a fair chance to purchase some.
This company’s despicable I left them recently because I was out of contract in done with their crap. When i did they charged me an additional 150 dollars saying that I still owed them for a month service even though I could show continuous payment from my checking that prove i owe nothing . When i proved i owed nothing at their local office they sent me to collections any way for a debt they made up. The ball buster is if i want to keep my credit score im going to have to pay a debt i dont owe.
@paul- are you kidding me? Did you seriously think there wouldnt be a larger number of layoffs with a merger? Merged companies don’t grow the employees.. They would have axed a hell of a lot more than 1900 jobs. I’ve had them for 15 years and they are average at best. AT&T is a shit company, with the false advertising of unlimited data(that’s all of them), the unwarranted wiretapping, collusion with VZW on pricing, and failure to properly invest in their infrastructure. F AT&T. And
@ Brent D. Job – if you would have started with the best you would have the best and unlimited too (grandfathered VZW) 4 Life. You gotta pay to play.
Someone needs to defend AT&T so I will. I’ve had AT&T for 10
years now, and never had a single problem. In fact, AT&T is always giving me fee stuff ie: free minutes, and free text messages. Never had a dropped call or no service in an area. Maybe it’s karma, or just because I always pay bill on time. As for the merger, AT&T is just telling it like it is. You can’t argue with the facts. AT&T said people would lose jobs if the merger didn’t happen. And that’s exactly what happened.
Umm, because AT&T is one of the worst companies in the country? Seriously, they are simply toxic. I despise them. If apple offered tmobile the iPhone/iPad, I bet they would see a resurgence.
I think you are right .However I think the up and coming device OS is windows phone 7.5 and windows phone 8 if you haven’t spent some time with it , you should it’s really fresh….
I stopped in local AT&T store to see if they could help in upgrading my iPhone to current OS version. The replay was “No, we do not have the technology or access to provide this service. If your internet ( HUGHES NET ) cannot download the software and re sync you iPhone 4, you might want to try the local Library and preform the update on their ISP. ” All I could say was…” no wonder At&t is worried about Nextel crawling up the backside. ” So much for Customer Service.
At&t complains more than people who haven’t had their daily Snickers bar. Get over it At&t.
at&t is running out of bandwidth, and there is no more they can by from the government, so they need to buy someones. T-Mobile is the perfect candidate, they are small in customers, but large in foot-print, and use the same technology, so it would be a snap to instantly expand at&t’s bandwidth holdings to provide more expansive, and likely less restrictive, higher-speed wireless Internet offerings. Verizon did the same thing with Alltel a few years ago, and that wasn’t mocked like the at&t/T-Mo deal was.