AT&T intends to use T-Mobile’s AWS spectrum for LTE

In the sense that less competition is never a good thing for consumers, I think Calvin is right. Why do you think a de facto duopoly in the mobile market will be a good thing?

Can you provide specific examples in detail of “less competition” being “never a good thing for consumers”? As someone that lived through the AT&T breakup, my landline phone bill instantly quadrupled… all to foster “more competition” for long-distance service, which were quite high, admittedly… sadly, your position holds very little water in reality – especially since long distance service has been free virtually everywhere since cell phones went digital in the 2G realm, about 15 years after the breakup. Now I’m left holding the bag for insanely high landline prices? Please. Spectrum consolidation is a good thing. Spectrum doesn’t magically appear if a company throws up another tower. It’s still just as limited.

I’m still waiting… because I bet you’re researching and discovering all the monopolies that you love which will disqualify your statement. I’m sure you love having running water from your local monopoly water company… or electric from your local monopoly electric company… or natural gas to heat your home from your local monopoly gas company. Or being able to take a dump and flush it down the toilet thanks to your local monopoly sewer provider.

Or… maybe you discovered “economies of scale”… or the notion that the larger a company, the more of an attempt they need to make to satisfy the market… or that larger companies have more money for R&D.

Why are you replying to me and talking about monopolies? Did I mention monopolies? Did I say the word monopolies? Did I write the word monopolies? It looks like I didn’t.

What I said was a de facto duopoly, aka a corporate circle-jerk. One guy raises prices, the other guy raises prices to match, and if you don’t like it, you… can go to the distant third guy? I’m sure you’ll say his existence means that everything is fine, but look at broadband. There’s basically three players, and we’re well behind the rest of the world when it comes to speed and penetration (verily… that is what she said). I’m not saying having multiple players will guarantee that everything will be great and wonderful. But I’ll bet that Apple computers wouldn’t be so expensive if more than one company could build them, as one example off the top of my head.

Unlike most of the internet, though, I’m perfectly willing to admit I’m wrong. Can you give me a hypothetical as to how having less competition in the mobile space will lead to a better result for consumers? Note the lack of sarcasm or trolling tags. I’m serious.

I’m not replying to you about monopolies per se. I’m replying to your statement that “less competition is **never** a good thing for consumers.” Which is inherintly false.

As far as wireless goes, yes I can. The game is spectrum… not towers, not number of subscribers, not who has what phone; it’s all about making the phones work – let’s just focus on 4G for now. You need huge swaths of spectrum to achieve the maximum rates of IMT-Advanced. 20 mhz up, 20 mhz down. Right now, Verizon holds the lions share of this at 22 mhz nationwide at 700 mhz, some at 34, smaller areas at 46. At the AWS spectrum, which is the topic of this article, Verizon has all parts of the Mississippi River east, AT&T has all parts of the Miss. River west, T-Mo has nationwide coverage. Of this, T-Mo is pretty much 10 mhz nationwide, with some areas around several cities being 30 mhz; Verizon having 20 mhz with every territory it owns east of the Miss.; AT&T has 10 mhz every territory west of the Miss, with 20 mhz in LA and Dallas. As it goes, 700 and 800 mhz are identified as the sweet spots for blanket coverage, AWS spectrums as the sweet spots for throughput.

What I find troubling, however, is that divestiture – which will be necessary – is not discussed at all. Coupled with their purchase of Qualcomm’s 700 mhz nationwide spectrum, this would let them corner both 700 and AWS. So some of this AWS needs to go. Presumably to Verizon… as Sprint already has 20 mhz virtually everywhere thru Clearwire. Combining the holdings of AT&T and T-Mo with proper divestiture of the AWS spectrum holdings where it is redundant out west, will form a 3-way battle. Verizon and AT&T with 700 and AWS nationwide, and Sprint with 800 and AWS nationwide. An actual true 3-way battle where the product can determine the outcome, not who covers what and where… but 3 companies operating from as close to a level playing field as has ever been possible.

Anyway, I’ll check back later to see if you’ve had a chance to read that minor dissertation.

