La Schiazza

AT&T Illinois president Paul La Schiazza is in the business of predicting the future of other mobile phone companies.  In an interview with the Journal-Star, La Schiazza said AT&T should be permitted to complete its purchase of T-Mobile, because if they don’t, T-Mobile will never make the investment in 4G upgrades and “whether we buy them or not, (T-Mobile) is going to go away eventually.”

That’s ironic for Mr. La Schiazza to say, considering his employer made a decision not to make substantial investments in 4G upgrades itself, before suggesting it would with the purchase of T-Mobile.

La Schiazza admits AT&T has thrown its landline business under the bus, now considering it antiquated and irrelevant for a growing number of Americans.

“More people, especially young people, are cutting the cord,” he said, referring to customers who drop landline service completely. “We’ve changed our business model to be a mobile/broadband company,” said La Schiazza.

La Schiazza was also willing to call out AT&T itself when he noted wireless companies in Illinois, including his, have put rural areas at a “significant disadvantage.”  That’s because wireless companies ignore rural areas where providing coverage does not make economic sense.  Yet La Schiazza oddly claimed that with the absorption of T-Mobile, 97 percent of Illinois could get enhanced AT&T service.  He did not explain exactly what business formula was used to justify the enhanced proposed coverage maps he brought with him to the interview.

David Kolata, executive director of the Chicago-based Citizens Utility Board, provided the newspaper with a countering viewpoint — rare in newspaper stories featuring interviews with AT&T executives.  Kolata told the newspaper he was less thrilled about a possible T-Mobile-AT&T merger. “The cellphone industry is already pretty concentrated. When one of the biggest players buys another large company, it raises competitive concerns,” he said.

“The fact that the Department of Justice and five or six state attorney generals (including Lisa Madigan in Illinois) across the country oppose the merger as currently proposed is an indication that it could be bad for consumers,” said Kolata.

[Thanks to Stop the Cap! reader Bob for the news tip.]

A Winston-Salem man with a judgment from a North Carolina court in hand shocked AT&T store employees on Summit Square Boulevard Tuesday when he walked in with a Forsyth County Sheriff’s deputy to serve AT&T a court order that allowed the Sheriff’s Office to seize the store’s assets and sell them to satisfy his $2,000 judgment.

George Kontos says AT&T has been stonewalling his family for more than three months after winning a lawsuit against AT&T for Internet Overcharging.  The company had been stalling Kontos with paperwork requests, but a visit by a sheriff’s deputy prepared to begin selling off the store’s property to pay Kontos managed to finally get AT&T to act.

“AT&T is making arrangements to pay the sum owed to the Kontos family and will deliver the payment to the appropriate entity,” an AT&T spokesperson said in a statement.

Kontos had little trouble arguing his case in small claims court.

(Courtesy: WFMY News)

“When I went into AT&T to look at the plan, I wanted to make sure I had a comparable data plan with what I had been using and the rep pulled up the account and obviously even as an AT&T employee it must have been outstanding for him because his first reaction was, ‘wow you’re paying too much,'” Kontos told WFMY News.

With an AT&T employee on his side, Kontos thought AT&T would do the right thing and credit his account for 24 months of overcharging.  AT&T agreed to partial credits for the last five months.  Kontos said he would see the company in court.

In July, a county small claims court judge quickly found for Kontos and handed him a judgment and Kontos has been waiting by his mailbox for AT&T’s check ever since.

Kontos calls the matter a real David vs. Goliath story, and openly wonders how many other customers in the Triad are being overcharged by AT&T.

“Demand that they review your account for the last two years minimum,” he told the station. “Find out what you’ve been paying. Find out what other rate plans exist. Find out what you could have been paying and if you’ve got money that’s owed to you, get it back.”

If AT&T won’t provide an owed refund willingly, and you live in North Carolina, you can use this form — the same one used by the Kontos family — to sue AT&T yourself.

