AT&T Pulls Plug On Merger

Who wins and loses on this? T-Mobile wins. They get the break fee. And as I've noted previously I think they were either expecting this to happen or at least hedging it, as they've been adding a massive amount of 4g tower capacity around in secondary markets -- including mine. Coverage along the I-10/I-75 path has literally doubled in 4g/3g density over the last six months -- large swaths that used to be GPRS only (~40kbps) are now screaming fast and lit with UMTS. That nice hunk of cash isn't going to hurt them one bit, and while they'll have to find their feet their pricing is pretty darn good Sprint wins. The threat of being a "never-has-been" has just dissipated materially. Never mind that now they are a potential target, although I see that as rather unlikely. They don't win so much from direct effects but rather from the wounding of the guy on top of them, AT&T. Their stock was up some 7% after the market closed on the news, so much how already got priced in is unknown. Nonetheless that's a hell of a nice move after hours, albeit on a $2.15 stock that was down 4% earlier today. AT&T isn't going to be....