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Controversial AT&T – T-Mobile Merger Dies

Much to the chagrin of those who favored the deal, (such as the Communication Workers of America union, Arizona, Louisiana, and West Virginia to name a few), the proposed AT&T – T-Mobile merger is now dead. AT&T made the official announcement that it decided to end its bid to acquire T-Mobile USA at the beginning of the week – roughly nine months after announcing its plan for the contentious merger.

The much anticipated $39 billion merger faced heavy government opposition from the start. As the second-biggest wireless provider in the U.S., Dallas, TX-based AT&T faced an uphill battle in their pursuit to acquire Bellevue, WA-based T-Mobile USA, the fourth-biggest U.S. wireless provider, from Germany’s Deutsche Telekom AG.

Critics (including Capitol Hill Democrats and the provider’s competitors) feared that the merger would do more harm than good to competitive providers, and would create a wireless duopoly between the combined AT&T/T-Mobile USA and Verizon Wireless. Due to the fact that the two largest providers already have a great deal of exclusive smartphone contracts, smaller providers saw the proposed acquisition as a threat; which isn’t too far off considering that – if the merger were to happen – a reported 80% of all U.S. wireless contracts would be controlled between the two giants.

Those in favor of it, such as the Communications Workers of America union argued that in addition to providing broadband wireless service to 97% of the national population, it would create as many as 96,000 new jobs, as well as bring back to the U.S. approximately 5,000 jobs which were previously outsourced. In a report filed by the Communication Workers of America union with the Federal Communications Commission at the beginning of November, it was stated that the acquisition would not only protect employees from losing their jobs, but that AT&T “will offer a job to any worker whose current job function is eliminated, outsourced jobs will be eliminated before any U.S. jobs, and any remaining job losses will be accomplished primarily through attrition.”

Regardless, the Department of Justice found the proposed merger to be anticompetitive, and sued in order to block it from happening. Furthermore, the Federal Communications Commission also contested the acquisition after concluding that it would ultimately not be in the public’s interest.

Additional Information

We would love to hear your thoughts on the AT&T – T-Mobile USA merger. Were you for or against it? Let us know!

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Sprint Actively Opposes AT&T Acquisition of T-Mobile USA

Earlier this week, Kansas-based Sprint Nextel Corp. filed a 337 page petition with the Federal Communications Commission opposing the $39 billion AT&T/T-Mobile USA merger. According to Sprint, simply requiring divestitures or imposing conditions will not solve the acquisition’s detrimental effects on competition.

If the merger is approved, AT&T and Verizon Wireless would control most of the nation’s wireless market. In the public filing, Sprint stated that the acquisition would make AT&T the biggest wireless carrier in the United States with 43% of the postpaid market and 118 million subscribers. Sprint went on to say that alongside Verizon Wireless’s 39% of the postpaid market and over 94 million subscribers, it would produce “a Twin Bell monopoly” with more than 78% of all wireless revenues, 82 percent of post-paid subscribers, and 88 percent of all wireless operating profits.

Currently the nation’s third-largest wireless provider, Sprint finds it difficult to believe one of AT&T’s chief justifications for the merger – the need for spectrum – declaring that among all carriers AT&T holds the largest licensed spectrum holdings and does not face network capacity restraints for existing and future escalating demand. Moreover, Sprint says that AT&T has the same opportunity as any other carrier to meet customer’s demand for spectrum, but they simply just made the conscious decision not to.

AT&T defended the acquisition in a series of blog posts, one of them addressing the spectrum issue specifically. AT&T disputed Sprint’s claims that AT&T is the industry leader in regards to spectrum, calling it “odd” considering the fact that Dan Hesse, the CEO of Sprint has continuously bragged that his company “has the best spectrum position in the industry.”

Claiming the acquisition would suppress innovation, Sprint argued that it would give AT&T and Verizon “far greater leverage to demand exclusive arrangements or rights of first refusal” in regards to handset manufacturers partnering with other wireless providers.

The Federal Communications Commission will examine the merger to ensure it is in the public’s best interest. Sprint is confident it won’t pass that test, saying that the proposed takeover would do more than fail to fabricate any cognizable benefits in the public’s interest – it would give rise to severe anticompetitive problems that could not be resolved via conditions or divestitures.

Additional Resources
To find out more about Sprint and AT&T services that can save your company money while increasing productivity, give one of our professional account managers a call today!

