March 24, 2011 AT&T and T-Mobile merger - It's not Doom and Gloom

This week AT&T announced that it made an offer to purchase the struggling T-Mobile for many billions of dollars. Since then I have been reading up on the deal and paying closer attention to other bloggers and their thoughts on this and I found a disturbing pattern. There is a lot of anti-corporation tones and doom and gloom posts that this will the worst thing for customers that has even been conceived. Now hold on a second... That's just stupid.

I am not going to backlink to any of these blog posts and "news" articles that have flooded out on this topic because I don't want to support their blabber. But I am going to talk about each of these arguments and put a different light on it. A light of common sense from a customer's point of view.

First let's talk about the merger, why would this even be proposed. The simplest explanation is AT&T wants to continue to be competitive and T-Mobile is struggling and losing customers left and right. In addition, AT&T and T-Mobile use very similar if not the same cellular infrastructure frequencies. So integrations of the physical networks will be very easy. Sprint would have been another good merger target, but the infrastructure alone would be such a horrible project that I would think it ruled them out. Either way, AT&T would have the most subscribers across all the cellular companies. Naturally, Verizon and Sprint are whining over this only because they are going to have to compete harder. Their monopolistic argument falls flat when the concept of a monopoly is that is prohibits competition and choice. There are still more choices in and around cell companies and services for everyone.

The second big complaint is that this merger will be BAD for customers. Their main points are customer service, devices, and up front money out of pocket for customers. Let's break them down.

• Customer Service - AT&T has been tagged as the worst in customer service. I cannot speak for the legitimacy of this statement for AT&T or really anyone else. I have a hard time why so many people have so many problems that they rely on customer service so heavily. If I have an issue I dial 611 or call the 800 number, I get a rep on the phone, explain my problem and it's fixed. Where the problems come in is when people want to break the contract they signed, and didn't read, or go over their limits and complain about the fees that they agreed to when they bought the phone. I believe there are just some people who are on this Earth to complain about everything and they will have a problem with any company's customer service no matter what it is. It's these people who get their food spit on when they send it back because the steak was 2 degrees cooler than ordered.  However, the merger of T-Mobile, which has been tagged as the best in customer service is not bad thing as long as it's merged right.
• Devices - This argument is one I continue to laugh at. People out there have built this expectation that we are entitled to hundreds of devices that all do pretty much the same thing. Phone now and in the future all do the same thing. They make calls, text, run applications, email, internet, take pictures. The variety is all cosmetic and minor technical differences. Why do we need 100 choices? Do people have that much disposable income and vanity that they are changing phones more then once every 2-3 years? I don't get this. I upgrade every two years just because I can, but there are some out there who get the next and best each release, once a year if not more frequent. Yes this merger will reduce the number of devices, but it sure will NOT reduce functionality of the devices. If you don't like the device choice, choose to go elsewhere.
• Up Front Money To Customers - Oh boy. This is the doom statement. FEAR. The customer will have to shell out all this cash to stay on the network. FALSE. This merger will not happen overnight. It will be years for the full transition to happen. Yes there will be network changes but there will be plenty of time for all the customer's contracts on both sides to expire and get renewed as they would normally on new paper and new phones to get along with it. No one will be forced to do anything on day one. Ridiculous fear tactic. But I guess you need a hook to get the article fully read.

What about the up side to this? First off is the AT&T and T-Mobile coverage. AT&T just added and improved it's stressed tower network. Calls will be kept from start to end, data bandwidth will be faster, and as a competitive move AT&T could revert back to unlimited data and force the other guys to do the same. AT&T's network may be that strong to handle it now and puts the pressure on the other guys to compete to do the same. 

At the end of the day I like this move. I was a Verizon customer for 5 years then went to AT&T for the iPhone. AT&T has horrible cell coverage but the iPhone and iPad is a cornerstone tool in my business and personal life so I dealt with it. This deal, as long as the network improves, will keep me an AT&T customer. 

End of Line.

@binaryblogger

Posted in: Apple Inc,iPhone,Technology