AT&T Buys, Comcast Says it Tries and Verizon Shows Highs: [25th Apr 2011]

AT&T have this week submitted a 100 page justification of their deal to acquire T-Mobile to the FCC. The document insists that the deal is extraordinary and that it will not reduce competition. It also hints that T-Mobile is not very important in the industry saying that T-Mobile made a late transition to 3G at a time when other providers were looking into 4G. However AT&T does make the point that they need the T-Mobile capacity to cover their needs until new spectrum is finally made available. They say that this could be many years away and that they need to make a move now. It has been suggested by industry experts that the purchase is more likely to be an attempt to gain market control rather than the need for further spectrum.

T-Mobile CEO Phillipp Humm has made it clear this week that the company is continuing to offer their customers good deals despite the fact it may be purchased by AT&T within the next year. Questions had been asked about how aggressively the provider would compete with AT&T given the deal which is on the table. However Humm has said that they are as aggressive as ever. In fact there have been a number of commercials released which even poke fun at AT&T. Meanwhile last week's confusion regarding the pulling of a leaked $59.99 plan was put down to the fact it was simply a test and wasn't meant to be on offer. Humm denied that AT&T had anything to do with it.

Verizon has revealed that their first quarter earnings for 2011 were $1.44 billion with revenues of $26.99 billion. In addition the company added 906,000 new contract subscribers which was slightly more than the previous quarter. This is also well ahead of AT&T, who managed just 62,000 new subscribers. Verizon also added 207,000 FiOS Internet subscribers and 192,000 FiOS TV subscribers. Those who have landline subscriptions continue to fall and the number of those who work for Verizon in their wireline workforce has dropped by 16,000 employees in the last year.

President Obama has made an address at a Facebook Town Hall event in Silicon Valley and suggested that improving the numbers of people ho get involved in science was important for the future of the country. He even suggested that science needs to be made cooler and that the next big Internet breakthrough could be seen by US citizens in the same way as the Moonwalk. (it is assumed that he meant the walk on the moon and not the Michael Jackson dance...)

It has been revealed that the iPhone has been tracking its owners movements and stores the location information and times almost constantly. This information could also be easily accessed as it is unencrypted and unprotected. The tracker file which is embedded on Apple iPhones and iPads was discovered by researchers and was followed up by the news that this type of tracking has been used for some time by law enforcers. Steve Jobs has been asked by a congressman to explain why this data is being collected. However it has been noted that the public appear o be quite naive when it comes to this type of tracking as most phones emit a signal to show where they are and this can and has been used by police for many years.

A new survey by the Temkin Group has shown that when it comes to customer loyalty many of the country's cable companies have come in towards the bottom. Charter and Time Warner Cable come in alongside a number of banks and insurance companies, while Comcast takes up the position at the very bottom of the list at number 143. Bruce Temkin has explained that some executives still see customer service as an afterthought and only attend to it if they have the time and resources after the product has been produced. He also points out that long contract times can cause problems with customer experience. Despite Comcast saying they will be putting their customers first it seems that cable companies still have bad reputations.