When Businesses Get Too Big For their Britches

Ordinarily, I like government to stay out of private business.  And they should to keep free enterprise working in our country. But what about when a company gets too big?  For more than 100 years the government has been stepping in on certain industries when the companies get too big and now it's AT&T turn - again.

This is not the first time AT&T has had anti-trust trouble and probably won't be the last.  But this time I believe the Government is acting along with the will of the court of public opinion.  Does anyone like AT&T other than AT&T stockholders?  I had their service for about 1 year when I bought one of those pre-paid cell phones.  At the time, AT&T had the best prepaid phone choices. That has of course changed.  During that year or so, I noticed just what a lousy job they did of providing any kind of customer service.  Even the most basic things like navigating their web site to get to your account. You had to type in your phone number and pass code twice on two different screens!  How annoying is that?  And every time I tried to call AT&T customer support, English was the second language of the person I was speaking to.  How annoying was that?

Well eventually I handed off that cell phone to someone else who needed a phone and he since dumped it in favor of a TracFone. So the main reason AT&T is successful is their relationship with Apple.  And the reason this take-over rubbed so many people the wrong way, is that T-Mobile is a good company with a good customer service experience.  I don't use either one (I have Verizon now) but it's good to see them throwing water on this deal.

Justice Department sues to block AT&T takeover of T-Mobile