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AT&T/T-Mobile Merger – What it means for SMBs

Since 2007 AT&T’s mobile data volumes have increased an astonishing 8000% – more than any other wireless provider. In addition to adding thousands of cell sites, purchasing spectrum in the open market, and a number of other measures, AT&T acquired T-Mobile USA in a heavily debated $39 billion cash and stock deal earlier this year in order to keep up with the astronomical demand on its mobile networks.

The FCC filing that sought permission for AT&T to purchase T-Mobile USA from Deutsche Telekom reported, “The network synergies of this transaction will free up new capacity – the functional equivalent of new spectrum – in the many urban, suburban, and rural wireless markets where escalating broadband usage is fast consuming existing capacity.”

AT&T defended the merger, stating reporting that if the capacity constraints for both AT&T and T-Mobile USA are left “unaddressed, [it] would translate into more dropped and blocked calls, slower speeds, and access to fewer and less advanced applications.” In addition, the acquisition enables AT&T to deploy fourth-generation LTE mobile services to approximately 55 million people – roughly 97% of Americans.

Great news! The multi-billion dollar merger will strengthen AT&T’s position in the small and medium-sized business market. According to AMI-Partners, (which specializes in Internet, IT, telecom, and business services strategy, venture capital and market intelligence) T-Mobile will help AT&T – specifically among businesses in particular vertical industries, such as construction, and companies that employ less than 10 staff members.

Those who opposed the merger believe that it will create a dualopoly in the mobile operators market. According to AMI-Partners, AT&T and Verizon Wireless currently control three out of four customers in the SMB market. Prior to the merger, AT&T had control over 28% of the market, T-Mobile controlled 8%, and Verizon Wireless came in with the largest share at 32%.

AMI-Partner’s manager of SMB Cloud Services, Brian Galgay, says the acquisition “creates differentiated SMB sales for AT&T and has an enormous upside potential… Compared to AT&T or Verizon, these T-Mobile SMB customers reported greater interest in adopting hosted services from a service provider, as well as indicating greater interest in purchasing multiple, adjacent SaaS applications.”

Galgay explained that what initially attracted significant sectors of the SMB market to AT&T were the specialized mobile workers and early adopters of technology that benefited from iPhone technology. Annually, AT&T and Verizon Wireless SMB customers spend around the same amount; however, AT&T SMB customers are said to be more “IT-savvy, focusing more budget on newer technologies beyond smartphones, such as … tablets.”

Posted in AT&T, Basic Business lines, Local, Verizon | No Comments »

AT&T/T-Mobile vs. Verizon/Sprint?

There’s been a lot of talk lately about the possible merger of AT&T and T-Mobile. At the end of 2010, the two companies had served a combined 129+ million wireless customers; T-Mobile with over 33.7 million and AT&T with over 95.5 million. Alongside them, Verizon reported serving 94.1 million wireless customers; and according to their earnings statements, the three combined companies serve well over 220 million customers.

Coming in 4^th place with 49.9 million customers reported at the end of 2010, it’s easy to see why the smaller rival, Sprint, would formally oppose the merger of AT&T and T-Mobile USA. If the acquisition were to happen, an estimated four out of five cell subscribers would belong to either Verizon Wireless or the new AT&T/T-Mobile company; Chris Kissel, In-Stat analyst had even gone so far as to say “the term ‘Oligopoly’ comes to mind.”

But does it mean we’ll see Sprint merge with Verizon?

If the $39 billion mega-merger between AT&T and T-Mobile USA were to materialize, Verizon Wireless might start feeling serious pressure to make an equally big move. But that doesn’t necessarily mean Sprint will be involved; Daniel Mead, Verizon Wireless’s CEO has no desire to have the most customers, he’s interested in having the biggest U.S. profits. Mead even went as far as saying that Verizon Wireless is “not interested in Sprint… we don’t need them.”

And that may be true. Regardless of the expected AT&T – T-Mobile union, Verizon Wireless could be sitting pretty. They currently have the most U.S. Android offerings, and more customers are expected to sign up as a result of breaking AT&T’s three and a half year strong hold on the iPhone. Even as the second seed – in respect to subscriber numbers, Mead does not seemed to be phased.

Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for Sprint – the number three seed – which is said to be more interested in being acquired by Verizon Wireless than Verizon is. Sprint has had a decline in numbers and taken a hit for their lack of smartphone options and relying on WiMAX as opposed to LTE in the 4G network race.

