Tag Archives: AT&T

T-Mobile Rebel Alliance update #2

Let’s talk about T-Mobile again…

So the AT&T takeover is blocked, right?

No. The US Department of Justice has requested that the takeover be blocked, citing the Sherman Antitrust Act and related provisions of US law. While it is possible that the courts will block the takeover, it is by no means certain.

So AT&T will fight the decision in court?

Almost certainly. They agreed to pay $3 billion in cash to T-Mobile’s current owners, Deutsche Telekom, if the deal didn’t go through. They also agreed to other concessions in the event of the deal collapsing for any reason— such as giving part of their allocated wireless spectrum to T-Mobile. So all told, it could cost them around $7 billion if the takeover doesn’t happen.

So AT&T must have been pretty confident the deal would go through?

Yes. It’s clear from AT&T’s statements to the press that they were surprised; as their general counsel put it, “We have met repeatedly with the Department of Justice and there was no indication from the DOJ that this action was being contemplated”.

AT&T spent $12 million lobbying politicians this year, a 30% increase over last year. Clearly they thought they had greased enough palms and wined and dined enough politicians that the takeover would be nodded through.

So what went wrong?

My guess is that the Department of Justice was flooded with so much correspondence opposing the deal that they felt they had to act. It’s possible that AT&T’s recent outrageous price hikes made the DoJ take more notice of consumer complaints.

In addition, a leaked AT&T document revealed that it would only cost them $3 billion to build out their 4G LTE network without buying T-Mobile, according to their own estimates. This rather undermined their claim that the reason for spending $39 billion on T-Mobile was to allow them to bring LTE to the rest of their network.

OK, so if their case is that weak, how can AT&T still win?

The most likely scenario for AT&T winning is that the DoJ goes to court and gets some minor concessions from AT&T, in return for dropping the case. For example, AT&T might agree to hand over some customers to a competitor, or to stop increasing prices for a year or two. Any DoJ officials who brokered such a deal would likely be offered well paid positions at AT&T after leaving office.

Isn’t that a bit cynical?

No, just realistic. For example, Republican FCC Commissioner Meredith Attwell Baker voted for the government to ignore antitrust concerns and approve the merger of Comcast and NBC. Four months later, she left the FCC for a job at Comcast.

In addition, “…the DOJ’s 25-page antitrust complaint filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia reads more like a move toward a settlement than a document leading to a trial, said David Balto, an antitrust attorney and former policy director at the U.S. Federal Trade Commission” (as reported by IDG).

Certainly, AT&T donations have been a very good predictor of politicians’ responses to the news that the deal may be blocked.

So what should we, the consumers, do?

Keep writing to the appropriate officials, explaining calmly and clearly why you oppose any kind of deal allowing AT&T to take over T-Mobile. Maybe even send them campaign donations, if they will be running for election soon.

If the DoJ settles, there is an attempt to fight the merger via consumer lawsuit.

But if AT&T doesn’t buy T-Mobile, won’t T-Mobile be doomed?

No. T-Mobile is making a profit. It just isn’t making a big enough profit to satisfy Deutsche Telekom, who are more concerned with investing money in their European operations, where competition is much stronger.

I heard T-Mobile is rapidly losing customers?

It’s true that T-Mobile’s subscriber numbers have been dropping. However, the AT&T deal has likely made things worse. In mid 2010, T-Mobile was losing around 54,000 contract customers per quarter. Once the AT&T takeover was announced, that shot up to 380,000 per quarter. There has certainly been no sign of any improvement in customer retention since the deal was widely publicized.

Part of the ‘problem’ is that T-Mobile offers excellent deals without needing a contract; people who were happy with their old phones would simply not bother to sign another 2 year contract. Once the AT&T takeover plan went public, the number of customers willing to sign a 2 year contract that might wed them to AT&T apparently dwindled.

I myself would likely have signed a contract and upgraded to a better phone, if it hadn’t been for the announcement.

Why do T-Mobile’s customers hate the prospect of AT&T taking over their mobile phone provider?

There are many reasons, but let me summarize a few:

  • According to Consumer Reports ratings, AT&T is the worst cell phone provider in every single category. Worst value for money, worst voice call quality, worst data services, worst phones, worst web site, worst e-mail services, and worst customer service.
  • T-Mobile offers a good selection of Android phones. AT&T has a very limited selection, and tended to lock them so that you couldn’t run any software you wanted.
  • The takeover would leave AT&T as the only GSM provider in the USA. This is important because GSM is the worldwide standard for digital cellular phones. If you want a phone that will let you roam in Europe, it has to be GSM.
  • AT&T admitted that every single T-Mobile customer would need to buy a new phone — and sign a new 2-year contract.
  • T-Mobile is significantly cheaper than AT&T, especially if you want data service. I calculated that my bills would go up by around 30% if I had to use AT&T — and that was before they hiked the price of SMS messages last month.

