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FCC Approves Sprint-Nextel Merger 242

Posted by CowboyNeal from the go-for-launch dept.
Luke writes "Sprint and Nextel received approval from the Federal Communications Commission to merge to form the number three wireless company on Wednesday. FCC commissioners gave the companies unanimous support for the merger. The companies, which announced the merger on Dec. 14, 2004, expect to finalize the merger soon."
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FCC Approves Sprint-Nextel Merger More

FCC Approves Sprint-Nextel Merger

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  • Yaaaay!! (Score:5, Funny)

    by xigxag ( 167441 ) on Thursday August 04, 2005 @08:27PM (#13246319)
    As we usher in a new era of reduced costs and consumer savings!!!!1!1
    • not to mention the ever accelerating drain-circling spiral of layoffs, outsourcing, loss of employee moral, consolidation mismanagement, elimination of R&D, even poorer products and services, alienating customers, and plummeting stock valuation. w00h00, let the self-destructive dance of death begin!
    • As a general rule, GSM is usable places outside North America, while CDMA and iDEN aren't. A year ago, wandering around asking if phones worked anywhere else would result in three affirmative answers (from ATT Wireless, Cingular and T-Mobile), and three blank stares (from Verizon, Nextel and Sprint).

      After the ATT-Cingular merger and the Nextel-Sprint merger, we'll only have two of each kind of answer. This will make shopping so much faster!

      Ultimately we'll just have two monopolies: PhonesThatWork, Inc. an
      • Why is it that a de-facto monopoly is bad for operating systems, but wonderful for cell-phones?

        You would prefer it if the whole world adopts a mediocre, rushed-out standard whose only advantage is its installed base (GSM), over a well-thought out, high-performance technology (CDMA) that beats it hands down in every conceivable technological aspect, like support for much larger cell sizes, coverage, battery life, ease of deployment, capacity, frequency reuse and inter-cell handoff?

        Are you aware that the GSM
        • The only geographic area where CDMA does not have a foothold is Western Europe (big surprise), where the various governments have passed rules to ban non-GSM technologies! Various operators who would otherwise have gladly chosen CDMA have been FORCED to adopt GSM.

          In western Europe, many network operators started before the first CDMA standard existed. Nevertheless, it's true that the European states specifically handed out GSM licenses, which makes sense if you want to ensure interoperability between the ne

          • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

            by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
            Comment removed based on user account deletion
            • GSM started as a project by France Telecom's mobile phone subdivision and was created independently of the EU's directive. It was one of the standards considered by the various standards groups, and in the end was their choice.

              Not quite. GSM was a group by CEPT (the European Conference of Postal and Telecommunications Administrations). It was indeed independent of the EU's directive to reserve the 900 MHz band, because it was founded before (actually it seems that the directive was passed to allow this grou
        • Comment removed based on user account deletion
          • > That's the biggest amount of BS I've ever read. Are you a Qualcomm employee perchance?

            No, but I do work in the CDMA industry... and used to work in the GSM industry before. I know what I am talking about, having had to mop up the problems with real deployments on either side.

            > though in practice both find power levels end up having a bigger affect than GSM's timeslot protection imposed limits.

            Absolutely incorrect. In GSM, it is theoretically impossible to have cell sizes larger than a few kilometers
        • Umm, no, W-CDMA is not the same as "CDMA technology". It is still based on GSM. It uses CDMA "techniques" for frequency-hopping among GSM channels.

          The name is unfortunate, but it's not CDMA. Underneath W-CDMA's covers is still GSM.

          It does not mean that GSM has been supplanted by CDMA. Industry buzz says that quite the opposite is happening and there's even a persistent rumor that Vodafone, the world's largest GSM provider and majority owner of Verizon Wireless, may eventually convert VZW to W-CDMA.
    • For what it's worth, when AT&T became Cingular, my rates went down, my minutes went up and my service got better. Of course, I was an AT&T customer, so the service couldn't have been any worse than it was, so anything would have been a step up.

