Uncategorized Related Posts

Posted September 29, 2015

“Competition, competition, competition” has been FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler’s rallying cry. Under his watch, the Commission’s approach has been, “When competition is high, regulation can be low.” He has stressed that, “[i]f the facts and data determine that a market is competitive, the need for FCC intervention decreases. I have zero interest in imposing new…

Posted September 15, 2015

Over a year ago, AT&T filed an application seeking to acquire two Lower 700 MHz B Block licenses from Club 42 CM Limited Partnership. AT&T’s ownership of 700 MHz B Block licenses is wholly uncontroversial – we purchased many in the 700 MHz auction and have been enhancing our B block footprint through small deals…

Posted September 10, 2015

The Financial Times (FT) ran a story recently highlighting British Telecom’s efforts to get the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to re-establish stricter rate regulation over special access services sold to business customers.   The essence of BT’s position was that BT was paying more for special access service than anywhere else in the western world and getting…

Posted August 6, 2015

Today, the FCC cast a series of votes that set the stage for the incentive auction to move toward its slated March 2016 start.  The results of the votes, however, are a mixed bag and leave significant wireless industry concerns unanswered. On the one hand, the FCC has finally resolved the protracted debate on the…

Posted August 6, 2015

Please attribute the following to Frank Simone, AT&T Vice President of Federal Regulatory: “In the National Broadband Plan, the Commission clearly recognized the critical need to modernize our country’s communications system, and carriers have invested billions of dollars to make this happen. The ongoing transition from a circuit-switched network to an IP-based platform – over…

Posted August 1, 2015

The following statement may be attributed to Len Cali, AT&T Senior Vice President of Global Public Policy: “We commend Ambassador Mike Froman and the Office of the United States Trade Representative on the progress made on the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) and urge the negotiators to finalize a high standard agreement as soon as…

Posted July 28, 2015 • 1 comment

In the hypercompetitive wireless market, mobile service providers are constantly pushing the envelope to bring better, faster and cheaper services to consumers. Such is the case with the ability to make voice calls over Wi-Fi networks, which enables consumers to make calls in areas that are challenging to serve, like deep indoors, underground and in…

Posted July 2, 2015

We don’t have a slick cartoon full of super heroes and telecom villains.  We aren’t generating a raft of identically-worded robo-letters.  And we aren’t tweeting apocalyptic rants about the demise of wireless choice.  But we do care about the 600 MHz spectrum auction – a lot – and we support the Chairman’s decision to deny…

Posted June 23, 2015 • 11 comments

Today, T-Mobile filed a petition to deny a spectrum acquisition by AT&T in three rural cellular market areas (CMAs) in West Virginia, Kentucky and Ohio. The purchase will give AT&T the needed spectrum footprint to deploy up to a 10×10 MHz LTE network in these markets, which will enable AT&T to offer faster and higher…

Posted June 15, 2015 • 1 comment

The ever colorful tweets from T-Mobile CEO John Legere made for interesting reading after his DC tour last week in support of T-Mobile’s quest to expand the 600 MHz spectrum reserve.  T-Mobile has long alleged that an expanded reserve is essential to competition in rural America.  But, the fact is that the reserve framework will…