I think AT&T and T-Mobile will benefit from the merger. They’ll be able to more effectively allocate spectrum amongst 3G, 3G+, 4G, and however-many-other-G offerings are going to be used in the near future.

My concern is that, once Verizon and uberT&T control something like 80% of the mobile market… what’s to stop them from raising prices? If they both do it at the same time, blowback from the consumer is going to be negligible. A lot of people will complain, but very few will be willing to swallow an ETF and move to Sprint or one of the regional carriers, neither of whom are likely to have the phone selection that the big boys will.

I look at this situation in much the same way as I do broadband in the U.S.: there’s Verizon, Comcast, and Time Warner. There are some other companies sprinkled here and there, but those are the big guns. They control pretty much all of what’s going on. Prices aren’t going down. Speeds are improving (hello, FiOS) but, compared to the rest of the world, we’re lagging significantly.

EA’s Madden series was fighting tooth and nail with 2K Sports… until EA got an exclusive NFL license. Now they don’t have to fight as hard. FIFA used to get shit on by Pro Evo when it came to gameplay. Now, the games are comparable (one could argue that FIFA is superior, but one would be a fool. EVO > *). Windows Mobile used to be goat shit. iOS, Android and (to a lesser extent) webOS came along. Now we’ve got Windows Phone 7. It’s not feature-complete by any means, but it’s so far ahead of what WinMo was that it’s comical.

The cynic in me doesn’t see where uberT&T’s:
- customer service doesn’t go down;
- phone selection doesn’t go down; or
- prices don’t go up.

Mini-dissertation reply to the mini-dissertation ahoy!

Right, and I’m on the same page as you, just reading it differently… glass is half full, half empty, blah blah blah. It’s interesting that you bring up cable providers, because that may actually be the best example. They provide the pipe, the service. The content lies within how you’re accessing that content hardware wise. So, I guess what I’m saying is, this isn’t a CDMA vs GSM battle of supremacy or cable vs satellite, this is a hardware battle of supremacy, it’s a “my Sony TV is better than your Samsung TV” to watch our otherwise identical TV programming.

If expectations of service are nearly identical, then the hardware utilizing it should take the forefront to command those dollars and compete there. There may be slight nuances in service, like if you’re a big NFL fan DirecTV is for you and Time Warner isn’t… but that isn’t where the focus should be. At the end of the day, the cost of the service is the cost of the service, you won’t win choosing satellite over cable, or vice versa, because the networks charge the same X number of dollars per subscriber for everyone, or as contracts expire, they’ll push it there.

Just like EA Sports vs Konami vs 2K Sports… the exit of Dreamcast didn’t kill 2K’s chances, it enhanced them. It wasn’t about the system, it was about the product that used the system. That example could easily be translated to something like Apple vs HTC vs Motorola vs Nokia…. or iOS vs Android vs WP7. I guess in this video game instance, Apple is Nintendo, and the only way to play Mario is with the Wii (iPhone)… and I guess EA Sports is the Microsoft to Nokia’s NFL license…

Honestly, I think a wait and see approach is the best course of action… all we know today is that it’ll cost AT&T a total of 39 billion dollars in cash and stock, and they intend to re-farm T-Mo’s AWS spectrum, currently deployed for it’s HSPA+… these aren’t exactly bad – perhaps AT&T can leverage it’s new relationship with DT for international roaming agreements. Perhaps Verizon now moving to LTE and SIM-based phones will allow them to leverage their relationship with Vodafone for the same. Maybe Sprint will follow thru with refarming iDen’s 800 for LTE and give them both a run for their money on the cost, or partner up with international carriers to take a feature for feature fight to them. There’s just too many unknowns on Day 2 of this subject-to-approval deal.

@Bullet Tooth Tony basically, there IS NO SPECTRUM CRISIS. It’s just manufactured by AT&T to keep the FCC on their toes over nothing.

@nushrike – yes, there is a spectrum crisis. Too many players, too little air. That’s why in Europe, home of oh such great competition, all the competitors are joining forces to share coverage. It’s a limited resource, and it’s too scarce for so many companies. It’s a fact, deal with reality.

