Is AT&T a Monopoly in the Making? • Hacker News Board

Re: Is AT&T a Monopoly in the Making?

#41

Post by hoag » Tue, Mar 22, 2011, 2:06 AM UTC

orblivion wrote: post #38

hoag wrote: post #33

My proudest accomplishment in law school was a research paper I wrote entitled "Anti-Antitrust: The Need for Antitrust Law Reform." In that paper, I argued that antitrust law as applied today totally misses the point: the issue shouldn't be whether a company, otherwise satisfying the elements of a monopoly, is harming competitors, but whether a company is actually harming consumers. Put another way: who is complainin…

Well in this case I have a grudge against AT&T, specifically as a consumer. I don't like that they can get away absurd customer relations, and I think we need to check them. If Sprint goes away one day I'm not sure what I'll do. EDIT: You know what I'll do? I'll say screw the paradigm, and start looking into VOIP, and other alternatives, and encouraging everybody else to do it so economies of scale work out.

Great, and that's precisely what should happen: the consumers should make their complaints heard ... not competitors who are (usually) just complaining about having not made such a good business decision themselves.

Re: Is AT&T a Monopoly in the Making?

#42

Post by tokipin » Tue, Mar 22, 2011, 9:35 AM UTC

bediger wrote: post #2

You've got to remember that "at&t" (the current one) is not AT&T, the remains of The Bell System resulting from the 1983 divestiture. SBC, which started out as a Regional Bell Operating Company named "Southwestern Bell", bought the old AT&T at firesale prices back in 2005 and assumed its corporate livery. SBC and Southwestern Bell before it, never made a secret of thinking that the 1983 Bell System breakup was a mist…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsCp-1hgfxI

Re: Is AT&T a Monopoly in the Making?

#43

Post by kgermino » Tue, Mar 22, 2011, 7:13 PM UTC

cheald wrote: post #37

kgermino wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

at&t is the other GSM carrier. If your lucky you might live in a place where you can get another regional carrier (U.S. Cellular, Virgin, etc) but odds are you'll still be stuck using at&t towers.

I'm aware of that, which is why I'm asking why it would be a duopoly. at&t will have a monopoly on GSM celluar service, and I'm left without options. They're saying that all T-Mobile 3G devices would need to be replaced as well ( http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D9M3LNPO0 ) which means that my Nexus One is a $550 paperweight, since it won't be useful on any US carrier. I won't even be able to resell it to reco…

O. Ok sorry about that. The duopoly comment is referring to the US cell phone market as a whole. Andrew was saying that because of the merger he believes Sprint and Verizon will be forced to merge, leaving only Verizon and at&t.