AT&T Buys T-Mobile for $39B

It’s official, AT&T has announced that it was acquiring T-Mobile USA for $39B, adding 33M customers in one fell swoop. The combined entity will therefore have about 129M subscribers. This deal makes a lot more sense than the rumored Sprint+T-Mobile deal that we called “a marriage from hell” earlier this month.

Both networks are using GSM as the basic building block, so the network consolidation should be relatively easy and transparent to T-Mobile users. Deutsche Telecom, the parent company will have an 8% stake in AT&T – if the deal is approved by the government. The good news for T-Mobile users is that they will gain access to the iPhone and eventually to AT&T’s 4G LTE network (whenever it will be ready). The bad news is that you can forget about that unlock code that T-Mobile was giving away on request. AT&T always had a tough policy on network unlocking. Is this good for consumers? Probably not… [press release]