Because for the cost of 200MB on at&t I can get 5G on t mobile. I can get the same customer service from at&t by standing in line at the DMV. I can get 1500 minutes on t mobile for the same price as 250 minutes on at&t.

The product has been released for years already, they’re just expanding their client base now.

The only reason you were getting those cheap prices through T Mobile was they were so desperate for customers they had to do that. The problem though T Mobile was making no money or not enough money to survive. The only time TMo was doing alright was back when all the carriers were pretty much doing the same thing. When they began to fall behind and then started throwing out crazy deals suddenly profits dropped. So basically what is good for you is not good for them. You have to stop thinking that these carriers are here to be your friend. They are a business in a very expensive field that has to make money in order to survive. Even if they would have merged with Sprint things as you know it would have changed. As soon as any of the carriers that are behind att and Vz close the gap the desperation mode would be turned off and pricing would begin to fall in line with the rest. TMO had no where to go in it’s current condition. They had no spectrum to build out the next generation network nor did they have enough to deal with congestion as more people added smartphones. You can only run HSPA+ for so long before you have to move up.
Before you get all mad about what happened see what happens. Who knows you may like it better. They will probably grandfather a lot of things in atleast for the first couple years. Progress means change. You can’t get better sitting still and that’s what they were doing. They haven’t done anything worth while in some time.

They did this already. Remember there used to be a “real” AT&T Wireless (not this rebadged Cingular). They’ve done this already. TMO customers will be forced to buy new phones, pay “migration fees”, choose much higher rate plans, give up flat rate plans, and sign new two-year commitments to the carrier. And that basically gets them what they could have had all along by walking into an ATT store right from the start.

Uh, no. I was pretty sure Homefront was going to suck because it’s THQ, and I was right. I was fairly sure the iPhone on AT&T would be hugely held back (not in sales, just performance) by AT&T, and sure enough. On the other hand, I loved my previous Canon compact, so got an S95 and it’s just great. If you think about histories of things, there are patterns. Occasionally you get a surprise and have to reset.

Here, let me try something you might understand. Have you ever been kicked in the balls? Did it hurt? Well, how about letting me kick you in the balls again? As hard as I can, because you’d be a total moron (oh sorry, just an idiot) to cast judgement on whether my ball-racking will hurt. I could have the toes of an angel for all you know.

But I probably don’t. And we saw what happened when Cingular (now AT&T) ate the old AT&T Mobile. It was a f@#$ing disaster for the previous AT&T Mobile customers like me. There’s zero reason to think it’ll be any better this time as they’re bigger, richer, and even more evil now.

That’s what they do the original AT&T Wireless (blue)…they shut it down and forced everyone onto the “orange” network. Granted it took a while, but that’s what they did.

I work for the government kid, I have plenty of money. I’m not going to pay more for less at slower speeds and also have to pay even more for tethering (which I rarely use but that’s not the point). Being ‘cheap’ has nothing to do with it – it’s called being smart about your money. When you grow up you’ll understand.

Lol @ “I work for the government kid, I have plenty of money. “

You work for the government? I would take my guess and say law inforsment? No a kid, being smart with many? Then you should know it cost to have what you want. You get what you pay for right? Hmm, AT&T service being costly as it is…it still has customers signing up quarter after quarter. The numbers speak for them selfs correct? Congrats on work for the foverment. I myself make more then the few government people I know, from what I see in government wages I could be making more then you and yet I have people working for me. Work smart and have your money work for you, never work for the money.

I’m glad our taxmoney is paying you plenty of money.

Getting unemployment checks and food stamps doesn’t mean you work for the government.

You really are Mr. Dick!

Ok well be mad at DT. AT&T is simply conducting business to make themselves more competitive. Anyone mad at them is an idiot. Be mad at sorry DT and TMO.

Well, unfortunately, I have to agree with you. But, just think, you’ll get some part of T-Mobile back; not sure what part but, you’ll get something.