John Battelle's Searchblog

I believe the merger is happening so that the two joint owners of Cingular are all under the same stock symbol. Cingluar is the key factor here.

We believe that this merger is not about anything as simple as Cingular - relatively small potatos in the Telecom world. There is a fast and big money race between the Telco's and the Cable companies to dominate the future of communications including VOiP, video, wireless and other emerging technologies. Additionally the potential to set and control "usage based fees" for Internet usage is a definite objective here. In this scenario giants such as MSN, Google and Yahoo will become subserviant to the Telco giants. Whoever dominates the communications channels, wireless/fiber optic or other, has power over a tremendous part of the economy. Let's face it, Fuel (gas & oil) and Telecommunications (phone, tv, etc.) are two industries which are very complex, generate large amounts of revenue and political power. This is really no different than the mergers of Exxon/Mobil, BP/Gulf/Amoco, Shell/Texaco - we are moving back to the foundations in both industries. What we knew as MaBell and Esso/Gulf/American will come to be reborn in AT&T/Verizon and Exxon/BP/Shell. Now if we only knew whose products would cost us less each month!

I won't be worried until AT&T buys Lucent. Consolidation is a good thing, so long as it doesn't completely eliminate the competition. The telco industry has been so grossly mismanaged in the last 10 years its a shock you can even read this comment without hitting reload 15x (knock on wood.) If consolidation allows an aggregation of enough revenue at the low, low margins telecoms now generate - maybe we can get some new service development that'll be interesting.