Myside's Spew - Blog of Spontaneous Combustible Spew

Litigation Against the AT&T and T-Mobile Monopolistic Merger to Settle The Cause of Increase to Market Price for Services

22 July, 2011 15:41 CST6CDT

AT&T Monsterupdated 2012-01-28

Fight AT&T's Takeover of T-Mobile - Get Involved, you may be eligible for compensation!  You may also take action here: Stop the AT&T T-Mobile Merger

 

  • PCMag.com: AT&T Customers Challenge AT&T, T-Mobile Merger "We've assembled a team of lawyers across the country who are working with us to jointly represent AT&T customers challenging AT&T's takeover of T-Mobile," said Barry Davis, a Miami-based trial lawyer working with Bursor, in a press release.
  • cnet News: AT&T customers try to block merger with T-Mobile The main argument in the arbitration request is that the merger will lead to higher prices and diminished service, which would harm consumers. The customers are asking that the merger be blocked or at the very least that certain requirements be put on the merger, such as AT&T divesting some wireless spectrum and stopping its practice of entering into exclusive contracts with handset makers.
  • PCMag.com: AT&T Spent 58 Percent More to Lobby U.S. Government in 2Q With the Senate's top antitrust lawmaker recently coming down on the proposed acquisition—dubbing it "highly dangerous to competition and consumers"–perhaps AT&T and T-Mobile will need to sink a few more dollars into the lobbying pot if they're going to have any shot at boosting the image of the $39 billion deal in front of the federal agencies that could block it. - David Murphy
  • CharlotteObserver.com: AT&T asks for support on T-Mobile "We all have experienced dropped calls, slow speeds and all that," Marshall said. "This merger is pretty much going to make this a thing of the past."
  • The Daily Caller: Scripted opposition to wireless merger raises credibility questions Last month the Atlanta Journal-Constitution pointed out that more than half of the filed comments opposing the merger from Atlanta residents "were identical, taken from a statement posted on a website by the Free Press."
  • The Hill: Group says AT&T/T-Mobile merger bad for mobile app makers Opponents of the merger claim it would result in a wireless duopoly with the market controlled by AT&T and Verizon Wireless. Black argues that AT&T has shown a history of stifling innovation in the past.
  • "AT&T's 'do-over' submission is a last-ditch attempt to distract regulators, politicians and consumers from the fact that it has failed to provide any evidence that its proposed takeover of T-Mobile yields meaningful benefits. Its latest model, clearly constructed with predetermined results in mind, does nothing to change the negative consequences of the takeover for consumers in the form of higher prices, reduced innovation and decreased investment. The facts do not justify allowing that to happen, and we believe the ongoing investigations by the Department of Justice, the Federal Communications Commission and 11 state attorneys general and various state regulatory commissions will reach the same conclusions." - Vonya B. McCann, senior vice president of Government Affairs for Sprint
  • cnet News: AT&T/T-Mobile merger finds more support in the states The decision puts Louisiana in a large group of states that has shown strong approval for the merger in one way or another. At the time of this writing, 26 state governors (including Jindal) have sent letters of support to the FCC and the Arizona Corporation Commission voted to approve the deal without a hearing earlier this month. And just yesterday, Arkansas Attorney General Dustin McDaniel (R) announced he had jointly signed a letter to the FCC with attorneys general from Utah, Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Michigan, Mississippi, North Dakota, South Dakota, West Virginia, and Wyoming.
  • Business Insider: AT&T Confirms Rumors That It Will Slow Down Data Speeds For Some Customers AT&T dropped us an e-mail this weekend, finally confirming rumors that the carrier will begin throttling data speeds for the top 5% of data users still on an unlimited plan..  In the note, AT&T blames a spectrum shortage for the policy, and says the only option is to complete its merger with T-Mobile...
  • gigaom: The going gets tough for AT&T's T-Mo plans The Federal Communications Commission said it would combine the review of AT&T's purchase of spectrum from Qualcomm with the agency's review of Ma Bell's purchase of T-Mobile. The FCC's decision on Monday night could be seen as the agency taking a careful view of consolidating so much spectrum in the hands of one company, which could be a blow for AT&T's plans to buy the No. 4 player in the U.S. market.
  • Josh Levy: AT&T's Wannabe Merger: It's the Jobs, Stupid Given this political environment, you'd think politicians would want to keep far away from anything that smells of lost jobs..  But AT&T's merger with T-Mobile — which will likely give the pink slip to as many as 20,000 workers — must smell like roses. There seems to be no other explanation for why some members of Congress would embrace the deal...
  • cnet News: AT&T may divest $8B in assets to close T-Mobile deal, report says While it's no huge surprise that AT&T will need to make concessions--the company's chief executive, Randall Stephenson, said as much--this is the first time there has been a value placed on the trade-offs it will have to make to get the deal done.
