Top 10 Reasons AT&T’s Acquisition of T-Mobile is Bad for Consumers

AT&T announced on March 20^th, 2011 that it had agreed to purchase T-Mobile USA from Deutsche Telekom from $39 billion. If the acquisition is approved, then AT&T would become the largest wireless provider in the United States by adding more than 33 million T-Mobile subscribers to its current 95.5 million customer user base. This would push AT&T past Verizon who currently sits at 102 million subscribers. A number of T-Mobile consumers have started to wonder what the impact of the merger will be on their plans and future choices. The short of the matter is that customers from both networks should see improved coverage, however, T-Mobile customers will see a significant change in a number of areas that attracted many to the company in the first place.

Top 10 Reasons AT&T’s Acquisition of T-Mobile is Bad for Consumers

#1 – Cell Phone Bill Prices are Less Likely to Decrease

T-Mobile has historically been a price leader in the U.S. Mobile market offering a large choice of flexible plans and some of the cheapest data rates in industry. With less competition on the market, AT&T will have less pressure to offer similar pricing plans in the future.

#2 – Bloatware will Increase for T-Mobile Users

If you are a T-Mobile user, check out the bloatware that comes per-installed on any of your friend’s AT&T phones. Yup, at least double if not triple that found on T-Mobile handsets.

#3 – T-Mobile Users May Have to Get a New Phone

This is seeing a lot of downplay in the press, however, at some point T-Mobile users will have to get a new phone to fully use the mega-network created by the acquisition. No impact for at least a year if the purchase is approved. Probably doesn’t seem like a big deal to AT&T customers, but T-Mobile users typically don’t buy a phone every year like AT&T folks do.

#4 – T-Mobile Users Won’t Have iPhone Access for a While

On the surface, T-Mobile users would think, “Cool, I can get the iPhone now…” Unfortunately, it will be at least a year or more before this is possible.

#5 – Fewer Options to Choose from if You Don’t Like AT&T

You’re two nation-wide carrier options pretty much come down to Sprint or Verizon with the acquisition. There are a number of regional carriers with nation-wide agreements, but instead of four options, you would now have three as a consumer (really two if you only count AT&T and Verizon).

#6 – Customer Service May Suffer

Back in the day, I originally shifted to T-Mobile service from AT&T due to poor customer service. A lot of my family uses AT&T and it does not appear as though things have improved.

#7 – Less Market Competition

There will be significantly less market competition in the U.S. Mobile industry. This can have implications from the cost of handsets to data plans to monthly service plan costs that are not in favor of the consumer.

#8 – Potentially Less Options for Supported Mobiles

T-Mobile has classically been on the “Bleeding Edge” of mobile phone options for consumers. Specifically with phones using the Android operating system. Its hard to imagine that AT&T would keep up similar efforts unless they eventually plan to divorce themselves from the Apple iPhone (unlikely any time soon).

#9 – There Will Only Be One GSM Carrier in the U.S.

At the time of this writing there are two options for GSM enabled phones in the United States (AT&T and T-Mobile). If the acquisition is approved, then there will only be one GSM provider for U.S. Consumers.

#10 – Wasn’t AT&T Broken Up Before for Being Too Big?

In 1983, the federal government ordered the breakup of AT&T in order to provide more options for consumers and lower long distance costs. Ultimately the advent of new technologies has proven the breakup to have been ineffective, but aren’t we entering into a similar space just with cellular now? As a funny aside, of the 22 original small companies forced to be created by the breakup in the 1980′s, 10 along with one that was partially owned along with the original AT&T long distance division are part of the company today….