[Macworld]

Post your comments for AT&T fires back at FCC staff report on T-Mobile deal here

[mike17032]

The FCC is right. AT$T is reaping the "rewards" for how badly they have been treating their customers for years, they do not need to use their money to further expand their power to bully consumers into their service.

[BrianAlvarez]

Crooked azz AT&T

[DCv573]

Awww - poor AT&T...they failed to bribe enough elected officials to put pressure on the FCC so they could be the bully of the telecommunications sandbox. Now they are crying that they are the victims of prejudice. Does anybody remember when the government forced the breakup AT&T into a lot of "little bells" to prevent their absolute domination / take-over of the telecommunications industry? Now they've re-assembled and have renewed their objective "There can be only ONE" (or at least, only one that has absolute control. AT&T's real motto: "We don't want any real competition - EVER!"

[ericole]

Regardless of the rest of this issue, this is a pretty good point made by AT&T regarding the FCC. Sounds a lot like govt/Congressional math:

The FCC report also ignores job gains that would likely come as AT&T expands its network, Cicconi added. AT&T and supporters of the merger have argued that AT&T's promised $8 billion in network deployment spending would create up to 96,000 new jobs at AT&T and other companies. The FCC, in October, estimated that its new $4.5-billion-a-year broadband fund would create up to 500,000 jobs over six years, he noted.

"This notion—that government spending on broadband deployment creates jobs and economic growth, but private investment does not—makes no sense," he said. "Conversely, if the FCC had applied to its own broadband fund the same analysis it used for our merger-related investments, the result would be similar—zero new broadband, zero jobs, zero growth."