[flv width=”640″ height=”447″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WFMY Greensboro Customer George Kontos Took ATT Mobility To Court And Won 10-7-11.flv[/flv]

WFMY in Greensboro shares the story of the Kontos family, who discovered they were overcharged for a data plan for more than two years.  When the company refused to issue an appropriate credit, Kontos took the company to court and won.  (2 minutes)

Crumpton

NAACP national board member and former Missouri Public Service Commission member Harold Crumpton believes that combining AT&T and T-Mobile will create 100,000 new jobs, despite the fact both companies have promoted “cost savings” from eliminating redundant services and winning “increased efficiencies.”

That’s code language for layoffs, and it has been that way with every telecommunications merger in the last decade.  But Crumpton prefers to deny reality in a guest opinion piece published today in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

Most mergers result in — and pay for themselves with — job losses and higher prices. Not this one.

If, to use the government antitrust lingo, there is a “relevant product market” for this merger, it would be “jobs” because jobs are the No. 1 product of the broadband factory. The AT&T and T-Mobile merger is structured as an engine of job creation — yielding 100,000 new jobs by delivering on President Obama’s call for a national high-speed broadband network. That’s far more jobs than would be lost because of AT&T and T-Mobile overlaps.

Ironically, AT&T announced the repatriation of 5,000 call center jobs and pledged not to terminate call center employees because of the merger. Two hours later, without warning to AT&T, the Justice Department filed its suit. Suffice to say that President Obama, our greatest champion of job creation, was not well-served that morning.

How will AT&T produce all these new jobs? By creating the first national next-generation high-speed (4G) mobile network. The merger is what will make the network possible, and it will do that by aggregating and redeploying spectrum T-Mobile can’t use for 4G. In this way, the network would reach 55 million more Americans than 4G currently reaches.

AT&T couldn’t have argued the case better.  Oh wait.  They have, in the company’s advocacy package mailed to the NAACP and dozens of other groups who receive the company’s financial support.  Those talking points inevitably end up in the guest editorials penned by Crumpton and others.

While the bloom is clearly off the rose of the AT&T/T-Mobile merger, thanks in part to consumer groups and the U.S. Department of Justice who filed a lawsuit to stop it, AT&T is still flailing about trying to find some way to get the deal done, if only to avoid the outrageous break-up fee self-imposed by the telecommunications giant if the deal falls apart.  AT&T’s promise to bring an end to the obnoxious practice of offshoring their customer support call centers — if the merger gets approved — has been compared with blackmail by some customers who have spent an hour or more negotiating with heavily accented customer support agents that companies like Discover Card routinely mock.

AT&T promises customers a solution to the "Peggy Problem" if their merger with T-Mobile gets approved.

It clearly wasn’t enough to move critics of the deal to reconsider — AT&T could voluntarily hire American workers who speak the language of their customers for the benefit of those customers with or without a merger with the fourth largest wireless carrier in the country.

Crumpton argues President Obama was not well served by the Justice Department.  Consumer groups argue T-Mobile and AT&T’s customers will not be well-served if this merger ever happens.

As Stop the Cap! has repeatedly argued, both AT&T and T-Mobile will construct 4G mobile broadband networks in all of the places where the economics to deploy those networks makes sense.  No more, no less, no matter if AT&T and T-Mobile are two companies or one.

Crumpton might as well have argued the merger would deliver 4G service to Sprint customers as well.  It’s the same disconnected logic.

Crumpton thinks AT&T’s high-priced, heavily-capped 4G network will somehow solve the pervasive problem of the digital divide — the millions of poor Americans who can’t afford AT&T’s prices.  Incredibly, Crumpton’s answer is to allow one of the most price-aggressive, innovative carriers in the country favored by many budget-conscious consumers to be snapped up by the lowest rated, if not most-hated wireless company in the country.

It just doesn’t make sense.  But it does make dollars… for the NAACP, which receives boatloads of corporate money from AT&T.  It’s no surprise the pretzel-twisted logic that drives merger advocates like Mr. Crumpton comes fact-free.  The money makes up for all that.