Meanwhile, AT&T’s CEO, Randall Stephenson, top executive is certain one thing won’t change as a result of his company’s $39 billion acquisition of T-Mobile USA: that there will always be plenty of competition. The top executive told the Wall Street Journal that “this industry is anything but a duopoly… the industry is intensely competitive now, and will be intensively competitive after the deal.”

T1 Speed T1 Connection

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Why you need DIA?

A Dedicated Internet Access (DIA) connection is one of the most reliable solutions currently available for your business. The name itself says it all – it’s a dedicated line designed to serve your office’s communications needs without having to rely on sub-par performance delivered by DSL or wireless broadband alone. This is because you’re connected directly to your Internet Service Provider’s (ISP’s) core network infrastructure, ensuring that you receive only the best performance and bandwidth scalability possible.

Speedy surfing
T1 connections let your entire network access the Internet with a variety of speeds. These speeds depend on the structure and nature of your business. If you’re company depends on regular browsing to get by, a standard T1 connection (1.5Mbps) is the ideal solution. However, if your company requires a faster connection for all of your units, go beyond a T1 with an NxT1 option.

Businesses that demand more than just your standard T1 connection should go with a heavy hitter like DS-3. DS-3 dedicated lines give you throughput speeds of 45Mbps. Those with higher speed requirements will need to get a synchronous optical networking (SONET) line, reaching speeds of up to 2488Mbps.

Another DIA solution that offers similar speeds to a digitally multiplexed system – and can be just as dependable – is an Ethernet system. You can choose from a standard Ethernet connection up to a 10 Gigabit Ethernet system that will let your channel record speeds of 1000Mbps.

Do you need a DIA?
Here are several other things you should consider before looking through the available DIA products:

Are you running a business that relies heavily on streaming media?
Do you host your own unique servers?
Would you like to make the transfer of documents and information from one of your offices to the other easier?
Do you rely on internal communication applications such as e-mail and web-based programs?
Are you interested in creating a virtual private network (VPN)?
Do you run a business that is in anyway dealing in e-commerce services?

If you answered ‘yes’ to any of these questions, you will likely benefit greatly from a DIA setup. Take a look around, you’re sure to find the best service for your business.

Posted in AireSpring, AT&T, Dedicated, DIA, NewEdge, XO | No Comments »

Long Distance Calls Overview

Phone calls made twelve miles outside of your local calling zone are considered long distance voice calls, and are charged with a specific rate per minute. The charges are based on a number of elements; calling within your local LATA (Local Access and Transport Area) is one of the variables. In general, calls made internationally are more expensive than calls made within the US.

Service providers have different long distance charges, but all of their rates are very competitive.

Intra and Interstate Calls

Long distance calls can either be intrastate and interstate. Intrastate calls are calls within the state (for instance, a call made from Hollywood to San Diego), whereas Interstate calls are calls made between states (such as a call made from Miami, Florida to Denver, Colorado).

Intra-LATA calls are made outside your local area, but are within the LATA lines the phone company has established.

Switched and Dedicated Long Distance Calls

There are two types of long distance calls: Switched and Dedicated.

Switched Long Distance is when calls are run through a local carrier, or “switched.” An ILEC (Incumbent Local Exchange Carrier) owns the wires that run through a location, while client companies can use these wires on lease from the ILEC.

However, local carriers don’t own exclusive rights to the long distance lines that run from one phone company to another. IXCs (Inter eXchange Carriers) provide these. Over the last twenty years, deregulation has encouraged competitive providers other than the original (AT&T) to offer this service to customers. This means customers can select which carrier to handle their state and in-state long distance calls, along with IntraLATA calls (nearby long distance calls).

Local phone companies offer a combination of different local and long distance services at a high price.

Dedicated long distance is a dedicated point-to-point digital data service transmitting at speeds of Fractional T1 and higher. This is usually directly connected to IXCs, which, along with ILECs and re-sellers, provide a variety of options to their customers for monitoring, privacy in transmissions, and diagnostics. The signal of dedicated long distance calls is very reliable, very secure, and most of all, high quality, because the service is designed to transmit voice from end users to service providers.

Transmission speed and a fixed rate for central office termination affect the pricing of dedicated long distance services. Usually, service provides bill charges monthly.

Posted in AT&T, Dedicated, General, Long Distance | No Comments »

AT&T’s Managed Internet Service

AT&T’s Managed Internet Service (MIS) helps your business bloom with a secure and dedicated Internet connection that’s both resilient and optimized to continue serving your business needs in the face of infrastructure and hardware failures.

