NNSquad - Network Neutrality Squad
[ NNSquad ] [IP] AT&T Admits That The Whole 'Spectrum Crunch' Argument It Made For Why It Needed T-Mobile Wasn't True
----- Forwarded message from Dave Farber <dave@farber.net> ----- Date: Sat, 10 Nov 2012 09:21:49 -0500 From: Dave Farber <dave@farber.net> Subject: [IP] AT&T Admits That The Whole 'Spectrum Crunch' Argument It Made For Why It Needed T-Mobile Wasn't True Reply-To: dave@farber.net To: ip <ip@listbox.com> ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: *Dewayne Hendricks* Date: Saturday, November 10, 2012 Subject: [Dewayne-Net] AT&T Admits That The Whole 'Spectrum Crunch' Argument It Made For Why It Needed T-Mobile Wasn't True To: Multiple recipients of Dewayne-Net <dewayne-net@warpspeed.com> AT&T Admits That The Whole 'Spectrum Crunch' Argument It Made For Why It Needed T-Mobile Wasn't True from the well,-implicity dept By Mike Masnick Nov 9, 2012 < http://www.techdirt.com/blog/wireless/articles/20121109/07434820984/att-admits-that-whole-spectrum-crunch-argument-it-made-why-it-needed-t-mobile-wasnt-true.shtml > You may recall that back when AT&T was trying to buy T-Mobile, a big part of the argument was a spectrum crunch around its wireless efforts. The company insisted -- strenuously -- that it would not be able to expand 4G LTE services to more than 80% of the population unless it had T-Mobile. That argument ran into some trouble when a lawyer accidentally posted some documents to the FCC which admitted that the company could fairly easily expand its coverage to 97% of the population of the US without T-Mobile (and, in fact, that it would cost about 10% of what buying T-Mobile would cost). Suddenly, the argument that it absolutely needed T-Mobile rang hollow -- even as the company continued to insist exactly that. Still, the FCC suddenly wasskeptical and AT&T, seeing the writing on the wall, gave up on the merger. So, it probably shouldn't have been seen as much of a surprise that just 11 months after the T-Mobile deal fell through, AT&T has announced plans to expand its LTE footprint to cover 97% of the population of the US. In other words, the internal document was exactly correct, and AT&T's public claims? Hogwash. Even the mainstream news media is now mocking AT&T's obviously bogus claims during the merger fight. AT&T's response to this is to claim that it "chartered a new direction," doing something like 40 new deals for spectrum. However, as Broadband Reports notes, all of this seems to make clear that there is no spectrum crunch -- that's just a bogeyman story that the telcos tell the government when they want a handout. In fact, AT&T is now saying publicly that there is no spectrum crunch. It has more than enough. [snip] Dewayne-Net RSS Feed: <http://www.warpspeed.com/wordpress> -- Sent from Gmail Mobile ----- End forwarded message ----- --Lauren-- Lauren Weinstein (lauren@vortex.com): http://www.vortex.com/lauren Co-Founder: People For Internet Responsibility: http://www.pfir.org/pfir-info Founder: - Network Neutrality Squad: http://www.nnsquad.org - PRIVACY Forum: http://www.vortex.com/privacy-info - Data Wisdom Explorers League: http://www.dwel.org - Global Coalition for Transparent Internet Performance: http://www.gctip.org Member: ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy Lauren's Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com Google+: http://vortex.com/g+lauren / Twitter: http://vortex.com/t-lauren Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800 / Skype: vortex.com _______________________________________________ nnsquad mailing list http://lists.nnsquad.org/mailman/listinfo/nnsquad