AT&T to Buy T-Mobile for $39 Billion

Earlier today AT&T and Deutsche Telekom entered into a definitive agreement for the sale of T-Mobile USA for $39 billion in cash and stocks, a deal that would create the largest wireless carrier in the nation and be sure to reshape the industry. The combined customer base of this upcoming behemoth will be 130 million customers.

However the agreed deal is far from being complete, since it will have to pass the usual regulatory and closing hurdles for a company merger. The two companies estimate that it will take them 12 months to get through all the bureaucracy. If that process reaches completion, the network merger will dominate the mobile phone industry in the United States. Only three major US carriers will be left, the remaining two being Verizon and the smaller Sprint Nextel.

One of the main benefits AT&T is claiming to achieve through the merger is a significantly expanded LTE footprint. Estimates put the expansion reaching 95 percent of Americans, which works out to 46.5 million more than AT&T was claiming had it gone LTE alone. The news of these two companies merging might come fairly unwelcoming for current T-Mobile customers, who will more than likely have price hikes after their current contracts expire. AT&T customers on the other hand, could benefit in one notable area: service. Both AT&T and T-Mobile operate on the same technology, the GSM network, which will allow each provider to combine their existing infrastructure to provide better overall coverage to their customers. Service has always been a nagging issue for AT&T, who in the past has been constantly being ridiculed over dropped calls and slow data services.

In the event of the deal failing to receive regulatory approval, AT&T will be liable to dish out $3 billion to T-Mobile, a so called “breakup fee.” Already being one of the top wireless providers in the United States, this is a bold move for AT&T to try and make. With limited major competitors in the industry, the acquisition of T-Mobile will more than likely face a great deal of legal opposition.

Activision Disbands Guitar Hero Franchise

Two days ago, Activision announced it is dropping the in-development Guitar Hero game planned for 2011. The company is also disbanding the entire Guitar Hero division, one of the company’s best money makers over the past few years. Here is an excerpt of the statement issued by Activision describing their actions:

“Due to continued declines in the music genre, the company will disband Activision Publishing’s Guitar Hero business unit and discontinue development on its Guitar Hero game for 2011.”

In their announcement, Activision made it clear that there would not be any music games from the company this fiscal year. So along with no more Guitar Hero games, there won’t be any more DJ Hero releases. Activision also said it plans to lay off approximately 500 employees. Perhaps some of those employees will make their way over to development on other music games such as Rock Band or new up and coming games.

Some quick history on the Guitar Hero series that once was. The first game in the series was published in 2005 by RedOctane and Harmonix Music Systems, and distributed by Activision. The series has sold more than 25 million units worldwide, earning US $2 billion at retail, claimed by Activision to be the 3rd largest game franchise after the Mario and Madden NFL franchises. Despite early success, the series has suffered from poor sales since early 2009.

So does this mean the franchise is truly dead, or will we see a newly re-vamped game in 2012 or 2013? Over the past few years the Guitar Hero games have surely saturated the market, and some time off might do well for them. A newly designed game in the future to target new players and some of the veterans, given proper development time to make it a worthwhile game, could mark a return of the Guitar Hero franchise.

Microsoft Bing Uses Google Search Results

According to a report on their official blog, Google has run a sting operation that says it proves Bing has been watching what people search for on Google and also the sites they select from the search results.  Apparently Bing has been using that information to improve its own search listings.  Bing’s search results potentially improving (or getting worse) through this tactic is the equivalent of copying exam answers off of the smart kid who sits next to you in class.

Google reports that “it all started with tarsorrhaphy.”  Google was looking at the search results for an unusual misspelled query [torsorophy].  The correct spelling—tarsorrhaphy—along with results for the corrected query, were being returned by Google’s search algorithm.  At that time, Bing had no results for the misspelling.  Later in the summer, Bing started returning Google’s first result to their users without offering the spell correction.  I’ve included the screenshots of this occurrence below, which were taken directly from Google’s blog.  To be able to return such a result without the correct spelling led to further investigation.

Google reported that over the next few months they noticed that URLs from their search results would later appear in Bing with increasing frequency for all kinds of queries, even including search results that were considered mistakes in the algorithm.  To test their suspicions, Google created about 100 “synthetic queries”—queries that you would never expect a user to type, such as [hiybbprqag].  As a one-time experiment, each synthetic query had a webpage which had nothing to do with the query inserted as the top result.

Engineers at Google were tasked to enter the synthetic queries into the search box on the Google home page, and click on the results (the inserted results).  Within a couple weeks, the inserted results started appearing in Bing.  The report states that Bing is most likely using a combination of Internet Explorer 8 and the Bing Toolbar to mimic the search results.  More details and screenshots of Google’s experiments can be found on their initial report posted to the Google blog.

I for one have always had a positive experience using Google as my main search engine.  Since Bing was announced, Microsoft has been trying to break into the search engine market with various promotions and television commercials.  This large push to gain users (and essentially pull them away from Google) has led me astray from using Bing, and these findings by Google just make me want to use it even less.