      -h-

  • Fraternization (Score:2, Funny)

    by Seumas ( 6865 ) *
    So does this mean that people who work for Nextel are no longer allowed to fraternize with those who work for Sprint after the merger if that new labor law proposal passes? Or do they get some sort of grandfathered in "friendship/buddy" clause that allows them to still retain friendships and acquaintances in such an occurrence?

  • The two worst. (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 04, 2005 @08:29PM (#13246334)
    Maybe the shittiness of Nextel and Sprint will cancel eachother out?

    Ugh. Just what we need. This is like when your huge, fat, impotent, blubbering idiot of a third cousin marries your bitchy, chain-smoking, slut of a first cousin. Nothing can result from the union except terrible, retarded things.

  • Oh great... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 04, 2005 @08:30PM (#13246337)
    So now we'll have lousy customer service (sprint) combined with that fabulous redneck mating call:

    {bee-deep} "Billy!"

    {bee-deep} "Yeah!"

    {bee-deep} "Where ya at?"

    {bee-deep} "At lunch!"

    {bee-deep} "What?"

    {bee-deep} "At luunncchh!"

    {bee-deep} "Where?" (...)

  • Just like K-mart/Sears (Score:4, Interesting)

    by toddbu ( 748790 ) on Thursday August 04, 2005 @08:30PM (#13246339)
    I can't believe that a great company like Nextel wants to merge with a crappy company like Sprint. It kind of reminds me when Sears merged with K-mart. The sad thing is that it's usually the weaker partner that wins out.
    • Oh God, I almost just fainted. I worked for Sprint before I went to law school, and then I worked for Sears during law school. Why do the companies I work for get so fucked up?

    • I can't believe that a great company like Nextel wants to merge with a crappy company like Sprint. It kind of reminds me when Sears merged with K-mart. The sad thing is that it's usually the weaker partner that wins out.
      --
      If you don't want crime to pay, let the government run it.

      I laughed out loud when I read your sig, because I've seen firsthand how government inefficiently is helping Nextel prosper and grow.

      I just quit my job at the county Parks and Recreation department, and everyone there has

  • What's the new name? (Score:3, Funny)

    by CypherXero ( 798440 ) on Thursday August 04, 2005 @08:32PM (#13246345) Homepage
    Spritel? Nexint? Vista?

  • Technology (Score:3, Interesting)

    by coflow ( 519578 ) on Thursday August 04, 2005 @08:36PM (#13246359)
    Does anyone out there know what will happen from a network technology perspective? It seems to me that Nextel's iDen "standard" is entirely incompatible with Sprint. Will Spring just send Nextel customers new Sprint units? Then what happens to Push to Talk?

    • Then what happens to Push to Talk?

      I would hope it would die, but unfortunately Sprint happens to have the same feature already anyway...

      Why do people bother with this? Why don't they just call each other? It is bad enough when I have to listen to half of a conversation. Now I get to sit in a restaraunt, or other public place, and hear:

      Phone: *BLEEP BLEEP* Hey, are you there?

      Guy: Yeah, I am here

      Phone: *BLEEP BLEEP* Where are you?

      Guy: I am at a restaurant.

      Phone: *BLEEP BLEEP* What did you say?

      • Well many companies used, imagine a construction company and you don't have unlimited minutes to minutes and you need to have 10 people on one channel talking getting the order right there and then. I suspect that is what Sprint wants, the large Nextel contract with the many companies.

        But year "push to talk" is just stupid from a personal point of view, this is 21st century people should be just talking to each other over videophones soon.

      • Does Nextel not give free mobile to mobile minutes? Do people not notice that they make their conversations so public like this?

