DOJ files antitrust lawsuit to block AT&T and T-Mobile merger

This is good news for America's wireless customers. The DOJ antitrust lawsuit would block a merger that would leave America's wireless customers facing only two suppliers.

The U.S. Department of Justice filed an antitrust lawsuit against AT&T on Wednesday seeking to block its $39 billion merger with T-Mobile.

The merger would create the largest wireless company in the United States, combining AT&T's 98 million customers with T-Mobile's 34 million users, for a total of 130 million subscribers. AT&T is currently the second-largest wireless company by number of subscribers, and T-Mobile is fourth.

The DOJ said the merger would lead to a situation in which just two companies -- the AT&T-T-Mobile combination and Verizon Wireless -- would dominate the mobile market. The new AT&T and Verizon would account for more than two-thirds of wireless subscribers and 78% of the wireless industry's revenues.

"We feel the combination of AT&T and T-Mobile would result in tens of millions of consumers across the U.S. facing higher prices, fewer choices, and lower quality products for wireless services," James Cole, deputy attorney general, said in a press conference Wednesday.

This proposed merger is clearly anti-competitive and not in the best interest of American wireless customers.

AT&T really doesn't like anti-Bush speech

Several days ago it was reported that AT&T had censored the rock band Pearl Jam when

the following lyrics were sung to the tune of Pink Floyd's "Another Brick in the Wall" but were cut from the webcast:

- "George Bush, leave this world alone." (the second time it was sung); and

- "George Bush find yourself another home."

AT&T apologized. It was a single low-level employee acting against company policy.

Yeah, Right. Sensible people didn't believe it then. Now there is more evidence that the low-level employee was following company policy. From Timothy Karr at Huffington Post"

AT&T redeployed its hacks with a "modified" public position:

"It's not our intent to edit political comments in webcasts," said AT&T spokeswoman Tiffany O'Brien Nels. "Unfortunately, it has happened in the past in a handful of cases. We have taken steps to insure that it will not happen again."

Then on Monday a crew member involved with AT&T's webcasts came forward, telling Wired News that he had been issued instructions to "shut it down if there was any swearing or if anybody starts getting political."

Sounds like a censorship policy to us.

AT&T is the problem, and they don't want us to know that Net Neutrality solves a lot of the problem.

This is precisely the behavior ... Net Neutrality advocates have been warning about for almost a decade," Stanford Law Professor Larry Lessig wrote about the Pearl Jam incident. "And not just (or even most importantly) in this explicit form. Much more important are the games played more subtly, to push innovation and content in the direction that benefits AT&T."

Internet Service Providers "believe they have the absolute right to control the content/application on those lines," Lessig writes. If allowed to proliferate, this attitude "will be deadly for Internet innovation."

AT&T's censorship, whether a "mistake" or corporate policy, is a rallying point for the Internet freedom movement. The great promise of the Internet shouldn't be left in the hands of those who confuse telling the truth with spinning for political and economic gain.

But AT&T can still make good on its promise to "never, ever" censor the Web by backing off its multimillion-dollar campaign to kill Net Neutrality.

No one who has watched AT&T business practices believes that they will stop fighting Net Neutrality.

Wait until the Progressives get back into position to apply Sherman Anti-Trust to the phone company - again. They are really making the case for it.

Finally! AT and T gave me my DSL back.

Unbelievable. We've had a lot of rain here recently (still haven't made up for the drought over the last two years, though.) With rain came bugs. Ants. Flies. Mosquitoes. Roaches. Republicans. (Sorry. Can't blame the rain for them.)

But I never connected it to the inability of my DSL to connect to the Domain Name Server. The computer was sending and receiving packets. But it couldn't find any websites. Then my dial tone went out. Related? Yeah, but it took a while to find that out.

The service tech finally called and told me I had a dial tone back (well, duh. He was on the phone, right?) He also said that my DSL was back. So I asked what had happened.

Ants.

Ants in a junction box a block away from me. He had to isolate the problem, kill the ants and clean them out, then fix the wires.

That's Texas, I guess.