Out from the camps at AT&T are a few red hot comments regarding the recent T-Mobile layoffs. In case you missed the news T-Mobile will be closing 7 call centers and over 3,000 employee’s will be out of a job. Today AT&T has made a few comments on the matter basically blaming the government and the FCC for the layoffs. More details after the break.
Apparently when T-Mobile and AT&T were looking to merge these call centers all would have stayed up and running, and shutting down the merger is the reason the centers will be closed, as T-Mobile is forced to make cutbacks. Showing their wings today, Jim Cicconi, AT&T’s EVP of external and legislative affairs made a quick comment about the situation and blames the FCC.
Normally, we’d not comment on something like this. But I feel this is an exception for one big reason — only a few months ago AT&T promised to preserve these very same call centers and jobs if our merger was approved.”
He also goes on to say that AT&T predicted that without the merger T-Mobile would be forced to make multiple layoffs and cutbacks – and that is now exactly what seems to be happening. This is basically AT&T saying it’s all your fault, or we told you so. If you’d like to read more and here the thoughts and comments right from the source head to AT&T’s blog. I would call this type of quick jab at the government and the FCC something of poor taste but AT&T does have a point here, even if I didn’t want the merger to go through myself.
Thoughts on the situation or the comments?
[via The Verge]
I think this is in fairly poor taste. Even if I did believe that all of these call centers would have remained open after the merger, it does not change the facts that a) the merger would have been very bad for competition and b) it is not the government’s fault that T-Mobile is unable to compete in the current marketplace.
Its really in poor taste when you consider AT&T’s own leaked documents said if the acquisition of T-Mobile was allowed to go through 25 thousand T-Mobile employees wouldn’t be retained . But your talking about AT&T , a company being sued by the FCC for allowing American deaf to be taken advantage of by Nigerian scammers . AT&T even aided & abetted these criminals for allowing AT&T to profit millions .
This is the AT&T trying to act like a white knight .
Personally
i’d point the finger at ATT. They were supposed to give TMO $4 BILLION
DOLLARS if the deal fell threw. Thats DOLLARs, NOT $4 BILL in
spectrum and/or roaming agreements you puds…
The money went to Deutsche Telekom not T-Mobile. The deal was actually not with T-Mobile USA.
Whatever AT&T! Like U guys really were gonna keep jobs open at T-Mobile after ponying up $39 Billion to acquire. Y’all had no plans to keep jobs after the merger, and that’s a fact. Had the merger gone thru, they would have done the same thing to cut costs and build up their spectrum to keep up with Verizon. Can’t say I didn’t see this coming, but T-Mobile is in it for the fight.