        No free mobile-to-mobile minutes, but they are the only US carrier to offer unlimited free incoming calls 24x7 (like the rest of the civilized world) AFAIK. My friends have gotten used to me calling and saying "call me back!" or texting them to call me. I keep looking at a Cingular crackberry, but I use about 1600 minutes a month, and use only 200 of 600 plan minutes. My plan inclu
        • Well, you and your family could get a Verizon family share plan with 1000 minutes for $70 and free mobile to mobile. I talk to my wife everyday at least once during lunch time and don't have to worry about running over or counting days till the end of month.

          Chances are some of your friends will have Verizon too. You'll get good signal quality, good customer service and no need to ask people to "call you back", you can talk to you wife as much as you can. And no I don't work for them. I switched to Verizon

      • Re:Technology (Score:2, Informative)

        by CoderBob ( 858156 )
        It's called letting our phone work for us. With the two-way feature, I can talk to someone with the phone sitting on my chest while I'm laying down trying to track network cable. In the car, I can beep someone, and if they are available they can talk- if not, they aren't interrupted by a continuous phone ring.

        Some people misuse it, this is true. Explain to them that the little "speaker" button on the top of their phone turns off the speaker-phone aspect. This means they have to hold it like a regular ph
      • "Why do people bother with this? Why don't they just call each other? It is bad enough when I have to listen to half of a conversation. Now I get to sit in a restaraunt, or other public place, and hear"

        I absolutely hate the push-to-talk/walkie talkie Nextel and Sprint phones. It is turning all of their customers "ghetto fabulous" when it comes to public manners.

        The walkie talkie users should get a clue and understand that the rest of us don't even want to hear ONE side of the conversation from them.

        Instead
      • You obviously have never done contract work in the field. The ability to ping people you are working with real quick without making an official phone call is great.

        Having said that, people who use the feature for purposes other than coordinating work (whether that be business work, or personal work) are retarded. You don't ping your buddy at the restaurant to see if he wants to go to the bar tonight. You call him like normal.

        • Re:Technology (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Wonko ( 15033 ) <thehead@patshead.com> on Thursday August 04, 2005 @10:30PM (#13246881) Homepage Journal

          You obviously have never done contract work in the field. The ability to ping people you are working with real quick without making an official phone call is great.

          Text messaging is usually good for such things. The receiver does not have to respond right away, and they can read the message more than once. I would imagine a vibrating phone/2-way is less of a disturbance than a phone going '*BLEEP BLEEP* Are you there?'

          You may even be able to send out a quick text reply without interrupting anyone else.

          You don't ping your buddy at the restaurant to see if he wants to go to the bar tonight.

          Actually, text messaging is quite good for this. I do not need to know that he is going right this minute. He can likely tell me any time in the next few hours. Of course, I have no idea if he is in a meeting, napping, out to lunch with someone important. I do not need to know, he can respond any time.

          Please correct me if I am mistaken, but it seems to me that text messaging and push to talk are both best used for asyncronous communications. Don't push to talk messages disappear immediately after you hear them, or are they saved? I am under the impression that they disappear. For me, that would severely limit its uses...

          I have to admit though, text messaging was much easier on my old Motorola 2 way pager than it is on the average cell phone. I can probably thumb about 4-6 characters per second on those things... I imagine I am more like 1-2 on a phone :).

    • I think Nextel has to switch technologies anyways as they are being removed from their current freq. So this makes some sense.

      • Re:Technology (Score:5, Interesting)

        by LinuxHam ( 52232 ) on Thursday August 04, 2005 @09:52PM (#13246692) Homepage Journal
        Nextel has to switch technologies anyways as they are being removed from their current freq

        Which is an important point here missed by many. Nextel, in effort to offer to step out of the way of emergency services was granted back in February the right to exchange the crappy frequencies they built their business on for awesome new ones for half off. Saved billions in the process.

        1. Buy up radio licenses from trucking companies operating in 800MHz all over the country.
        2. Build a cellular network with those frequencies geared towards business (i.e. markup city)
        3. Pound the emegency service radios until they beg the FCC to do something.
        4. Exchange the crappy, life-threatening frequencies for shiny new ones at fire sale prices.

