Why does Verizon want this AWS spectrum?

[Steveanderson13]

AT&T quit. They didn't want to come to the negotiating table. The government court case to stop the merger was for all intents and purposes a call for AT&T to immediately come to the bargaining table and set out an alternate plan that would satisfy everyone's needs in a more balanced manner. They didn't want to. Apparently they felt there were other means to their goals that didn't involve tying up government resources in such a public manner, otherwise they would have. In a way, their forfeiture was confirmation that they could have done it all along, they just wanted to eliminate the competition at the same time which further confirms my previous deductions.

For more confirmation, see Stephenson's latest remarks.

[Steveanderson13]

They were not just trying to eliminate competition, because T-Mobile isn't competition to AT&T.

Stephenson disagrees with you, but he calls it "consolidation", necessary to forestall "price increases".

[Steveanderson13]

And if they allowed the merger, but required AT&T to divest TMobile in markets where they both operated, then AT&T would have had to divest probably well over 90% of TMobile. That would have made the merger absolutely meaningless.

And absolutely useless and expensive; $39 bil for nothing. DT is smart, AT&T is not. And a $8 bil money gap to prove it.

[AlexKidd1977]

For more confirmation, see Stephenson's latest remarks.

I saw the article, and what was said. I felt I had adequately supported my stance without even needing his moronic remarks about guaranteed price increases. He's acting like a spoiled brat.

--Kidd

[BuffaloTF]

Do you mean this negatively?

If you want to take that approach as the reader, you certainly could - there's definitely parallels that can be drawn... but I personally don't regard Ma Bell as this evil entity that needed to be broken up. In fact, I consider it a folly that it was broken up... just like breaking up Standard Oil wasn't wise.

[GSMinCT]

Boy, you're really stuck on this notion, see your other post referencing "the 'hood". You ignored the post after yours about an attorney in a national law firm using an employer-supplied Tmo phone. Sure, tmo skews lower (buy a phone by the month), but if I lived in a large urban area and didn't travel extensively, I would use them. Course, I'm from the 'hood. :joke: But every carrier is a competitor to every other anywhere if their offerings overlap. So that is a lot more than four.

Not 100% of T-Mobile customers are in the 'hood, it's just that in aggregate, their subs are much more urban and/or poor, and/or minority.

The people who are better off travel, and want the coverage of Verizon or AT&T.

They certainly could have served up a lot of cash. If Tmo has 33 mil customers who pay their bills, that revenue would have been virtually cost-free to AT&T (after the acquisition cost) or apx cost $1,000/customer or apx 2 iphones which is two two-year contracts.

AT&T really wanted the spectrum. They either would have had to keep bottom-scraping plans for T-Mo subs, or lost a lot of them to Sprint (and MVNOs) and Metro.

[ilvla2]

They certainly aren't, we're all rural up here, the nearest "Metro" area is 70 miles south in Santa Rosa, pop.150,000.

[PhoneObsessive]

I think this assertion that T-Mobile and Sprint and all the other tier 3, 4, ... carriers do not compete with ATT and VZW is nonsense. They may not compete for your business, but they do compete for other people's business. If all the carriers other than ATT and VZW closed tomorrow - and I mean closed tomorrow, shut their doors and turned off the lights, do you think that those millions of people would not have a mobile phone? Perhaps families with 5 T-mobile lines would go to 3 ATT lines, but there is no way you could pry the phones out of the hands of 50 M people like that. Where would those subscribers go? Walkie-talkies or CB radios? They compete and exert enormous pricing pressure on the tier 1 carriers and that is why ATT wanted to buy T-Mobile.

[AlexKidd1977]

I think this assertion that T-Mobile and Sprint and all the other tier 3, 4, ... carriers do not compete with ATT and VZW is nonsense. They may not compete for your business, but they do compete for other people's business. ...

The truth is, there's a very vocal minority in the thread that truly thinks that T-Mobile doesn't compete with AT&T or Verizon. Don't let the volume level confuse your sense of aspect. Most of us do agree with you.

--Kidd

[ilvla2]

The truth is, there's a very vocal minority in the thread that truly thinks that T-Mobile doesn't compete with AT&T or Verizon. Don't let the volume level confuse your sense of aspect. Most of us do agree with you.

