The proposition of this merger is one of the most blatantly negative outcomes for the public I've heard in some time. Anyone with even an inkling of sense regarding this industry understands that it would be very dangerous and troublesome for consumers if T-Mo were absorbed into AT&T -- not only would it pare down the oligopoly that is mobile telco and allow further price gouging (which is already quite excessive; cf. 20¢/text), but AT&T would have acquired the entire GSM market in the US, leaving current T-Mo customers with no choice but to use AT&T or get a new phone and foreign visitors with no choice but to roam on AT&T.
> (somewhere there's a paralegal looking for work today)
I like to think that somewhere there's a paralegal holding his head high for the "accidental" damage he inflicted to this potential merger. Good for you, man.
I think that is overstating the negative. You basically are going to get significant coverage improvements for TMO and ATT customers, and the cost will be potential price increases due to decreased competition. As an ATT customer, I really want the Tmo bandwidth. I'll take the risk.
I think you missed the point of the leaked letter. It claims that AT&T could have gotten the relevant coverage improvements for roughly 1/10 the price of the merger ($3.8 billion vs $38 billion). Why is AT&T willing to pay the extra $34+ billion? Taking out a key competitor seems like the obvious motive.
I wonder why they haven't gone ahead and made coverage improvements, then. Perhaps they've calculated that increased user satisfaction won't net them $3.8 billion more in profit.
That's in the letter too. ATT stopped considering building out their own network for $3.8B back in Jan, right around the time they started considering acquiring T-Mobile for $38B.
They decided to spend 10 times more on a process of regulatory approval and service integration that would likely take about as long as it would to simply build out their own network.
The implication being that ATT isn't doing this for T-Mo's network, but anti-competitively to crush Sprint by preventing them from getting T-Mobile's network and customers.
The coverage improvements would take years to build out their existing infrastructure with new base stations (erect new towers or lease space on existing towers, purchase and install equipment). By buying TMO, they would get an instantaneous coverage increase and instantaneous capability increase.
There has to be a substantial cost of opportunity if it takes them (e.g.) 5 years to build the infrastructure themselves. There also is the risk that ATT could not achieve the full coverage because it has gotten increasingly difficult to get zoning permissions to build unsightly cell towers.
> By buying TMO, they would get an instantaneous
> coverage increase and instantaneous capability
> increase.
Not really. Most of the coverage AT&T is lacking and proposed to build out to expand from 8x% to 9x% coverage is in rural areas where T-Mobile's network is even weaker than AT&T's. In other words, there are very few places where T-Mobile has coverage and AT&T doesn't already; most of the new coverage they'd get in this deal is redundant.
Beyond that, we're primarily talking about LTE coverage. That would require significant additional investment even if you added T-Mobile's (GSM/UMTS/HSPA+) infrastructure to the mix.
I knew I'd get down voted because this is an emotional issue for some. I didn't miss the point of the letter. It said the cost woud be to 3.8 billion to move LTE coverage from 80% to 97%. It didn't say the cost of matching the entire Tmo footprint in the US would be 3.8 billion. There would be massive coverage infill improvements for ATT by taking on the Tmo towers in addition to the LTE improvement. This would be a massive win for ATT customers in quality of service. It may bite them in price down the road, but definite good in the short term.
There is already too little competition in carriers (and telecoms in general). Even completely ignoring the document, I can't imagine who thought public good would have been served by allowing such a merger.
Doesn't matter to the politicans. They don't work for the American public, they work for the corporations who give them money and high paying jobs later in life.
The state of regulatory capture in this country makes corrupt Latin American dictatorships look like bastions of ethics and accountability by comparison.
edit: Downvote away. At least in Latin America, everyone accepted the corruption was going on. Here we pretend the revolving door between policy enforcement and well-paid private sector jobs in the enforced-upon industries is totally fine and not at all subject to conflicts of interest.
Fuck, man, one of the people who approved the NBC/Comcast acquisition later took a very cushy job with... Well, I'll leave it to you to guess. Spoiler: she didn't join a consumer advocacy nonprofit.
I didn't down-vote you (I think that its lame to ninja down-vote - it defeats the purpose of conversation), but I think that your initial comment was just a bit hyperbolic.
I disagree with your edit too though. Who here in the US is pretending that there is no revolving door? I don't think that anyone is ignoring the problem. I just think that most ordinary people are completely ignorant of the problem.
Big media has very little interest in reporting on the extent of the problem (for obvious reasons), and most people don't read the kind of news sites that discuss the issue openly. For most ordinary people, the issue isn't ignored so much as it is out of site, out of mind.
The problem is that ordinary people make up the majority of the population. It is a real problem, even when the revolving door is a huge issue[1] it is hard to keep the interest of the general public. The general public is kind of like my cat; intent on stalking something for a few seconds then off scampering around after the latest amusements.