        Maybe we'll get some interesting new services on those frequencies. Crap, I forgot "profit" somewhere in there.

        "Nextel, the #1 preferred carrier for delivery boys, tow truck drivers and construction workers in all 50 states. 51 if you count Canada."

  • Who profits from it? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by drgonzo59 ( 747139 ) on Thursday August 04, 2005 @08:37PM (#13246362)
    Sprint and Nextel have different infrastructures. Sprint is CDMA (like Verizon) and Nextel uses a Motorola proprietary standard. It would have made sense for Sprint and Verizon to merge.

    Would they have to privide dual chipset phones to take advantage of all the Nextel infrastructure? I suspect Motorola will lose out, because CDMA seems to be better suited for the future and is used more widely. Nextel will probably be converted to CDMA and Sprint will get the huge Nextel corporate contracts as soon as it can implement the local "walkie-talkie" feature that Nextel customers love so much.

    • I work indirectly for Nextel. The plan is that Nextel's iDEN network will be operated in place until 2010. In the mean time customers will be encouraged to move to Sprint's up coming EV-DO/CDMA2000 based net. After 2010 the iDEN network will be taken offline. Sprint's current net will have Push-to-talk (PTT) capability graphed onto it and users of both networks will be able to PTT each other. What do I think? I think it will fail miserably. In a few years I think that Verizon's bet on rolling out EV-
      • Yeah, nationwide EDGE (slowly rolling out in markets, its here in the Twin Cities and all of the Minnesota roaming) for $30 bucks. You keep on wasting that extra $50/mo!

        [I'm talking about standalone pcmcia card service, unlimited use. Yes, I know EV-DO is better, but its going to take a long time for coast to coast. By that time we're going to see Flash-OFDM deployed in major cities, anyhow]

    • It would have made sense for Sprint and Verizon to merge.

      From a technical standpoint, this is true. However, as luck would have it, I bet if Verizon and Sprint merged, you'd get Sprint's terrible coverage combined with Verizon's terrible customer service!

  • My suggestion (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Y-Crate ( 540566 ) on Thursday August 04, 2005 @08:37PM (#13246369)
    The FCC should have mandated the removal of the "Push To Talk Feature" as part of the agreement. When you live in a society that has lost all concept of manners (and don't say the South is still some shining example, because I just lived there for 3 years and it is becoming just as vapid and rude as any place else) something that basically enables people to be even bigger assholes in public is the last thing we need.

    Inevitably, you have soccer moms and ghetto thugs (or wannabes) blasting their conversations across the entire room, and for some reason they feel the need to shout even louder than they normally would on a cell phone. (another thing that drives me nuts)

    • Re:My suggestion (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Ryosen ( 234440 )
      Interesting. You were modded as a Troll. Methinks some boarish, obnoxious, inconsiderate, soccer-mom driving, ghetto-thug-bangin', Boost mobile-using, louder-than-a-boom-box-talking, commuter-train-riding moderator doth protest too much.

    • Re:My suggestion (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Kadin2048 ( 468275 )
      This is sadly quite true.

      What began as a useful feature for business users, has become the height of obnoxiousness when used by individuals. It's unfortunate that it wasn't kept just to the expensive ruggedized Motorola-Nextel commercial handsets. You don't see regular people walking around using business two-way radios in public, and you shouldn't use a PTT cellphone either.

      The only thing more expensive, IMO, are polyphonic ringtones. Whoever thought that it was a cool idea to allow every idiot with a cell

      • Re:My suggestion (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Y-Crate ( 540566 )
        What began as a useful feature for business users, has become the height of obnoxiousness when used by individuals. It's unfortunate that it wasn't kept just to the expensive ruggedized Motorola-Nextel commercial handsets. You don't see regular people walking around using business two-way radios in public, and you shouldn't use a PTT cellphone either.