--Kidd

On price, I agree they do compete, but they can't compete with VZ or AT&T on coverage. I mean, in the urban areas they may get close to competing with those guys, but outside of there forget it, AT&T and VZ rule.

[AlexKidd1977]

On price, I agree they do compete, but they can't compete with VZ or AT&T on coverage. I mean, in the urban areas they may get close to competing with those guys, but outside of there forget it, AT&T and VZ rule.

We're not talking about elements. AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile are all nationwide cellular phone carriers. They compete on that solid fact alone. As is pointed out, if T-Mobile shut their doors tomorrow and turned off all the towers, would a T-Mobile customer throw up their arms and say "I just can't get a cellular telephone anywhere else, so I guess I will have to do without!" Not a chance. They could go to Verizon or AT&T. At the end of the day, they're just mobile phone providers plain and simple. Everything else is nit-picking.

--Kidd

[GSMinCT]

We're not talking about elements. AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile are all nationwide cellular phone carriers. They compete on that solid fact alone. As is pointed out, if T-Mobile shut their doors tomorrow and turned off all the towers, would a T-Mobile customer throw up their arms and say "I just can't get a cellular telephone anywhere else, so I guess I will have to do without!" Not a chance. They could go to Verizon or AT&T. At the end of the day, they're just mobile phone providers plain and simple. Everything else is nit-picking.

--Kidd

They would go to MetroPCS or a Sprint MVNO or wherever else would give them cheap, crappy service.

[fraydog]

The FCC killed it because the politicians wanted it dead. One of the most verbal opponents of any merger that is proposed is Herb Kohl. It is to be said US Cellular's parent company, TDS, is headquartered in his home city of Madison. I can guarantee you that if USCC gets bought he'll be more than happy to support that merger. Kohl is showing his dangerous delusion in calling for AT&T to be blocked from buying 700 MHz spectrum. This will show a direct effect on AT&T's ability to provide data speeds competitive to Verizon in Chicago, Los Angeles, and Miami.

It has nothing to do with political parties, BTW. It's about who butters his bread. His thinking on the AT&T aspect of a potential sell-off has me seriously considering writing letters to his office along with the offices of Senators Durbin and Kirk as they are the Senators in my home state, as well as the office of Senator Lee of Utah who missed the point about the fact that an extra 5x5 LTE spectrum block will double speeds three of the largest cities in the US, increasing competition. I am directly affected as a constituent as I frequently travel to Chicago.

[Morphling27]

I’m just going to start by throwing this out there: ATT and VZW are both basically the original Ma Bell and stronger than ever. It’s a duopoly and ATT alone is one of the top companies in the world. These two companies (along with the other ‘tier 2’ carriers) collude with each other on pricing and you all well know it. They have almost exactly the same pricing and any time a fee or such is added, the others add it within a year.

Now, this means they are basically a commodity (which they are), yet they don’t have commodity pricing and two year contracts are an INSANE thing for a commodity.

And to get back on topic and answer the OP’s questions, VZW wants that spectrum to control more of the market as any duopoly/oligopoly wants. I’ll exclude Tmobile since they really don’t have a lot of unused spectrum, but the other 3, bigger carriers sit on gobs of spectrum they DON’T DO ANYTHING with. VZW has the 700 pieces it isn’t doing anything with. It had AWS it hasn’t done anything with. Sprint botched the 2500 with Clear, which is a huge chunk of spectrum yet we have no network with it to speak of after years. ATT has misused so much of its spectrum and is now finally refarming old technology in places like NYC to finally get some decent coverage.

[thegonagle]

For capacity! It's a relatively simple matter to add AWS to the towers they already have, and an even simpler matter to source a phone that works on AWS as well as EDTE. EDTE stands for Every D--- Thing Else.

OK I made EDTE up, but all Verizon has to is overlay their network with some new antennas, and then call Apple, LG, Samsung, HTC, etc., and say "Hi, I need some phones that work on AWS and EDTE." They all say "okay."

Result: More bandwidth, fewer failed calls and slow connections due to an overloaded network.