Talk:Merger of AT&T and T-Mobile USA

Article merger proposal

The contents of this short article (stub) are already covered almost verbatim in both the T-Mobile USA and AT&T Inc. articles. The content is briefly mentioned again in AT&T Mobility. I think four articles covering the same topic is overkill. This article does not offer any insight or detail that is not present in the main articles. Per WP:MM reasons to merge an article include:

• unnecessary duplication of content
• significant overlap with the topic of another page
• minimal content that could be covered in or requires the context of a page on a broader topic.

I believe all three apply to this article. I can see no reason why content that is already present at both T-Mobile USA and AT&T Inc. needs to be reproduced a third time (fourth time if counting the brief mention at AT&T Mobility), especially considering the brevity of Merger of AT&T and T-Mobile article. (Additionally, the title of this article is sloppy, implying that AT&T is merging with T-Mobile International AG, when in fact T-Mobile USA is the only DT asset up for sale to AT&T.)

I support the merge of this article into T-Mobile USA and AT&T Inc. articles. What do others think? Ch Th Jo (talk) 02:23, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

Agreed. Don't see a reason why a separate article was created in the first place. As you note, the AT&T and T-Mobile USA articles already contain just about the entire contents of this article, so a straight change to a redirect is all that's needed.

The only question is which of the two, AT&T or T-Mobile USA, to point it to. I'd say the latter, as there's a bit more in the T-Mobile article that the AT&T one, and as the acquiree, the merger would have more impact on T-Mobile. (That is, afterward, AT&T will be larger, but it will still be AT&T, while T-Mobile USA will be no more.)

Actually, I'm thinking that there's no reason to keep the redirect at all, as it's unlikely someone would search for that phrase, instead of just one of the companies. oknazevad (talk) 06:43, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

Certainly, the optimal destination for the merger information would be the historized company! -- Glockenklang1 (talk) 22:27, 7 June 2011 (UTC)

Seems to make sense. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.164.233.6 (talk) 13:20, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

"I'm thinking that there's no reason to keep the redirect at all, as it's unlikely someone would search for that phrase" That makes sense to me, too, but I've found a couple of examples of similar phrases that re-direct to more general main articles. Proposed merger of Anheuser-Busch and InBev redirect to Anheuser-Busch InBev and Merger of British Airways and Iberia redirects to History of British Airways. Since WP isn't a breaking news site, these examples also suggest that creating a separate article for the merger was not an ideal choice. It's worth noting that both of these examples re-direct to the acquiring entity.

As I mentioned above, this article title is sloppy. If we keep this as a re-direct, we need to move the title to something like "Merger of AT&T and T-Mobile USA" to correctly reflect reality. AT&T is not buying all of Deutsche Telekom's wireless assets worldwide, which is what the current title suggests. Ch Th Jo (talk) 18:16, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

I agree that the name to identify the right parties should be changed to reflect that only the USA susidiary is being bought by ATT. But do we know if the transaction is a statutory merger or reverse merger? Or would it be a all stock purchase? I would presume that the T-Mobile idneitity would be eliminated but then is it a merger or merely an asset sale? Lingust (talk) 14:56, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

I agree on the title. However, this is quite a discrete topic and definitely of relevance to a large number of readers. At least for now it should stay as a standalone article.Lesbianadvocate (talk) 18:48, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

• Support - but only after the merger is complete and at&t branding is used throughout the US, similar to the Verizon acquisition of MCI Charles E. Keisler (talk), A+ Network+ and Security+ Certified 20:07, 26 June 2011 (UTC)

Offcial Filing

Susan Crawford Blog [1] has mentioned that the parties have officially filed with the FCC. Where is a link to it? Lingust (talk) 14:53, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

Article title

If the article is not merged into T-Mobile USA, I feel that the title should be changed from "Merger of AT&T and T-Mobile USA" to "Acquisition of T-Mobile USA by AT&T," or something reflecting the fact that it is an acquisition/sale rather than a merger. Just a thought. ShandraShazam (talk) 01:30, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

I agree.Mike 289 16:17, 15 August 2011 (UTC)

Sounds good. Majoreditor (talk) 02:18, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

Agreed. I was thinking about to going ahead and doing it, when I noticed that someone else had the same concern. Would the title "Purchase of T-Mobile USA by AT&T" be a better one, or just stick with "Acquisition of..." ??? So, who's going to do it?
LP-mn (talk) 19:59, 21 November 2011 (UTC)
DONE.
LP-mn (talk) 20:18, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

Point of order: you can't do a copy-and-paste love like that. It doesn't preserve the edit history and therefore violates the license terms. An admin should be able to do a history merge to fix it, but it needs to be done.

Though I still wonder if we really need an article on this. The merger is as dead as a doornail, and giving it an entire article seems a bit undue. oknazevad (talk) 23:40, 19 December 2011 (UTC)