You may want to mention these points in letters to government officials. Keep writing, because with $7 billion at stake, you can be sure that AT&T will be lobbying even harder in the upcoming months.

T-Mobile letter reply received

Got a reply from Senator John Cornyn of Texas. He cited federal anti-trust laws, and that he supported their enforcement. So I’m thinking that means he thinks the merger should go ahead, on the grounds that the federal government will watch over AT&T’s behavior afterwards so it’s OK.

T-Mobile Rebel Alliance update

The FCC have announced the docket numbers for their consideration of the AT&T takeover of T-Mobile:

Interested parties must file petitions to deny no later than May 31, 2011. Persons and entities that file petitions to deny become parties to the proceeding. They may participate fully in the proceeding, including seeking access to any confidential information that may be filed under a protective order, seeking reconsideration of decisions, and filing appeals of a final decision to the courts. Oppositions to such pleadings must be filed no later than June 10, 2011. Replies to such pleadings must be filed no later than June 20, 2011. All filings concerning matters referenced in this Public Notice should refer to DA 11-799 and WT Docket No. 11-65, as well as the specific file numbers of the individual applications or other matters to which the filings pertain.

So you can now go to the FCC’s public filing submission form and file your comments and/or complaints.

First, prepare your comments as a PDF document. The FCC site will convert a few other formats to PDF, but you might as well do it yourself. Don’t forget to cite both Docket 11-65 and DA 11-799 in your comments. Remember that all comment documents will be made public.

(If you’re on OS X or Linux you can print to a PDF from any application. On Windows, you can edit your comments in LibreOffice and then save as PDF. Or you could install a PDF writer–CutePDF Writer is available for 32 or 64 bit Windows, there’s also PrimoPDF and the open source PDFCreator.)

Then go to the FCC’s public filing submission form. In the Proceeding Number field, type 11-65 and hit enter, and you should see In the Matter of applications of AT&T Inc. and Deutsche Telekom AG for consent to assign or Transfer Control of licenses and Authorizations show up as the subject. Then you can fill out the rest of the form, and attach your PDF at the bottom.

Another option is to go to the EFCS Express page and select Docket 11-64, then enter your comments directly. No file attachments required.

Join the T-Mobile Rebel Alliance

So, AT&T have announced that they want to buy T-Mobile? That doesn’t mean we have to go down without a fight.

Yes, it’s time to start writing letters. Real letters, because a single written personal letter is far more effective than clicking a bunch of online polls. (Sorry, Credo and MoveOn, but it’s true.)

The first address to write to is:

United States Department of Justice
Citizen Complaint Center
Antitrust Division
950 Pennsylvania Ave., NW
Room 3322
Washington, DC 20530

The above is the complaints division of the DOJ team that will have to approve the deal.

Next up is the Senate Judiciary subcommittee on antitrust, competition policy and consumer rights. They say they’re going to take a close look at the implications of the deal, so let’s make our voices heard.

I plan to write to John Cornyn, since he’s my Senator; and Al Franken, since he’s awesome and seems like he might actually care. Here’s the address:

U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary
Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights
224 Dirksen Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510

Or you could use your senator’s regular address. The main thing is to get writing.

Later on the FCC will undoubtedly open a docket for public comments on the proposed deal. They have a web-based system for comments, I’ll post instructions for that when I hear that the docket has been posted.

Some things you might want to discuss in your letters:

  • The fact that AT&T is the worst-rated cell phone provider according to Consumer Reports, coming dead last in every single category.
  • The observed effect of AT&T’s merger with Cingular, which was also promised to improve things for consumers.
  • How much your bill will go up, percentage wise.
  • The fact that the US will only have a single GSM provider.
  • The difficulty of switching providers when all three networks use incompatible technical standards.
  • The fact that every T-Mobile customer will need a new phone–with a new 2-year contract.
  • The fact that AT&T lock down their Android phones.

Oh, and proper salutation is “The Honorable Senator Smith”, though “Dear Senator Smith” will probably do in these days of informality.

US Music Find bogus charges

Just got my landline bill, and it had a charge from “US MUSIC FIND INC” for $14.99. A Google search located them; they’re apparently a ringtone vendor offering ringtones each month for a monthly fee.