        Agreed, I would have been much happier if they had just migrated the ruggedized handsets to the consumer market and left PTT with the business types. I'm th
    • "When you live in a society that has lost all concept of manners (and don't say the South is still some shining example, because I just lived there for 3 years and it is becoming just as vapid and rude as any place else) something that basically enables people to be even bigger assholes in public is the last thing we need.
      Inevitably, you have soccer moms and ghetto thugs (or wannabes) blasting their conversations across the entire room, and for some reason they feel the need to shout even louder than they n
    • I have a Nextel, and would have to disagree with your call for the complete removal of PTT. Consumers should not be using Nextels - there is *no* question about that. I really do not understand why the hell anyone would spend $80/mo on a Nextel for personal use. I knew a few people who did that, and was annoyed by their stupid use of them.

      On the other hand, my Nextel is for business use, and it is invaluable at times. It's called "Direct Connect" for a reason - if I had to wait for a full connect via a
    • Actually, one of the main reasons for the merger was so Nextel could roll out their next generation PTT which runs on the CDMA network. Merging with Sprint means they don't have to go out and build a completely new infrastructure to support the new features. That's also why Verizion cried foul last year when Nextel was allowed to buy frequency spectrum at a fraction of what is normally charged in return for selling back the lower frequency spectrum they use now (at reduced charge) so it can be used for emer
  • When two sucky cellular providers merge is that bad because you've got one double sucky provider, or is it better because you've got one less sucky provider?

  • The most important question (Score:4, Interesting)

    by SetupWeasel ( 54062 ) on Thursday August 04, 2005 @09:09PM (#13246505) Homepage
    What will the NASCAR championship be called now?
  • I'm a Sprint customer right now, and I can honestly say Sprint sucks. Granted, everyone has horror stories about any one particular wireless provider (none are perfect), but the issues I've had with Sprint have been insane.

    It's not so much the service itself (which is not great, I still get dropped calls from time to time, but it's acceptable). It's their crummy customer service and problem resolution system. They disconnected my service 'accidentally', claiming I hadn't paid my bill when I had, despite the fact their customer service reps told me their computers showed a credit on my account followed by a "I don't understand why this happened. Don't worry, we'll fix it. Your service will be on within four hours." Four hours would pass, no service, I'd call again, same response with a "oh, this time it will be different". This lasted 3 ½ days. To make matters worse, every time I'd call their "customer care" number and punch in my phone number, they'd bump me to their collections department, where I'd wait on hold before getting to speak with somebody who would insist I hadn't paid my bill until I convinced them to look at their computer, then transfer me back into the queue for their regular customer service. To make matters worse, about one out of every three calls I made connected me with such a thick accent I couldn't understand them, and they had real trouble understanding me.

    There's a lot more; this is just the problem I've had in the last week. I'm stuck in this contract with them for another 11 months and to date fully expect to ditch them as soon as my contract is up.

    So my question is this: with Nextel, can I expect things to get any better?

  • And people wonder why job creation is sluggish (Score:4, Insightful)

    by MCTFB ( 863774 ) on Thursday August 04, 2005 @09:28PM (#13246591)
    Corporate power is anathema to small business formation as the overaccumulation of capital in the hands of a small group of people who are more likely to hoard assets than invest them, makes it really hard for anyone who is not born with a silver spoon in their mouth to create a new business.

    Right now only five software companies create 75% of the revenues in the software industry here in the United States, and people wonder why the tech-job market is exploding in India and China, while laws like Sarbanes-Oxley which are ironically intended to curb corporate corruption, only enhance its power at the expense of small and medium sized businesses.

    I mean, at this rate the entire telecommunications industry will just be a monopoly in the very near future, or at the very least, a colluding duopoly like Visa and Mastercard which is arguably just as bad since it gives the false impression to the public that there is competition in the marketplace.