AT&T achieves this high-speed T1 capability with their unique, industry-leading OC48 / OC 192 IP Backbone. The multiple-ringed network is protected by a variety of security features to ensure the safety of both the hardware and the infrastructure of the line that your Internet relies on, making it ideal for any business that desires on a high-speed Internet solution bundled with world-class service.

Multiple Options

Your direct Internet access (DIA) option is designed to meet all of your critical broadband needs. AT&T has taken into consideration the possibilities of network failure and found ways of working around them. In the event of a failure, your continued network service will be achieved through AT&T’s Managed Access Redundancy Options (MARO) service, which gives your network multiple backup options.

Tech support experts are provided to assist you in setting up your redundancy solutions and designing the rerouting of your network when your main line fails – ensuring your traffic flow requirements are met. With AT&T, you can set up multiple routers for your line without having to leave the comfort of your office, and STILL get the unique network solution that works just for you.

AT&T provides a series of reliable rerouting points that let you isolate the error in your line without having to disrupt the rest of the network connection. You can set up:

Backbone node redundancy points, giving you the widest array of choices for your connectivity
Access router redundancy points, because sometimes the errors happen when you’re trying to access various sections of your line (which could occur at your own physical mainframe or in the access routers that connects your office to AT&Ts main network)
Automatic load-balancing options, letting you segregate your traffic through two circuits. This works as a backup solution for your main line, or backbone and access router redundancy points

Ease of use

Once your network has been set up, all you need to do is connect to the Internet and browse. You will never have to keep an extensive IT staff to take care of your DIA because AT&T’s customer support staff is available 24/7. Once you have an AT&T connection, you can rest assured that your business is in good hands.

Posted in AT&T, DIA, Internet T1 | No Comments »

AT&T MPLS Service

AT&T’s multi protocol label switching service (MPLS) gives you a flexible service that gravitates between a scalable IP-based network and highly-secure private network. This Private Network Transport (PNT) service is an advanced IP VPN service that will ensure your network connects from point-to-point efficiently, effectively, and with very little trouble throughout the connection. This is achieved through the union of a dynamic network that sports the security of a private network, combining reliability and flexibility into one diverse virtual private network.

AT&T’s PNT service will let you link your entire network to one IP. This service upgrades your traditional packet-based network into a highly efficient network-based VPN designed to facilitate the free and seamless flow of heavy data.

A flexible network solution

The PNT solution will work with you in order to get your media available to a wide network. Whether you’re hosting large packets of data or streaming long hours of voice and video, AT&T assures the lossless transfer of data. The unique classes of service (CoS) feature keeps the line clean and free from irregularities by marking the various kinds of traffic going through your network and prioritizing heavy packets of data over those with a lighter load, such as e-mail hosting and browsing.

Other features that make your network even more efficient include: support for either private or public LAN addressing, static or border gateway routing protocols, and the ability to manage your own network or let AT&T manage it for you.

Visibility in performance

AT&T lets you review the performance of your PNT network via a series of network management tools available for network owners. Your administrators can also manage the ticketing system of the CoS traffic control and review the prior months of billing. A web-based portal that chronicles reports on the integrity and performance of your system is also made available to you.

The service will also adapt to your network needs. If you need to attach new sites and applications to your network, you can easily do so without disrupting the flow of data throughout your network. And the unique MPLS framework ensures the integrity of your data is never compromised.

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AT&T Private Line

In order to meet the growing needs of customers, businesses today are constantly expanding, adding more staff into their roster and increasing the size of their office. Some businesses have diverse set of offices spanning multiple locations in order to meet with this growing demand.

While this is good news for businesses the world over, the problem of management and communications becomes trickier. How will you effectively connect office branches in a way that they can easily get in touch with each other? How can you easily facilitate the transfer of large documents from office to office without making it available to the public domain?

AT&T offers the solution with its Private Line service; a high-speed intra-network connection that connects your entire system of operations to each other. This lets you facilitate communication and interaction within the various departments of your office without having to resort to setting up expensive and complicated networking solutions.

Customizing your network

AT&T recognizes the fact that you need a simple solution for connecting your office throughout a singular network. They will help you set up a reliable network of communications connecting your various sites to each other in a manner that’s simple and non-intrusive. This connection is made via a series of network servers connected to a main server in your office.

