AT&T's Jim Cicconi is mad, bro...

[soco]

Source: The Verge

Didn't see this being discussed, and this is becoming comical. Sprint's response, while I don't subscribe to their network, was fantastic.

Oh and here's a picture of Jim Cicconi taken today:

The highlights

• In response to the FCC's claim that AT&T would be forced to expand LTE beyond 80 percent population coverage through competitive forces, even without the acquisition: "...the report apparently assumes a high enough level of competition exists in rural areas to compel billions of dollars in investment. Yet the report elsewhere argues that the level of wireless competition in more populated areas of America is so fragile that the merger must be disallowed. At the very least, these conclusions show a logical inconsistency."
• One of the snidest comments in the entire statement relates to LTE deployment rates, too — specifically, President Obama's statement that mobile broadband should be accessible by 98 percent of Americans within five years: "It appears the FCC did not inform the President that in their view this was not a needed or worthy objective because it was apparently going to happen anyway."
• The FCC had effectively refused to take into consideration AT&T's claims that rural broadband would spur job growth as part of its net job gain / loss (and, thusly, public interest) analysis. AT&T argues that "makes no sense," especially in light of the Commission's recently-announced $4.5 billion broadband fund that promises to create some 500,000 jobs.
• AT&T reiterates that T-Mobile "has no clear path to LTE," but doesn't directly address the FCC's claim that T-Mobile could find a way to do it, particularly with the assistance of the additional AWS spectrum AT&T owes T-Mobile should the acquisition bid ultimately fail. AT&T does say that Deutsche Telekom can't afford to invest the amount of capital needed for T-Mobile to develop LTE and that T-Mobile "must develop into a self-funding platform," but that's assuming DT doesn't find another buyer with whom the FCC and DOJ are more comfortable.
• AT&T really turns up the heat on the potential for a spectrum crunch on T-Mobile's network, saying "the report's authors find this evidence inconvenient, and simply claim it does not exist." There's no mention of Cablevision's prior statements that it had been investigating a wholesale deal with T-Mobile — a deal that would require excess capacity — or the other wholesale projects T-Mobile is said by the FCC to be pursuing, but unfortunately, there's way too much redacted detail in this part of the FCC report for an outside party to weigh in with much authority.
• Regarding the back-and-forth about the viability of regional carriers as legitimate AT&T competitors, AT&T says that the FCC's decision not to assess individual markets in rendering its decision ignores "among others, US Cellular, Leap, and MetroPCS, all of which have a higher market share than T-Mobile in numerous major markets across the US."
• AT&T says that the FCC report understates spectrum holdings by regional players "an obvious attempt to manipulate data to support the report's conclusion" by averaging the holdings across markets that the regional players don't serve. Of course, AT&T's rebuttal ignores the FCC's claim that regional carriers tend to service customers of different needs and demographics than the national carriers do — and thus it's not an apples-to-apples comparison, particularly considering the costs that the regionals incur to support national roaming.
• AT&T also disputes the FCC's branding of T-Mobile as a "disruptive force" in the industry, echoing the "no clear path to LTE" verbiage and pointing out that it's been losing customers over the last two years.
• Regarding the threat of increased backhaul pricing by taking T-Mobile out of the market, AT&T points out that the DOJ didn't even bother to include that in its own report. (Not to say the FCC guys can't think on their own.) AT&T goes on to say that Sprint's own announcements reveal that it has access to 25 to 30 providers of backhaul, a number which should presumably be sufficient to generate competitive pricing.

AT&T concludes by saying that it is "still ready" to make the merger happen, but this language in particular caught our eye:

In this circumstance, we understood the issues such a combination might raise, and we made clear, publicly and privately, our readiness to address those concerns.
​

If you read between the lines, it sounds like AT&T is saying that it's ready and willing to play ball at the bargaining table, where proposals like the rumored divestiture to Leap could be fair game. Of course, AT&T points out in its own statement that the FCC report has no legal standing — it wasn't voted on by the Commission and AT&T doesn't have an application in for review anymore — but it'll be interesting to see how long this posturing continues and how (or if) it'll translate into hard negotiations.

 

[mkrishnan]

AT&T has some pretty openly antisocial executives, but I think most of this is more an example of how our approach to mobile infrastructure has major issues:

- T-Mobile doesn't have a better build-out of 3G/4G in rural areas than AT&T does, so just acquiring T-Mo isn't going to solve this problem

- It is the case that we have a surprisingly large population without broadband coverage for a developed nation, even if this is because of the extent of rural dwellers here vs. other developed nations

- It is also the case that networks in several of the largest / highest density cities (NY, SF, to a lesser extent LA and Chicago) have at least intermittent major service issues

- From a cost standpoint, handset sweetheart deals basically allow the major players to charge more over time for the same (or less) level of service, as opposed to less.

I think it's time to shake things up. Number porting was a major coup, but I think the next steps should include:

- Some kind of mechanism to force all carriers to use supported hardware owned by the consumer

- Force all carriers who sell locked phones to provide a complete unlock on request (or automatically) when the original contract is finished.

This would create a market for handsets and allow more people to use low-cost providers (Boost, Cricket, H2O, etc) who are currently not able/willing to use them because they do not offer good hardware.

And possibly...

- Force carriers / handset mfr's to remove limitations from use of capped data plans (e.g. if you get 2 gb, you get 2 gb, and you can use it any way you want) This will cause data congestion, but it will also put increased pressure on the providers to improve network infrastructure and not over-sell their mobile data services.

- Regulate SMS/MMS costs

- Legislate LTE interoperability or put together some kind of program to help the providers collaborate on network infrastructure for rural consumers rather than expecting each provider to independently produce a huge amount of 3G/LTE hardware in the middle of nowhere to serve a small customer base.

Whatever AT&T comes up with is not going to be focused on making life better for consumers, even though T-Mobile without AT&T is not viable.

I think the government should focus on empowering mobile consumers and then let consumers put the pressure on the major carriers to force them to compete.