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It would seem that AT&T is going to continue to be forefront on my mind as they announce their intention to purchase T-Mobile for $39 billion (US) in cash and stocks. Why should you care? Well, if the purchase goes through there will be only one GSM network in the US. No big deal? Consider the costs.

AT&T has the worst reputation as far as carriers goes, they have really bad customer service and a really unreliable network. So, we would have one less choice for service. Additionally, AT&T is going to use the spectrum the T-Mobile currently uses for 3G data service for LTE. Great you say? Not for T-Mobile customers, who would have to purchase new phones as they would no longer have data service and with that they would have to sign contracts for the data plans that AT&T provides; which means their cost for the service plan will go up significantly. AT&T will have no reason to make it cheaper to use their service, and as some have referred to AT&T’s practices as ‘draconian’, now more people would have to look elsewhere for service.

You could argue that T-Mobile has a fairly reliable network, and that will help AT&T. I would argue that the only reason AT&T has such bad network service is that they did not upgrade the network to be more reliable, and with that track record, why would you possibly think that they would change that. They will now just have more cell sites that will degrade over time. True, AT&T has announced upgrades to their network that will enable them to claim ’4G’ (not real 4G, the fake stuff that all the carriers except Verizon are claiming) in more places, namely Portland and San Diego. Spending $19 billion in upgrades will not help AT&T much, or they could forgo upgrading their network in the hopes that they can rest on the T-Mobile network for a time. Except that AT&T and T-Mobile do not use the same spectrum frequencies for 3G (4G) data, which will leave the AT&T customers still wanting a reliable network.

What a tangled web they weave. I would have liked it better if Sprint would have purchased T-Mobile.

AT&T jumped on the 4G bandwagon to save face in the public arena. However, things have not worked out they way they planned as they have been called out by numerous testing facilities on the speed of their ’4G’ network. Today AT&T announced an upgrade to that ’4G’ network in San Diego. What I find interesting is that they state that it will enable the ’4G’ speeds that they claim they already have.

“AT&T*, building on its strong 2010 record of network accomplishments, today announced network improvement plans designed to enable 4G speeds** and enhanced reliability to San Diego and surrounding communities in 2011.  The wireless network enhancement plans are part of AT&T’s planned $19-billion investment in its wireless and wireline networks and other capital projects in 2011.” (Source – PRNewswire).

So really they don’t have the fastest network in the nation if they need to spend $19-billion to upgrade their network. Just something to think about.

As a side note – I have been a customer of the same network here in Las Vegas since 1997, which is now owned by AT&T. Am I a little critical? You betcha, the network service has been rapidly degrading over the last few years and is now bad enough to where I am looking for another service provider. Way to go AT&T!

UPDATE: AT&T has also announced a network upgrade in Portland, the release seems to be pretty close to a cut and paste job with some extra details. I am seeing a trend here…