On: T-Mobile to acquire most of U.S. Cellular in $4.4B...

[impulser_]

T-Mobile is almost twice the size of AT&T.

[tivert → impulser_]

> T-Mobile is almost twice the size of AT&T.

But if T-Mobile bought AT&T, the back-to-the-future telephone monopoly wouldn't be so obvious.

[advisedwang → impulser_]

They're just making a comment about the consolidation reversing the anti-trust breakup of Bell/AT&T.

[Aloha → advisedwang]

I think Legacy AT&T made the wrong choices in divesture - they should have held on to WECo (and the labs) and the local BOC's - and spun off Long Lines - I dont know how they would have worked culturally though (or if it would have passed DOJ muster) because Long Lines was part of the core identity of AT&T.

[notatoad → impulser_]

this says AT&T is twice as big. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mobile_network_operato...

are you measuring by something other than subscriber count, or is wikipedia wrong?

[echoangle → notatoad]

You measure by market cap. Acquisitions are paid in money, not subscribers.

Edit: Also wikipedia says that the AT&T stat includes "connected devices". If that really means they count all individual connected devices, thats a useless comparison. One customer can have multiple devices.

[NewJazz → echoangle]

Also those connected devices can be cars and things that nobody gives a fuck about.

[lotsofpulp → notatoad]

ATT spends its money paying for debt used to buy DirecTV and Time Warner at obscene prices, even though anyone with half a brain cell would have known those were legacy businesses were on their way out.

[yial → impulser_]

A quick Google search says t mobile has about half the customers of att. But 75% of the revenue.