Ringtones for my landline? Oh, you’d better believe I didn’t sign up for that. I don’t even buy ringtones for my cell phone, because it’ll play any old MP3 file as a ringtone and I’m more than capable of making my own. I also highly doubt that a ringtone vendor would have any music I’d be interested in anyway. And of course, if I did want to spend money on ringtones, I’d just go to T-Mobile’s store, since it’s right there on the phone.

So I called ILD Telecommunications Inc via the number on my bill. They are apparently the billing provider for US Music Find. They said they’d refund the charge–and the charge they were planning to put on my next month’s bill.

I then called AT&T, and was told that there’s no way to block premium services like this from being billed to an AT&T landline account. Instead, they marked the $14.99 as disputed, so I won’t get late fees on it.

Another quick Google search reveals a stream of complaints about ILD Teleservices and US Music Find Inc. Will they indeed process the credit as promised? Watch this space.

Democrats are cynical and corrupt

So, in spite of earlier promises to try and bring down the FISA bill and stop retroactive immunity for telecoms providers who illegally wiretapped Americans, Barack Obama quietly avoided voting in the Senate, as did Hillary Clinton.

In the House, 94 Democrats had a sudden change of heart and voted the measure through.

Why did this happen? Well, it could be something to do with the average of $8,359 per politician that they received in "donations" from AT&T, Verizon and Sprint, compared to the reduced contributions seen by those who opposed the measure.

I must be old, I remember when you had to wait until after the election to see politicians abandon all their promises. So yeah, like many people I no longer expect much from Barack Obama. What will be the next position he abandons–opposition to torture?

BlackBerry Curve review

In mid November, our contract with AT&T (formerly Cingular) expired. We switched to T-Mobile and got BlackBerry Curve phones.

I was a BlackBerry skeptic for a long time. I didn’t think I wanted a phone with a full QWERTY keyboard. This changed when we looked at the phones available. It turned out that the Curve was only marginally wider than the average phone, perhaps a centimeter or so. It’s otherwise comparable to mid-range phones in size. It ends up being pretty much as portable as our Sony Ericsson Z520a phones.

The BlackBerry UI is best described as “retro”. The icons look like 1990s Windows, the text fonts look like 1980s Atari ST, and the general method of navigation most resembles Palm OS. This is both a good thing and a bad thing. Starting with the good, the UI is clearly designed from first principles to work well on a handheld device. The central trackball handles scrolling, pointing and clicking. It sits easily and naturally under the thumb. You can do pretty much everything with one hand, including browsing the web and checking e-mail.

This is in marked contrast to the iPhone, which pretty much requires two-handed operation. Windows Mobile devices suffer from having a desktop UI squeezed into a handheld form factor, and also require two hands, and often a stylus. Symbian is designed for phones, but the UIQ interface for smartphones uses a stylus. Overall, then, the BlackBerry works better than other phones I’ve tried when you’re standing in an airport with a coffee in one hand.

On the downside, it’s hard to find the icon you want in a hurry, because of their visual clutter. Perhaps a replacement UI theme would help; I’m a little tempted to grab the theme designer and start working on one, but it’s Windows only. The fonts were initially problematic too; nowhere near as nice as Apple’s, and they took some getting used to.

But when it comes time to reply to an e-mail, niggling issues with fonts were forgotten as I got to grips with the keyboard. Yes, it requires both hands, or more accurately both thumbs. It’s not as fast as a full size keyboard, but it’s faster than Palm Graffiti or Windows Mobile pen input, and much faster and less frustratingly error-prone than I found the iPhone’s on-screen keyboard to be. Unless Steve relents and allows a Son of Newton to use the Newton’s non-cursive text recognition, I can’t see it being bettered.

Textual messaging is where the BlackBerry really shines. It’s quite possible to thumb out fairly lengthy e-mail responses, or even update your web site. As far as IM, there’s support for Google Talk and AIM built in, as well as Yahoo Messenger, Windows Live Messenger and ICQ if you know anyone who still uses only those. There are third party clients for non-Google Jabber and other protocols, and in addition, there’s BlackBerry’s own BlackBerry Messenger, previously called PIN messaging.

If you have a friend who also has a BlackBerry, PIN messaging is definitely the way to go. The manual doesn’t cover its benefits, so I’ll digress a little here. Unlike other IM systems, PIN messaging is tied to the BlackBerry device by a unique ID. You connect with another person initially by sending them an invite via their BlackBerry-specific e-mail address, or any other address they access via BlackBerry e-mail. When they reply, their device records the device ID you sent, and sends you theirs.