“The NAACP stands ready to work with the public and private sectors to ensure that every American has an equal opportunity to participate in and benefit from this awesome ‘broadband revolution,'” Crumpton writes.

We can only hope that is true.  The NAACP can get started by admitting publicly it receives substantial support from AT&T and it will either agree to remain neutral in corporate advocacy issues to avoid conflicts of interest, or return AT&T’s money.  After all, it sounds like they need it to build the digital divide-erasing 4G network Crumpton is purportedly so concerned about.

AT&T believes it can make a killing getting consumers to hook up as many wireless devices as possible, preferably to AT&T’s network.

That’s the view of Glenn Lurie, who serves as AT&T’s hunter for new revenue opportunities.  Lurie believes that every device that can developed to work on a wireless network can obtain that connectivity through his company, for a price.

Lurie and other wireless industry executives have gathered to discuss where the wireless industry is headed, and the answer seems to be data, data, and even more data.

Everyday consumer products, from washers/dryers to pill bottles to pet collars are all possible candidates to get the wireless treatment.  Want to know when your dryer is done?  Why not have it send a text message.  Is it time to take your medication?  Let the bill bottle page you.  Your dog roaming the neighborhood?  Have a built-in GPS unit alert you to exactly where Fido is headed.

Lurie

“Everything that has a current running through it will be connected,” Lurie tells CNET. “They need to be smarter.”

Not every idea is all that futuristic.  Some high end refrigerators support Internet connections and even include a built in small screen television.  So-called smart-home products that work with home security systems, smart electrical meters and even smartphone apps already exist.  Dishwashers can be programmed to run at off-peak energy rates.  Lights can be turned on or off remotely, and so on.

But AT&T sees even more possibilities.  In-car wireless could deliver Wi-Fi and streamed media directly to car radios and televisions over AT&T’s wireless network.  Even parcel delivery could be smarter with tracked shipping and anticipated delivery times.

Lurie believes that AT&T can earn the most keeping things simple, which means getting devices connected easily without a lot of hassle or multiple bills.

AT&T always believed business applications would be the core driver in wireless data growth, but that assumption has now proven incorrect.  Consumers are driving wireless data growth with apps, multimedia, and a need to feel constantly connected.

Courtesy: Gottabemobile

Just two days after the less-than-overwhelming unveiling of the incrementally-upgraded Apple iPhone 4S, the “must-have-it” crowd has begun melting down the customer service lines of AT&T looking for special discounted upgrade pricing, even though many are months away from the end of their contracts.

AT&T customers are being invited to dial *639# from their phones for an upgrade text message in response.  Others are visiting AT&T’s Phone Upgrade website.  Many are not happy to find AT&T isn’t automatically throwing out the rules for two-year contract upgrade pricing, and are being offered phones that include an early upgrade penalty and a new two year contract.:

1. $250 early upgrade penalty fee;
2. $199 for the iPhone 4S (8GB model) on a new two-year contract (other models available);
3. $18 upgrade activation fee;
4. Shipping, handling, and taxes extra.

For the benefit of having the latest iPhone, AT&T customers will pay at least $467.  That $250 early upgrade fee appears to be different from the company’s standard early termination fee: $325 minus $10 for each full month of your two year contract that you complete.

Several customers are unhappy to hear that, so they are calling up AT&T and demanding the same discounts a new iPhone customer would get.  AT&T has a history of bending over backwards for their iPhone customers, because they often spend more than other customers on higher-priced service plans.  In many cases, customers got their current generation iPhone months before contract renewal time, scoring significant savings and avoiding penalties other phone owners face when attempting early upgrades.  Many customers expect they’ll get the same treatment again, but AT&T is showing signs it has few reasons to agree to every request.

Surveying several message boards, it appears AT&T is granting early upgrades only to their best, biggest-spending customers.  Everyone else gets to wait.  For those who managed to acquire the iPhone 4 on the day it was released, discounted upgrades without the $250 penalty will become available the day after Thanksgiving.