    And why does our government allow these kind of mergers to take place without even thinking twice about the long-term consequences? Oh yah, it is the mistaken premise by the leaders of both political parties that corporations need to get fatter in order to compete in the "World Economy" with largely state owned businesses in China and India as well as the oligarchy oriented super-massive corporations of old Europe and Japan.

    Until the United States (and the rest of the world for that matter) has a graduated corporate tax on revenues (not profits but revenues), things are going to get worse and worse for the worker as they will be stuck in a state of inertia slaving away in some cubicle at a super-massive corporation with no option of finding another job because no new jobs will be created due to small businesses getting the shaft by their own theoretically democratic government which constantly creates unnecessary laws which add relatively major costs of compliance to small businesses, while leaving large corporations relatively unscathed.

    How are small businesses so supposed to compete against large corporations if all their capital is being drained by their government while large corporations can use their political influence to get tax breaks and sweet heart deals to add to their bottom line.

    I mean seriously, when will the American public get the drift that corporate mergers are not some special unification to be joyous about as if corporate mergers should be treated as some kind of state wedding.
    • Until the United States (and the rest of the world for that matter) has a graduated corporate tax on revenues (not profits but revenues)...

      I'm not an economist, but that is about the dumbest suggestion I have heard for corporate tax reform.

      Take a $10 billion dollar company with a 10% margin. Currently we'll say they are taxed at 25% of their 10% profit. Their taxes are now $250 million. If you decide that equals a 2.5% tax on revenue, what happens to another $10 billion dollar company with only 2% profitab
    • Until the United States (and the rest of the world for that matter) has a graduated corporate tax on revenues (not profits but revenues), things are going to get worse and worse for the worker as they will be stuck in a state of inertia slaving away in some cubicle at a super-massive corporation with no option of finding another job because no new jobs will be created due to small businesses getting the shaft by their own theoretically democratic government which constantly creates unnecessary laws which ad
      • Or the government could eliminate business taxes altogether, since businesses don't pay taxes EVER, their employees, shareholders, and consumers do.

        To the head of the class! Although there are two good reasons to use corporations as collection points for taxes:

        - it's cheaper and more efficient than collecting them individually from every employee, shareholder, and customer; and

        - you also get to tax *foreign* shareholders, employees, and customers, if indirectly.

        A perhaps better tax scheme would be to tax o

  • Aside from having shittier coverage in cities, these providers are better about embracing technology and opening their networks.

    I can't help but to wonder what this means for customers. Nextel has been pushing mobile devices as business tools for a long time (walkie-talkie feature, sophisticated pager-like functionality, etc.) whereas Sprint seems to focus more on casual use (they provide the dialtone for Virgin Mobile). Hopefully they continue to build on these areas instead of chip away at them...

    Co

  • The new company will keep the last three letters of each name and will be known as Int-Tel. They will be dropping the low end service plans and low end phones.

    Also, phone numbers will now be big-endian.
  • After reading all of these comments about Nextel and Sprint I have to wonder if ANYBODY with a cell phone in the US is happy with their service. And let's not even talk about Cingular's new slogan. A guy I know on IRC recently got a job with Cingular. The catch-line lately has been "Hey Ted? Whatcha been up to? Busy raising the bar, I'll bet." He still doesn't get it. That's what makes it so beautiful.
    • I absolutely adore my cell phone provider. Almost physically. Verizon kicks serious ass in my neighborhood; it was up through Hurricanes Ivan, Dennis, etc etc etc. (include: all storms last year).

      'Tis beauty itself.
    • Verizon. Their customer service blew until the class-action lawsuit, but now it's quite good. As in, prior to the lawsuit they actually tried to defraud my wife and I, but now they're one of the better companies we have to deal with.

      I have no complaints, even if it did take legal action to straighten the company out. And one of the best things about their customer service: no goddamned incomprehensible Indian accents!!!