The primary benefit of PIN messaging is that it’s push-based. The recipient doesn’t need to be logged in. If their phone is switched off, the message will be queued until they log on.

The second benefit of PIN messaging is that it’s reliable. Unlike SMS, messages don’t get randomly dropped. In addition, you get delivery confirmation automatically for every message: when you hit enter, the line you typed appears in the transcript with a small icon next to it indicating that the message is going out over the network. When your device receives positive confirmation that the recipient’s device has displayed the line you sent, the icon changes.

If that’s not enough, there’s a third benefit over IM or SMS: there’s a separate “ping” option. So you can set up your regular notification to be something discreet, and know that your spouse can ping you to set off something more noticeable if necessary.

Other than that, PIN messaging has the usual file transfer, allows you to send voice memos, and looks and behaves like regular IM. For us, it has completely replaced SMS, not least because it doesn’t cost 15¢ a message.

One interesting feature of the BlackBerry is that as well as individual icons for each messaging system, there’s also a unified inbox that shows IM, SMS and e-mail in one place. This makes sense, as they all have pretty much the same UI on the Curve; the protocol is almost an irrelevant detail. I believe that if you attempt to send pictures via SMS, the phone automatically uses MMS, but I haven’t tried it.

Web browsing is a mixed bag. The built in BlackBerry browser has two modes, mobile mode and “desktop” mode. Although there are references to WAP, the browser copes with both, the mode just determines how the page is formatted for display. In mobile mode it works like a typical phone browser, in desktop mode it tries to deal with things like tables, CSS and JavaScript. Overall it makes for a pretty good browsing experience, as phones go. (If you haven’t tried browsing from a phone, the main issue isn’t usually layout–it’s latency. Each page request takes a ridiculously long time to send, compared to a desktop system. I assume this is something to do with the mobile network.)

An alternative is Opera Mini, which takes the “thumbnail of page with moveable active area” approach to web browsing. It works surprisingly well with sites that the built-in browser can’t cope with, like zagat.com. (Yeah, good move, make a web site of restaurant reviews that doesn’t work with a phone browser.)

Maps are another strong point. There’s a map application supplied, but I downloaded Google Maps for BlackBerry, which is free and offers pseudo-GPS location by correlating your active cell to its geographical location. Accuracy can be as little as 50m or so in cities, up to 1km in the countryside. The Google Mail application also works well once downloaded.

The BlackBerry OS appears to be Java based, and is pretty solid. It’s more reliable than a Palm; I’ve only managed to crash it once, which is comparable to Linux on the N800 in solidity. Initial bootup (after inserting a battery) is horrendously slow, but once running it seems to use a soft power off which doesn’t require a full boot. The UI is generally responsive at all times, unlike some Sony Ericsson phones. You can put the phone into standby mode by holding down the power switch. In standby the screen and keyboard deactivate, but you can still receive messages and calls. The same hold-down-button action brings the phone out of standby instantly.

The one bug I’ve found so far is in the BlackBerry web browser. After a while the cache gets full and slows browsing down tremendously. The workaround is to empty the cache once a week.

The phone shows a lot of attention to the details of how a mobile device should best operate. For example, an ambient light sensor behind the notification LED turns the screen brightness down in dark areas, and automatically turns on the keyboard backlight. The LED itself has behavior customizable through the notification options; each event (phone call, IM, SMS) can have any or all of a user-chosen sound, vibration, and LED flashes. You can even set different messaging systems to have different notification; for example, I have IM just flash the LED a few times, unless it’s a PIN message from the spouse.

Mac sync is a bit of a sore point. There’s a package called PocketMac that BlackBerry purchased and now give away for free. It worked for me, more or less, but had some annoying bugs. (For example, syncing with a subset of address book records didn’t work, and editing records on the BlackBerry resulted in duplicates.) The solution is simple enough: Mark/Space have a Missing Sync for BlackBerry, which makes everything work, and even syncs user pictures so you can see the face of the person calling you if you’ve given them a picture in OS X.

Overall, it’s the best mobile phone I’ve used. Whether it’s good for you will of course depend on your use cases. If you’re someone who likes to talk to people or use voicemail rather than IM or e-mail, or if you have little patience for customizing software, the iPhone is probably a better bet. It certainly look prettier. But if you prefer text to voice and prefer functionality to prettiness, the Curve beats the iPhone hands down. This may change once they stop crippling the iPhone and open it up to third party applications; we’ll see. For now, I’d pick the Curve again, even if the iPhone wasn’t tied to AT&T.