This private line uses a variety of service solutions to meet the needs of your enterprise. These range from a single channel connection of 9Kbps for simpler networks, to a heavy 10G wavelength connection for a multi-network WAN. They also offer other infrastructure solutions such as an optical mesh service and Ethernet connections if you’d rather use those for your network.

Thanks to their state-of-the-art infrastructure, AT&T has made sure that any private line they install is fast, reliable, and secure. They realize that no intranet solution is perfect, and will help you set up a series of backup plans should your main network fail. This includes using Mesh network architecture in your system, as well as the option to utilize FASTAR and SONET network setups. SONET premium private line customers have the choice to set up redundancy circuits to serve as backup data routes.

If you’re worried that AT&T doesn’t cover your area, stop worrying. AT&T offers this service in up to 80 countries around the globe, and that service coverage is expanding. Just to give you an idea of how wide their coverage is – AT&T sports up to 77,000 miles of fiber optic cables connecting all of these networks to each other, so you can be secure in the knowledge that they will have no trouble setting you up as well.

Easy Management and Support

Since this service is important in the integrity and productivity of your office, AT&T makes sure that you can easily fix network discrepancies throughout the line. AT&T’s customer and technical support crew is available 24 x 7. They will be able to help you manage and, if necessary, fix your network whenever the need arises.

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AT&T Opt-E-Man Service

If there’s one thing to say about the AT&T Opt-E-Man Ethernet service solution, it has to be this: Opt-E-Man will give you the chance to open multiple access points in various locations and have them communicate with each other simultaneously. That’s because this service uses Ethernet technology in tandem with an optical cable solution to connect multiple local area networks together.

Thanks to its unique infrastructure, Opt-E-Man is highly capable of providing its customers with a variety of flexible bandwidth options, ranging from a network connection with transfer speeds of 5Mbps to a Gigabit Ethernet connection that transfers 1Gbps. All network infrastructures come with a guarantee that the network solution is scalable – which means that if you find that you need to switch to an Ethernet service that’s faster than your current setup, it’s as easy as letting AT&T know.

Opt-E-Man supports a variety of ways in which you can send data to anywhere within your network. Some of the transport configurations it has include the basic point-to-point configuration, a more complex point-to-multipoint setup, and the ultimate multipoint-to-multipoint mega connection.

That’s because Opt-E-Man uses a unique mix of physical and virtual connections to make sure that your data gets through when you want it, where you want it. The Ethernet virtual connection solution is a unique method of transferring information through optical fiber connections. By shooting Ethernet LAN packages through these optical fiber cables that travel through your intraLATA network, Opt-E-Man is capable of transmitting information to virtually anywhere in your network – even to the Internet. It can also access network-based VPN services by connecting you to a network-terminating server at your location, and then using a network router, switch, or bridge to connect to the service.

Components of Opt-E-Man

A service wouldn’t be exceptional if its basic parts weren’t exceptional – and Opt-E-Man uses components that are some of the best in the industry today. For its specialized network terminating functions, Opt-E-Man uses an Ethernet interface capable of handling multiple payloads at any given time. This interface uses a specified Ethernet port to transport the data, which is used to end the flow of incoming data and begin the execution of incoming payload.

As mentioned earlier, the Ethernet virtual connection used by Opt-E-Man is the system’s way of generating a variety of randomized circuits to facilitate multipoint connections. This enables the Ethernet line to connect to a variety of physical end connections, as well as to connect to the Ethernet cloud network

Users are also given the choice to select an option which they think will fit their business best:

Bronze service assures you of full support for your data applications, and will be most beneficial for users who wish to just get their network connected.
Silver service users are given all the benefits bronze service customers receive, but are also given high-speed support that will ensure the minimal loss of data integrity, as well as a low latency rate for services that require unusually fast connections, such as Voice over Internet Protocols.

What you get from Opt-E-Man

Opt-E-Man’s private line network is a scalable solution, so if you need to change the parameters of the service you’re currently using or add new locations into your network, you won’t have to worry about going through a full-scale network revamp. That’s because this Ethernet network’s architecture is simple in structure, requiring less servers and relying mostly on physical cable connectivity instead. And since it’s a simpler network structure, Opt-E-Man is a cost-effective alternative for customers who are looking for a reliable and secure way of setting up a private network for their company.

Tags: Opt-E-Man Service
Posted in AT&T, Ethernet Service | No Comments »