AT&T to Acquire T-Mobile USA

In a move that’s epic to say the least, it appears to be official that AT&T has committed to purchase T-Mobile USA from their current owners Deusche Telekom AG. This will be a cash-and-stock transaction that has been valued at right around $39 billion – or 8% of company ownership. This agreement has been approved by the FCC and will be a definite step up the the competition, namely Verizon Wireless who currently heads the US mobile communication market. Will this transition make this team a powerhouse that’ll dominate the market instead? AT&T chairman and CEO Randall Stephenson hopes so, him noting in the press release below that this move will bring LTE to more than 294 million people in the USA.

What this move represents is a boost for AT&T to a whopping 95% of the US population for coverage in their 4G network – this whole situation including a new $8 billion dollar investment by AT&T into infrastructure improvements which will bring higher quality voice and LTE to essentially the entirety of the United States. Another way of looking at this move is that it’ll “directly benefit” an additional 46.5 million US citizens who will soon have access to AT&Ts latest 4G LTE connectivity. As the company notes, this is roughly the size of New York and Texas combined.

Exciting! As evidenced by the massively anticipated addition of Verizon’s application of their LTE network to handsets via their first compatible device, the HTC ThunderBolt, Verizon had what’s been up to this point a basic dominance of the mindshares of mobile awesomeness seeking citizens across the USA. Now if AT&T and T-Mobile do indeed join forces and rack up a giant move toward working knowledge of their own 4G LTE speed network into the brains of those lovers of mobile connectivity in these United States, they may have a winning combination.

And as an added bit of irony, I must say that I personally am in an airport heading off to CTIA 2011 writing this story and posting it using the Inspire 4G on AT&T’s current HSPA+ 4G network. It’s working fantastic where the HTC ThunderBolt has had a bit of a problem connecting. Now this is more than likely a funny fluke as it’s been speeding along every other location I’ve been with it thus far, but the oddity of the moment is just too silly not to note!