> I don't think that anyone is ignoring the problem. I just think that most ordinary people are completely ignorant of the problem.
This is fair – but I've honestly heard apologia for the issue by people who believe this is acceptable. "Only insiders understand the issues at play!" goes the cry.
The ignorance is ever more damning, I suppose. Which is more ripe for corruption – apathy or ignorance? Apathy strikes me as the much more mutable of the two. If people know nothing about the potential for corruption, it spreads unchecked.
Whether the American people are too lazy or too ignorant, the result is the same. An enormous power can be hijacked by anyone with a big enough bank account.
Thinking about the issue some more - maybe I was wrong to disagree with your edited initial comment. I really do think that the American public is both apathetic and ignorant, and the majority of the country's current problems derive from these failings.
They are apathetic, but they are not apathetic towards any specific issue. No, they are apathetic to anything that would seem to distract them from the normal course of their daily schedule. I do not think that it would be difficult for "ordinary" people to take a few minutes and become informed about what is going on. If I know, you know, and (probably) most of the people on Hacker News know - well, it can't be impossible to find out.
I think that, well, most people content themselves that party affiliation and straight-ticket voting are all that is necessary to ensure a functioning democracy. It just seems strange to me, that in a country where so many people pride themselves on being patriotic, there is so little intellectual curiosity with regards to how it functions.
The tyranny of the majority is usually used to refer to the potential for the opinion of the many to disenfranchise the rights of the few. I wonder if there is something more insidious than this though. What could be the side effects of the self-selected nonchalance of the many?
I was once told that to talk about a problem without providing a solution is not a good way to advance in society, but, really, I'm completely at a loss. How do you get the majority of people to be interested in something that does not provide immediate economic benefits (without resorting to indoctrination)?
> I was once told that to talk about a problem without providing a solution is not a good way to advance in society, but, really, I'm completely at a loss.
I raise my glass to you, as we've arrived to the same place. I don't know, either. The old trope goes that we get the government we deserve. And here it sits. It makes me so angry and frustrated because it's one problem I can identify regularly in my world that I am powerless to address. The issues are too large, too systemic, and too self-perpetuating. Another trope: to enslave a man, convince him he is free. Fearing a powerful government, ours was too feeble to prevent the rise of corporate power with influence on all, accountable to none.
I fear something must break first. I'm sadly reminded of Brave New World – everyone doped up on whatever meager pleasures they've been convinced matter. Until people lose their cable TV, their Doritos, their strip mall shopping centers, they can get fucked but still convince themselves of their prosperity. And perhaps they have it, relative to history, and relative to the rest of the world. But at what cost? How many choices are no longer theirs? How much information can they no longer trust? How much of their potential is capped because of opportunities denied to them by corporate interest?
I agree with both of you but feel compelled to weigh in:
1. Although you recognize political problems, you're not about to become a politician to fix them: The best way to solve a lot of these problems might be from the inside. But, politics has got to be the worst field to go into. An offhand comment can end your career. Best case scenario, a lot of people will hate you for making decisions. A right decision for some will be an absolute wrong decision for others, and vice versa. And let's say you try to go your career supporting the underdog... the underdog often doesn't have any money and you need money to campaign... and you might say, "you shouldn't need a lot of money to campaign", but let me ask you this: if it's not money you need to campaign, then what should it be?
2. Has there ever been a time when those in power don't get extra privileges for supporting causes that benefit their [monetary] benefactors? I think it's important to at least acknowledge that never before in history has there existed a time when political favors of some sort are not divvied out in exchange for monetary favors. It just seems to me that for every law that people create to stop this, the money finds a way around it. But, if you're going to design a better system, what would that even look like? I'd say, you're better off designing around this concept than working against it.
3. Most people don't care, they never have, and they never will: Seriously, not to be too extreme, but I really think there's truth in this and it's baked into the human race and the practice of democracy. For an extreme example (and to include the nazis) I remember thinking about Germany in the 30s: Why didn't people get out when they had a chance? Pick up and leave when they saw doom sweeping the nation. And the answer, I think, is because that was where home was and it happened gradually enough. For people to leave everything, to admit to themselves that "They're mad as hell and they're not going to take it anymore!" it takes a certain personality that most people simply don't possess. It takes, I think, the same personality that says things are bad when things are actually good. Put it this way: if we lived in a total utopia, you'd still be pointing out problems (as would I). Most people wouldn't, nor would they really know they're living in a utopia. They'd just be getting on with their day and hoping nothing truly catastrophic happens to them or theirs.
So, for these reasons, I think things will continue about as they have, with the caveat that the internet has made things a bit more transparent and I think more people in general are becoming aware enough of the issues around to write about it and affect change in some small way. Still, that won't change things all that much.
