
U.S. Wireless Industry Is Finally Competitive, FCC Says - JumpCrisscross
https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-wireless-industry-is-finally-competitive-fcc-says-1505145979
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tw04
The part that's both sad and extremely enlightening is the _ONLY_ reason it's
competitive is the FCC blocking AT&Ts attempt to acquire T-Mobile. As a result
they were forced to give up a ton of spectrum which T-Mobile used to become
extremely competitive. Without that action, T-Mobile would still be the red-
headed stepchild of the wireless industry.

The "lesson learned" should be that the FCC should force any bidder on an
auction to use-it or lose-it on spectrum within 18 months. Additionally they
should require companies to provide FACTUAL DATA on their spectrum shortages
before even allowing them to participate in an auction. This spectrum hoarding
was on the verge of destroying any competition in the US.

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chrishacken
I couldn't agree more. A guy that's been sitting on a grandfathered 3.5Ghz
license approached us to lease it from him or partner with him to use it. He
hasn't used it himself in over 7+ years.

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burnte
To be fair, AT&T has been losing subscribers for a while, and Verizon has
finally started experiencing some net losses as well, while TMobile gained
enough to surpass Sprint as the number three carrier. TMobile has shaken up
the market with being transparent with phone pricing and payments, eliminating
contracts, pushing new plans and aggressive pricing. Sprint suffered from that
(and their own horrible service) and then AT&T and Verizon got nervous and
started competing too. It's still an oligopoly but I think it IS legitimately
arguable that it's more competitive than it was 6 years ago.

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blitmap
My impression was most of the cell towers were owned by either AT&T or Verizon
- how can TMobile and others be competitive? I had assumed they were buying to
use the networks of the existing 2? I know I'm uninformed, I'm asking for more
info on territory.

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ibrahima
T-Mobile and Sprint are independent networks. Other smaller carriers, known as
MVNOs (eg. MetroPCS, Cricket, Google Fi, etc), do rent the networks of the
major 4 carriers, but T-Mobile and Sprint do not, which is part of why their
coverage is a little worse in less populated areas. I'm not sure if T-Mobile
can roam on AT&T towers (since they're both GSM, but are probably using
different bands for 3G). I do know that when I'm in Yosemite with T-Mobile I
don't get any reception, but I've heard that Verizon and possibly AT&T do.

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wlesieutre
My T-Mobile phone roams to AT&T towers, but with no data connection. Fancier
plans may not have this limitation.

Side note for those who don't know the term, MVNO stands for Mobile Virtual
Netwok Operator.

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SpikeDad
Um, sure. Shall I translate?

"U.S. Wireless Industry is finally going to be unregulated so they can do
whatever they want", FCC says.

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j605
If they are unregulated you would end up with AT&T or Verizon hoarding
spectrum and not cooperating with other carriers. If you had experienced
pricing and service outside of US, you can clearly understand how ridiculous
it looks from the outside.

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jon_richards
I just bought 2gb/day of 4g data for 2 months for $10 in India. I get
2gb/month in the US.

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wil421
I pay something like $65 a month for unlimited data with AT&T. India isn't a
fair comparison, my colleague recently went to visit a team there and was able
to get a free SIM card. Like literally a free SIM card with a decent amount of
data from an up and coming provider.

How much is $10 a month for someone on an Indian salary?

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th0ma5
There's still no _technical_ reason why costs are so high, speeds are so slow,
and caps exist at all. Some blame can be put on the FCC, tower owners, cities
regulating towers, but the carriers themselves have very little incentive to
make any radical cost reductions or service upgrades.

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gok
There's a very technical reason why caps exist: using more data requires more
spectrum, and there's a limited amount of spectrum, so it doesn't make any
sense to charge every user the same amount regardless of how much data they
use. There's no carrier in the world that can sell you truly unlimited access
without applying traffic shaping at some point.

~~~
th0ma5
Wrong. I mean, you're right, but you're ignoring various other aspects that
affect the connection of a single device to a single base station...
directional antennas, channel use, channel spread spectrum, tower height,
noise floor, obstructions, etc... The point is, they want you to believe that
it is spectrum, but really it is tower owners and tower licensing. And even
that I don't think justifies caps. How does limiting speed affect the spectrum
when your phone has already negotiated with the towers the amount of channels
in use? There is a lot of FUD spread around on this topic.

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mark212
And the last time it was "competitive"? 2009, with commissioners appointed by
the last Republican president.

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addicted
The wireless industry is significantly more competitive than it would have
been and this can exactly be traced to TMobile being independent and providing
more unique plans which can be directly traced to the 2014/2015? Decision to
prevent the AT&T acquisition of Tmobile.

The course of events here are very straightforward and clear in a way that's
extremely rare where corporate actions are concerned. There's very little
doubt that the FCC's actions preventing AT&T from acquiring TMobile has led to
a significantly better wireless environment for US customers and Republican
appointees, especially Ajit Pai, were on the wrong side of that decision.

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sliverstorm
Right, but the natural fear is that the FCC's next move is going to be _" Hey
because wireless is finally competitive and things are great, we should let
AT&T acquire T-Mobile!"_

It's even right there in the article, _Some say the finding could spur merger
activity_

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schiffern
>It's even right there in the article, Some say the finding could spur merger
activity

"The U.S. wireless industry is finally competitive. Time to fix that!"

I want to get off Mr. Capitalism's Wild Wealth Concentration Ride...

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yipopov
For those who can't read the link in the OP:
[http://archive.is/FBbny](http://archive.is/FBbny)