The Verizon iPhone Arrives

Finally, after a very long wait and much speculation, Apple and Verizon Wireless have agreed to bring the iPhone to the Verizon network.  After talking about the new Verizon LTE network, the Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam confirmed that a CDMA (non-LTE) version of the iPhone 4 will be coming to Verizon Wireless, and in less than one month!  Discussion of this deal dates all the way back to 2008, and the phone has reportedly been in testing for almost a year.

Current Verizon customers will be able to pre-order their very own iPhone 4 on February 3rd for the standard $200 price for the 16GB model on a two year agreement, and $300 for the 32GB version.  All other new customers will be able to order on February 10th.  Just to emphasize and answer any wild rumors, the phone is Verizon 3G only, meaning no 4G data or GSM roaming.  It’s not a world phone or an AT&T + Verizon phone, it’s just a Verizon phone.

Beyond being on the Verizon network, the phone is for the most part unchanged.  One thing to note is that Verizon’s CDMA network doesn’t support simultaneous voice and data like how AT&T does.  It does have the new antenna design that it was rumored to have, but that’s just because CMDA requires a different antenna setup.  According to a report from Apple, they didn’t go LTE just yet because first-gen chipsets would force unwanted design decisions, and customers want a Verizon device as soon as possible.  The modification to the antenna caused a slight bump in where the volume buttons and mute switch are located, so a specific case for the Verizon iPhone will probably be required.  On the software side, the main feature will be the five user WiFi hotspot functionality.  While this has been a standard feature on Android phones, until now Apple has kept the iPhone only able to tether directly to one computer.

Most Overplayed Songs on the Radio 2010

Now that 2010 is about to come to a close, I thought a quick recap of the songs that have driven us crazy this year would be in order.  Usually it starts with a pretty catchy song that you hear once or twice on the radio. Then you start to hear it being played more frequently and thoroughly enjoy it.  Then…you start hearing it every day on the way to and from work, on multiple radio stations at once, and so on and so forth.  It’s at that point at which many of us declare our hatred for said song, and decide it is definitely time for it to go.  Here’s my list of songs that were played way too many times in 2010.

Honorable Mentions

In making this list, I had to leave out quite a few songs that would certainly be worthy to mention.  Two songs that just missed the top 5 are “I Like It” by Enrique Iglesias and “Club Can’t Handle Me” by Flo Rida.  The fact that Enrique hasn’t been too popular in the music industry in a while is cool and all, but does he have to spam the radio to make sure every last person knows?  Then there’s Flo Rida, who often casually forgets to credit the other artists in his songs, let’s not dwell on him though.

5) Eminem – Love The Way You Lie ft. Rihanna

Eminem exploded back onto the music scene this year with his album titled “Recovery”.  “Love The Way You Lie” is a very well done collaboration between Eminem and Rihanna, and thusly dominated the summer and fall radio airplay.  This probably would rank higher on my list just solely based on airplay, but since I’m a fan of the song I’m ranking this at #5.  Oh did I mention that Megan Fox is in this song’s music video? (Sweet!)  Also Dominic Monaghan (played Charlie on “Lost”) co-stars in the video.

4) Bruno Mars – Just The Way You Are

Bruno Mars jumped into the mix this year with his debut album, and “Just The Way You Are” was everywhere during the summer.  I’m guessing that he appeals much more to women with his sappy slow songs, because I’m not a fan at all.  Basically, this song was just played way too much.

3) Katy Perry – California Gurls ft. Snoop Dogg

There’s usually one big song each year that screams “heyyyy, it’s summer time, yay!”, and “California Gurls” was definitely it this year.  It was by and far the most played song late spring and summer of 2010.  Albeit a really catchy song, the radio definitely played this song to death.

2) Usher – DJ Got Us Fallin’ In Love ft. Pitbull

Usher has once again proved this year that he is a dominant artist in the music industry.  I’ll be honest though, I’m more of a fan of his albums in the early 2000′s.  His songs now are almost all geared towards dance music for clubs.  Oh well.  Also I think Pitbull is one of the worst artists I’ve heard in a long time…but whatever.  Both of these guys are racking in the dough from this song.

1) Taio Cruz – Dynamite

“Dynamite” by Taio Cruz is a clear winner here.  During the summer and fall I heard this song on the radio almost every day going to and from work.  Also on a 4 hour road trip I heard it over 5 times while trying to find legitimate stations.  Making things worse, there was even one frightening day when it was being played at the same time on 3 of my 6 programmed stations in my car.  Anyway, I can’t stand Taio Cruz, and hope his run on the charts is on the brief side.

So here’s to closing out 2010, the actual good songs that were produced with reasonable (or even little to no) radio time, and also the ones that completely sold out to the radio stations.  Let’s hope for a better setlist in 2011!