AT&T buys T-mobile for $39 billion!!
 

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) ? AT&T Inc. has signed an agreement with Deutsche Telekom AG to purchase T-Mobile USA in a cash-and-stock deal worth about $39 billion, the companies announced Sunday.

The boards of directors of both AT&T (T 27.94, +0.20, +0.72%) and Germany?s Deutsche Telekom (DTEGY 13.58, +0.03, +0.22%) have approved the acquisition, which is subject to regulatory approvals and is expected to close in about a year, the wireless companies said in a joint statement.

The purchase includes a cash payout of $25 billion, with the remainder to be covered with AT&T common stock. AT&T can hike the cash part of the purchase by up to $4.2 billion, the statement said.

Terms of the deal also give Deutsche Telekom a roughly 8% stake in AT&T, and a Deutsche Telekom representative will join AT&T?s board.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/att...ion-2011-03-20

damn, somehow not excited at all to become att's customer

As if being a part of at&t is some sort of an improvement for their customers.

Ditto. Hopefully merging the networks I won't see too much if a change in speed locally. I'm in Tampa Bay, not the largest metro. Fingers crossed.

I'm with you, ATT around here sucks...

I've had a positive experience with T-Mobile

AT&T's customer service is far superior to Verizon's that's why they've hung on even with less superior signal service. The two merging will only make the network bigger and stronger.

Also, I never drop any calls with AT&T ,had some issues about 1.5 years ago. But not since then.

they were trying to get rid of t-mobile usa for a while now, never played out the way they planned. seems like they finally succeeded.

real biz...

I have no problems with att, never had a single dropped call (ok maybe once or twice) in over 5 years. Maybe you just need to live in the city?

damn i offered 38.5 billion :(

I prefer my tmobile

I'm assuming coverage won't change, but if it does I'll have to switch.

ATT just doesn't get reception here, even though it's a major metro area. I had to switch from ATT to TMobile just to be able to make calls from my own condo.

enjoy that memory.

t mobile was a 4th in the cell phone race, needed to make a move. joining GSM forces makes this a huge force to reckon with in the US.

they shoulda spent the money on new towers for fuck's sake

I like Metro PCS. They are a NO BULLSHIT company.

Why build out 4G when you can just buy it wholesale? Done and done :)

I've been with T-mobile for over 10 years now. If this gets approved I'm switching to Verizon.

Would be nice if they kept all the towers in the network(s)
I already know if approved for the sell, that rates will go up for Tmobile customers.

I have been with Tmobile since they were Voice Stream, and lately customer service has gone to shit, now I see why!

Didn't AT&T just limit ISP usage as well to like 150 Gigs? They said only 2% of customers will see a bill increase!

Congratulations, AT&T company.

DSL customers are limited to 150 GB per month, U-verse customers 250 GB. Over those limits it's $10 for an additional 50 GB.

Ugh :( Man, so not looking forward to this.

Getting 4.936Mbps down and 481Kbps up on my AT&T 3G right now.

my dsl is only 4.324Mbps down and 393Kbps up. :P

love the faux patriotism and lower prices angle AT&T is pushing. I'll be one of those that will leave before the merger is approved, that's how much I hate AT&T.

T-Mobile's problem has almost always been the phone selection - it was always mediocre, it was like they weren't even trying.

Then they bought the AWS frequencies and the Government naturally took forever to get off it so T-Mobile can launch 3G

as a long time tmobile customer I am hoping things only change for the better. The ATT service used to be shit where i lived, thats why I switched. From the few articles ive read so far, ATT will force customers on 3g and 4g to switch to an att phone. They will be sharing the cost with customers, if not eating it all.

The bad thing I read on Fortune is, they think ATT will be bumping up rates to cover the cost of the billion dollar integration they will have to do to merge the 2 networks.

AT&T is without doubt the very worst company in America if not the world. If Steve Jobs had not done the iPhone deal with them they would be in the shitter without a doubt. I also believe the iPhone could have been even bigger had Steve gone with Verizon or opened the iPhone up to all companies.

Now with the acquisition of T Mobile they have another company to fuck up :321GFY

right, like deciding which phones are released and which aren't. And AT&T's penchant to lock Android phones and features.

It was T-Mobile who took a chance on Android first by the way

This royally sucks...

Being a T-Mobile user I am not looking forward to having to deal with AT&T. T-mobile's customer service skills are bar none. Nobody takes care of their customers better. I am always right even if I am very wrong when I make the call and they always bend over backwards for me.

Cost wise T-Mobile has $19.99 all lines covered unlimited text messaging. I wish all carriers had this kind of shit. Looks like I will be switching to Verizon now just to have all of my shit on one bill if nothing else.

Ugh, I HATE AT&T. I used to have them years ago for my land line and after several EXTREMELY bad customer support experiences I vowed to never ever use that company again. My cell phone is with T-Mobile and I couldn't be happier. Especially since I frequent Europe a lot and T-Mobile has awesome reception there.

So now I can pretty much expect having billing issues again along with horrendous customer support to get it fixed.