      Max

  • SIMs (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Stonent1 ( 594886 ) <stonent@ston3.14 ... ark.net minus pi> on Thursday August 04, 2005 @09:59PM (#13246733) Journal
    Nextel uses SIMs, CDMA providers do not. From a corporate standpoint, SIMs give a phone a lower TCO because you can easily reuse handsets. Bob want's Joe's phone and Joe wants Bob's phone. A simple SIM swap is all it takes. For Sprint or Verizon, it's practically a week long process. Where I work, if someone gets fired or quits or turns in their phone. We just call Nextel or Tmobile and cancel the account then the phone (usually a Blackberry) gets put in a box. Then Joe Newguy, gets hired, we just put a working SIM from whoever most recently turned in a phone, in the phone and give it to him. Changing numbers is a snap with SIMs, just call up the provider and they can issue you a new number in 2 minutes. Verizon wanted me to key in a bunch of stuff in the phone to make it work.

  • Sprint PCS is not Sprint (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Kaenneth ( 82978 ) on Thursday August 04, 2005 @10:08PM (#13246796) Journal
    From what I read while helping to build a case to defend a former customer from their bullying collection tactics (You shouldn't cash peoples checks, and not provide service.. then try to charge termination fees, when you were the one that turned off the customers phones even when the bills were paid.)

    Sprint PCS is a DBA name for Ubiqicom (sp?), apperently they licensed the Sprint name from the 'real' Sprint.

    Kinda like that "Lawnmower Man" movie, based on "The Story by Stephen King", which sucked so bad.

    Careful who you let use your business name.
  • If anyone doesn't think the US government has a role in ensuring American markets and American corporations are controlled to protect consumers, look into how China's CNOOC dropped its attempt [newsday.com] to take over American Unocal. The Congressional opposition was, of course, only due to its unacceptability to so many Americans. Chinese money is just as green as American - and since so much of that CNOOC money is American dollars bought up by China as American debt (mostly real estate), it's all really Chinese money
    • How did keeping CNOOC from buying Unocal help American markets and consumers?

      Seems to me it just screwed Unocal stockholders, and upset the Chinese government at a time when Walmart and CityBank are trying to expand in China. Great going Congress!

      Oil is a global commodity. It really doesn't matter who owns what rights. The only people who can actually influence its price are two or three countries in the Middle East, but as the price goes up they actually lose control because other previously unprofitabl
      • By not letting a big US oil company get taken over by the Chinese Communist mafia, which is looking to take oil away from the US everywhere it can, to feed its own needs. The vast increases in Chinese demand for oil are part of what's driven up the price in the past couple of years. And part of what sent Bush into Iraq, to ensure the remaining oil could be controlled by Bush and his oil backers directly, instead of having to deal with the Chinese. It's kept the US and other countries from stopping the genoc
  • As a SprintPCs customer all I can say is too bad for you. You can kiss any notion of service, carrier, coherent billing or being able to rectify any problem no matter how small, out the window. Plus as an added bonus, virtually 100% of the known universe is DIGITAL ROAMING so whatever your plan you will be raped by charges.

    In customer satisfaction surveys SprintPCS usually comes out slightly above North Korean Prison Camps, but not always.
  • And how soon will it be before we only have one or two telecoms that control *everything*... except this time, they'll be unregulated.

    Bring back Ma Bell!

    Alternatively, let me propose an Act for Congress to promote free and fair competition:
    1) in any interstate industry, including but not
    limited to telecom, transportation, and
    retail, if mergers result in less than
    fou
  • Was because the CEO's and board of directors from both companies wanted to make a killing from stock options from the merger.

    Merging two large companies in no way benefits the consumers or the regular workers of those companies seeings that you are trying to combine two almost independendant organizations together in a larger less organized organization.

    Also trying to combine two incompatible network protocols would be very painful for all involved... In reality the smart way to merge with have just joint b

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