Tongue Tyed: Jan 31, 2005

Jan 31, 2005

Baby Bell Buyout

SBC has agreed to buy AT&T. This concerns me. First of all, wasn't the point of splitting up AT&T to prevent one company from having a monopoly? So now we will have a nice big fat oligopoly. How is that better? All of these mergers of late are frustrating me. We are being given fewer and fewer choices. I will admit that the AT&T Wireless and Cingular merger was good for my cell phone service--I almost always have coverage now--but at what price? And it shouldn't go by the wayside to note that AT&T Wireless and Cingular are respectively connected to AT&T and SBC. We are slowly moving toward having two companies rule our communications network. Verizon and SBC/Cingular. Yes, Sprint and Nextel are still out there, and MCI/Worldcom is still hanging on, but it feels like more mergers are on the books for the future. Without competition, what are we going to pay for the ability to talk to our friends?

And for those of us who were trying to get away from the terrible customer service of SBC by going to AT&T, our efforts are about to be thwarted. Even my efforts to get away from traditional long distance by using AT&T's VOIP services could soon be thwarted. AT&T has a partnership with Comcast for their VOIP and Comcast's broadband. What will SBC do with that?

Should be an interesting ride if this deal is approved.

posted by Ty @ 1/31/2005 | 0 comments

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