AT&T and T-Mobile US announced this week that AT&T will be buying T-Mobile US from Deutsche Telekom for $39 billion. This seems like great news for AT&T since they’ll benefit from T-Mobile’s existing network, but everything to lose for existing T-Mobile customers. In no particular order, here’s why:
- AT&T will become the only GSM based mobile carrier in the US. If one of your criteria is to buy a phone that allows you to easily roam on another networks worldwide and easily swap SIM cards, then your only option will be with AT&T. Sprint apparently offer some CDMA/GSM dual technology phones, but since their US network is CDMA, they don’t have many of the dual phones on offer.
- Find me one AT&T customer (past or present) who says they love AT&T’s customer service. I’ve been with T-Mobile for over 4 years and every interaction with them has been awesome, either in person or over the phone.
- Find me one AT&T customer who will tell you that AT&Ts coverage is great
- Find me one AT&T customer who will tell that they’ve never had a dropped call. From memory I think I may have had one dropped call once on T-Mobile, but I can’t honestly remember (any AT&T customer reading that will probably raise their eyebrows at this point. “Huh? Really? I get a dropped call at least once a day”
- Compare T-Mobile’s plans with AT&T. My current plan on T-Mobile with unlimited data (throttled at 5GB), unlimited texts, 1500 anytime minutes, free nights and weekends is $65. I just looked at AT&T’s site and the equivalent options to get me anything close to the service I currently get with T-Mobile (900 mins, unlimited texts, 4GB data capped) will cost me $130 a month. That’s almost TWICE what I currently pay. No thankyou.
So, I plan to stay with the merged company for as long as my current contract is in play and I get the same service for the same cost, but as soon as anything starts changing to the service or my plan to get rolled onto an AT&T equivalent then I’ll be looking to terminate my contract. I have no plan whatsoever so pay $120 a month for what I currently get. No thankyou AT&T.