Update: Oh yeah, the Curve is also a quad band phone. That’s de rigeur, so I didn’t even think it was worth mentioning.

Hell hath no fury like a phone company scorned

When I moved to the USA, one of the first things I did was get a cell phone. I was going to be living in a big city, rothko was working in a different part of town, we needed to coordinate things–it seemed to make sense. We went to Omnipoint, got a couple of phones, everything was good.

A few years later, Omnipoint were purchased by Voicestream. We got a phone upgrade. Still no trouble. Later still, Voicestream were purchased by T-Mobile. Another phone upgrade came and went.

Finally, we moved to Austin. I started looking for new phones, as ours were a couple of years old. The requirements were simple enough–quad band, Bluetooth for the car and for sync with the Mac, iSync support.

T-Mobile had zero quad band Bluetooth phones. None at all. On the other hand, IBM had a discount deal with Cingular, who offered some good phones. So, we were seduced to switch providers after 7 years with T-Mobile and its ancestors. This time a contract was involved. And before long, Cingular was purchased by AT&T.

Our contract finally expired last week, and we decided that on balance, we preferred T-Mobile. For starters, AT&T’s bills are utterly incomprehensible. You’ve probably read stories about iPhone users getting 200 page bills. Well, ours aren’t quite that long, but they’re just as impossible to decipher.

Then there’s the pricing. With discount, AT&T isn’t ludicrously expensive; but they really, really overcharge for SMS, web and e-mail. Plus, rothko has perpetual problems with dropped calls.

I saw a good deal at Amazon.com on the BlackBerry Curve. It meant a 2 year contract with T-Mobile, but I was willing to take that risk to get a good deal. I ordered two phones, 2 years of family plan service, 2 years of unlimited e-mail and web. I wasn’t expecting any problems.

A while later, I got an e-mail from Amazon saying that I needed to call T-Mobile to confirm my information. I did so, and was told that I needed to fax them a copy of my Social Security card, driver’s license, and a recent utility bill.

Fax? In 2007? Apparently, yes, a company that sells e-mail and Internet access doesn’t actually have e-mail itself. I scanned the requested documents, found an online fax service, and sent everything off.

A few hours later, I got another call. The woman on the other end of the line explained that I had been misinformed. What I actually needed to do was travel to the nearest T-Mobile store and have them fax in the information.

Annoying, but no big deal. I figured they were just being extra careful. So that evening, I drove to the nearest store and had them fax everything in. I took the transmission receipt home with me. The next day, I called back to check the status of my order. After a few minutes on hold, I was told that I had been misinformed yet again. A fax wasn’t enough; I actually had to go to the store and have them confirm the information in person.

By now, I was starting to get annoyed, but I decided to humor them. I drove to the store again, and explained the situation. The store called T-Mobile, who told them to fax the information. So they faxed it again, and confirmed that the fax had been sent.

An hour later I called to check on my order. After a few minutes on hold, I was told no. They were refusing my order. If I wanted service with T-Mobile I would have to pay full retail price up front for the phones, and then pre-pay for service.

So basically, all that jumping through hoops had been a total waste of my time, as they had never been going to give me contract service in the first place.

I explained that I had been a T-Mobile customer for 7 years, and could prove it. (I still have copies of old paid bills, because I’m that kind of person.)  No dice.

So, I’m still with AT&T, and I’m wondering what to do next. Part of me still wants to switch, but part of me wonders if I should, given the amount of dicking around I’ve received trying to become a T-Mobile customer again.

Unfortunately, there isn’t a third option. Thanks to industry consolidation, the US only has two GSM providers. So I can’t say “Screw you, I’ll go with the good guys”, as there aren’t any good guys.

I wrote a letter to T-Mobile customer service, but I haven’t sent it yet. I don’t honestly know if I want a 2 year contract at this point. Maybe the best thing to do is to buy a couple of unlocked phones from somewhere else entirely, then go to T-Mobile and just get a couple of SIMs and sign up for service with no contract.

Minnesnowta

Got home, booked tickets to Minnesota. It’s funny, when I married Sara I didn’t really think about the fact that it would mean visiting Minnesota every other winter. Not that I’d have decided differently; I’m just amused that it didn’t occur to me.

Also fixed my web site. The Perl script rewrote most the HTML for AT&T’s web servers, but I had to change a few URLs in my LiveJournal template and fix the redirection at pobox.com. It’s great being able to change web host and ISP at the drop of a modem connection.