I'm from the UK and i can answer that question (my girlfriend is on AT+T, i'm in the States now so the N900 picks up AT+T, and this thread has all the answers)

1) it's expensive.
2) you get very little for what you pay, compared to tmobile
3) customer service sucks. hard.
4) the N900 doesn't get 3G on AT+T frequencies, so the current tmo users get 3G and when the merger goes through they'll get 2.5G instead, which is ok for browsing but not good for downloads or streaming

why be the middleman, when you can be the man. And now I can charge more for specific channels in different markets; and then charge your company less for the same channels. Walmart has been doing it for decades!

AT&T Mobility has basically bought or been bought by or merged with many other companies to take over their customer base, and merged with companies who merged with other companies...

Just an incomplete list of companies that have gone away to AT&T Mobility includes:

Metromedia
McCaw Cellular
Pacific Telesis
PacBell
BellSouth
SBC
Cingular
AT&T Wireless
Cellular One
Ameritech (later sold, now Verizon)
SNET
Comcast Cellular
Dobson Celluar
Edge Wireless
Centennial Wireless
Wayport (wifi hotspot network)

And coming soon: T-mobile

So, they basically became the largest company by buying the competitors (and with them, their customers).

AT&T/Bell Labs/whatever you want to call them, did a lot of great work for UNIX, C, C++ etc. in the old days. Really invaluable work. Some of the most famous names in our field work or worked for the company.

But, for ordinary telephone customers, they've never been very friendly... AT&T had a land-line monopoly until the early 1980's when the US government broke them up. In the "bad old days" you couldn't buy your own phone and use it, you had to lease or buy the phone from AT&T. (sounds familiar...)

Dont worry lads, we will keep up an iOS section for you all. :P
And please do not criticise the merge, the end of the day it's an american company who is gonna have monopoly... Ebrace it and be proud. God bless America!!

As for us europeans I hope it will mean improvements for T-mobile's eouropean network...

USA FCC = Nero playing the fiddle

@somedude: so does this mean calling people via the Skype option built in to the N900 will be blocked/unusable once it all goes AT&T&T?

They won't have to bother, they are killing the 3g frequencies that the n900/t-mobile use and re-purposing it for their 4g rollout.

There will be no 3g for n900's in the US if the deal goes through.

I talked to a service rep at AT&T to see what kind of comparable plans they have.

http://i.imgur.com/WUC3l.png

Long story short, there aren't any.

And all that happened now that I am going for college in the US (and I was planning to get T Mobile)

I am on a Tmo out of contract plan and paying $5.99/mo for the unlim 3g net. Do not use huge data but it is good to have that option, just in case. I am contemplating whether it is better to grab hold on to the $20/mo android preferred web from Tmo right now and be grandfathered into the plan if the merger happens. I am sure that at some point in time, the t-zones and my current plan will be curtailed based on how the phones are accessing the web.

Companies are anti-people. When two companies really love each other and they get married, instead of reproducing, they do the OPPOSITE. :P