  • DSLReports.com: Leaked AT&T Letter Demolishes Case For T-Mobile Merger - Lawyer Accidentally Decimates AT&T's #1 Talking Point Yesterday a partially-redacted document briefly appeared on the FCC website --accidentally posted by a law firm working for AT&T on the $39 billion T-Mobile deal (somewhere there's a paralegal looking for work today). While AT&T engaged in damage control telling reporters that the document contained no new information -- our review of the doc shows that's simply not true. Data in the letter undermines AT&T's primary justification for the massive deal, while highlighting how AT&T is willing to pay a huge premium simply to reduce competition and keep T-Mobile out of Sprint's hands.
  • Dave Saldana: AT&T Messes with Texas: Is Campaign Cash More Important than Latino Jobs? Perry is one of the biggest cheerleaders for Dallas-based AT&T's proposed $39 billion merger with wireless rival T-Mobile, a deal which stands to put as many as 20,000 T-Mobile employees out of work if it's approved. Particularly vulnerable are those workers who have jobs that duplicate those already done by AT&T employees--think customer service and retail workers. AT&T is promising investors $10 billion in "synergies" (read: cuts) to services like call centers that it's suspiciously silent about in its public statements. Three major call centers that could be mothballed are in Texas, two of them in overwhelmingly Latino communities where workers were recruited and hired for their bilingual skills.
  • Reuters: AT&T sues customers seeking to block T-Mobile deal In eight lawsuits filed last week, AT&T accused Bursor & Fisher and a second plaintiffs' firm, Faruqi & Faruqi, of trying to pressure AT&T into "an extortionate settlement" by encouraging AT&T customers to file multiple claims against the merger..  Scott Bursor, the lawyer behind the "Fight the Merger" campaign, said the American Arbitration Association has already overruled AT&T's objections and moved forward with the arbitration process.. .
  • The Washington Post: AT&T, T-Mobile merger faces new criticism from Free Press The file, an AT&T letter, revealed that the company estimates rolling out LTE to 97 percent of the county will cost $3.8 billion. The file, which was uploaded to the FCC docket without first being redacted for public view, has since been removed and resubmitted with the redactions in place. 
  • KCBJ: FCC restarts clock on consideration of AT&T purchase of T-Mobile The FCC notified AT&T (NYSE: T) by letter on Friday that it was resuming its consideration of the merger after receiving new models the company is using in its argument for the deal. The new information concerns AT&T claims that benefits to the consumer from its size efficiencies outweigh any potential anticompetitive effects of the acquisition. 
  • The New York Times: U.S. Moves to Block Merger Between AT&T and T-Mobile The Justice Department on Wednesday sued to block the proposed $39 billion merger between the cellphone giants AT&T and T-Mobile USA, arguing that keeping them separate would preserve competition in the wireless industry and even help save jobs of American workers.
  • The New York Times: AT&T Plans to Woo U.S. And Fight It AT&T has a strong incentive to determine how many conditions the Justice Department might impose on the proposed merger. If the costs of those conditions are "reasonably likely to be more than $7.8 billion," according to the merger agreement, AT&T can walk away from the transaction without having to pay a breakup fee to T-Mobile of $3 billion in cash plus wireless airwaves worth an estimated additional $3 billion.
  • infoZine: Seven States Join DOJ in Suit Against AT&T Washington, D.C. - infoZine - On Friday, the Department of Justice (DOJ) gained the support of seven state attorneys general in their efforts to block the AT&T/T-Mobile merger. Attorneys general from New York, Washington, California, Illinois, Massachusetts, Ohio and Pennsylvania, representing more than one-third of the American population, signed on. 
  • seattle-pi: Feds ask how T-Mobile merger could really create jobs "Our review of the information currently in our record suggests that AT&T's responses on this issue remain incomplete," wrote Rick Kaplan, chief of the Federal Communication Commission's wireless telecommunications bureau. "Indeed, AT&T to date has produced almost nothing in response" to the FCC's questions on the deal's effects on T-Mobile and AT&T employees.

 Big Win! AT&T Drops Its T-Mobile Takeover Bid

AT&T just announced it's finally abandoning its doomed merger with T-Mobile.  For nearly a year, we've been showing that this deal would have only meant higher prices, fewer choices and tens of thousands of lost American jobs. Free Press knew it; the Department of Justice agreed; so did the FCC.

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Main Entry:   spew   Pronunciation:   \ˈspyü\
Function: verb
Etymology: Middle English, from Old English spīwan; akin to Old High German spIwan to spit, Latin spuere, Greek ptyein   First Known Use: before 12th century

intransitive verb
  1. VOMIT
  2. to come forth in a flood or gush
  3. to ooze out as if under pressure : EXUDE
transitive verb
  1. VOMIT
  2. to send or cast forth with vigor or violence or in great quantity <a volcano spewing out ash> —often used with out —spew·er noun
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