"ignorant" and "ignoring" are different forms of the same word ("ignore"). One describes a person that regularly ignores something ("ignorant") and the other describes the act of ignore ("ignoring"). So, to say that people aren't ignoring the issue, they're just ignorant, is the same thing.
Perhaps you mean that people aren't aware of the issue. This is closely related to being ignorant, as one who is paying attention (i.e., not ignoring things) will realize the problem fairly early, but not quite the same. Well, people aren't aware because they choose to ignore important matters for trivial distraction.
When it boils down to it, the blame for any long-standing regime can only be placed on the populous that lives under its control. Kings and sovereigns cannot govern without at least the implicit consent of obedience from their subjects. We can make excuses but it isn't going to get us anywhere. We need to become serious about the issues in our government and move to correct them, with the knowledge that people do not sacrifice the tokens of earthly prominence easily.
> "ignorant" and "ignoring" are different forms of the same word ("ignore"). One describes a person that regularly ignores something ("ignorant") and the other describes the act of ignore ("ignoring"). So, to say that people aren't ignoring the issue, they're just ignorant, is the same thing.
"Ignorant" means "Lacking knowledge or awareness in general; uneducated or unsophisticated" not "a person that regularly ignores something" - ignorance has nothing to do with ignoring things. Seriously, if you're going to try to make an argument that hinges on definitions, at least make the effort of checking if the definitions you're claiming are correct or not.
It's not exactly the same. Ignorance can be corrected. Willful ignorance cannot be, except by making the thing that is being ignored too obvious to be, possibly by painting it in neon pink and yellow stripes - of course, that works as a way to correct normal ignorance too.
Very true. However, they're also a very useful way to make sure that we're all using the same definitions. Since, as you can see, when we have our own definitions we get into long arguments about which one is correct or not, and we try to use our own definitions to refute people who are using different definitions. It becomes quite confusing.
Anyways, it's seems pretty clear (to me, at least!) that Spyro7 was using "Ignore" to mean something like "push out of mind, actively suppress the knowledge of" and "Ignorant" to mean "not aware of, not knowledgeable of", which are the common usages, at least in my experience. That also fits the classic difference between ignorance and stupidity - ignorance is not knowing something, stupidity is refusing to know something (or at least refusing to act on the knowledge).
You can have the last word, if you want. Either way, enjoy the Perseids - watching meteor showers is probably a better use of time than arguing, no matter how fun it can be.
Yeah, I am aware that he was using the words in that context. I was using his words as a platform based on the tautological relevance. I sought to indicate that long-standing corruption can't be excused by ignorance in terms of awareness, because it really portends an ignorance that is borne of actively ignoring important matters, and at the heart of the matter ignorance is about ignoring things. There's a time where it's reasonable to say nothing has been done because most people are ignorant, i.e., not aware, but the FCC has been this way for 30+ years.
there have been several stabs at similar problems using unlicensed spectrum; you pay people to use wimax or wifi wireless routers running software you provide. Your software allows your other customers to connect to the internet through those routers. From there it's easy enough to provide voip phone service. If you control the software on the routers, it's easy enough to set up authentication so only third parties that pay you can connect, and to rate-limit those third parties to something reasonable.
But it's a difficult thing to carry off. Several companies, I believe, have tried and all have failed. (I can't remember the names of any of those companies right now; I don't know if that's 'cause I'm tired, or if that's 'cause I'm actually remembering a conversation about a business that someone wanted to start that never happened, or if I'm just making this up wholecloth. None the less, it seems like a direction from which you could attack the market using unlicensed spectrum. You would have many obstacles, but it seems possible, at least in high-density urban areas.)
Cringely proposed that Wal-Mart install wimax routers in every store and thereby essentially blanket the country in coverage. I don't know enough about wimax or wimax phones like the HTC Evo to know if you could provision any wimax router to make voice calls, but I do like the thought that someone in an entirely different business could disrupt the ridiculous monopolistic profit machine that is today's cellular market.
Agreed. If the spectrum had been treated like other property all along, owners would have a strong incentive to figure out how to carry more data.
Landowners have a similar incentive. And, where it makes sense to do so, we see buildings that are many stories high, effectively using the same land many times over for the same purpose.
But in spectrum, we have spectrum lying around unused, while emergency services can't even get usable spectrum to save your butt in an emergency. Its well known that cops and firefighters couldn't even be alerted to leave one of the towers.
And this problem has still not been solved. But they can buy land with no problem.
> (somewhere there's a paralegal looking for work today)
I like to think that somewhere there's a paralegal holding his head high for the "accidental" damage he inflicted to this potential merger. Good for you, man.