It appears as if the engagement is off in the proposed AT&T purchase of T-Mobile. Was it something T-Mobile said? Or did AT&T not bring enough bling to the union? Or was it just a falling out, a difference of opinion?
Actually, it rather looks like the minister in charge of officiating (the U.S. Government that has to approve such mergers) questioned a bit too deeply AT&T’s commitment to the plan. In the end, AT&T realized that the government would never approve the merger.
AT&T is still crying that it can only build available bandwidth by buying up other companies with bandwidth to spare. It is now using the equivalent of that old pre-marital argument, “you didn’t deserve me, T-Mobile, but someone else will want me.”
I have to wonder why AT&T isn’t investing their billions of dollars in profit in building its own infrastructure to fill what it claims is a huge demand for bandwidth and service. I would think that if it built it’s own infrastructure, it would ultimately control its market share by sheer force of its available service. This seems like a no-brainer to me, but I may be missing something.
And since I moved from a place where AT&T coverage was ubiquitous (St. Louis Metro area) to a place where AT&T coverage is spotty at best, I do realize that they come up short in the “we are everywhere” broadband service spectrum. They aren’t everywhere. There are places in my own town where we are completely in a dead zone. They definitely need to improve their coverage areas.
I’m probably one of a lot of people who are very happy to see the end of this potential merger. I guess we’ll have to wait and see who they try to buy next. I, for one, would rather see more wireless carriers, not fewer, in our country.