Next year will bring coverage expansion
The big powerhouse company AT&T is at it again.
On March 20, AT&T announced, via social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook, their buy-out of T-Mobile. The cost of this transaction was $39 billion. $25 billion was paid in cash, and the rest was given in stock.
This was still cheaper than when Cingular bought AT&T back in 2004 for $41 billion.
Most people believe it was the other way around, but in fact Cingular was the one who bought AT&T and decided it was better to keep the AT&T name because of its long running history since 1885.
The big question people have always had is: What is going to happen now? The buy out has to first be approved by the government before it can be finalized.
AT&T is projecting it will take 12 months before all of the legal work is done. Once the deal is finalized, however, there will be an immediate difference in everyone’s cell phone coverage.
With the extra towers, which are completely compatible because AT&T and T-Mobile both use the same networks, not only can AT&T increase the capacity of the network, but it can also jump start the move into LTE for 4G coverage.
The number of towers they are getting in this deal would have taken about five years to build.
Devon Freese, an AT&T customer, believes this was a good move.
“T-Mobile is known for cheap prices and excellent customer service, and that is exactly what AT&T needs,” Freese said.
Logan Laport, also an AT&T customer, was not so happy about the merger.
“Any time a big company buys out another, it always ends with prices going higher,” he says.
Only time can tell whether the merger will be good or bad.
