Posted by: Joan Marsh on April 21, 2011 at 2:53 pm
Today, we filed some paperwork with the FCC – our official applications to transfer licenses from T-Mobile USA, Deutsche Telekom ’s U.S. subsidiary, to AT&T. We also filed a public interest statement and some other supporting documents. It’s certainly a lot to read so we tried to break it down into key points. You can check out a comprehensive executive summary of our filing on our MobilizeEverything website.
The bottom line is that our merger with T-Mobile USA will offer significant benefits to American consumers. It will address capacity constraints that both of our companies face, which will enable the combined company to provide improved services in the many urban, suburban, and rural markets where the enormous surge in broadband usage is fast consuming available capacity. What this means is fewer dropped calls, fewer failed call attempts, and better data throughput.
Our subscribers have the highest percentage of data hungry smartphones among all U.S. wireless providers. We’ve seen mobile data volumes on our network skyrocket by a staggering 8000% from 2007 to 2010…and we expect to see accelerating growth going forward.
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Posted by: AT&T Blog Team on April 18, 2011 at 4:36 pm
The FCC officially began its process today to modernize its telephone subsidy programs, the Universal Service Fund (USF) and Intercarrier Compensation (ICC) system. The comments we filed today highlight the urgent need to update these policies if the Commission hopes to achieve its National Broadband Plan goals. The following statement may be attributed to AT&T’s Vice-President, Federal Regulatory Hank Hultquist:
“The overriding goal of the FCC’s National Broadband Plan – to ensure that all Americans have access to, and use, broadband services – will not be achieved unless sweeping reforms of USF and ICC are enacted. Policymakers have long recognized that broadband is ‘the straw the stirs the drink’ for future economic growth, jobs and innovation, and is critical for improving healthcare, education and the environment. And, to achieve these broadband goals, policies that are hindering broadband investment and adoption in rural and high-cost areas need to be reformed.
“We all understand that communications technology is undergoing a historic transformation from narrowband Plain Old Telephone service (POTS) to broadband IP-enabled services. Where we once bought local or long distance voice service separately, voice is now simply another app you download. Where we once tethered a black rotary phone to a wall, we are now tethering wireless devices to go online from a laptop. But regulatory policies and regulations have woefully lagged behind these changes, and by doing so are thwarting our country’s broadband goals.
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Posted by: Jim Cicconi on April 15, 2011 at 5:44 pm
We have great respect for Dan Hesse as an executive, but his comments today about AT&T’s merger with T-Mobile are way off base. They’re also totally at odds with his own past statements.
As recently as last October, Mr. Hesse said the wireless industry is ‘hyper competitive‘. The month prior, his CFO talked about how ‘tough‘ retail competition is in the wireless market, citing at least six major competitors. In February of last year, Mr. Hesse said, “M&A is absolutely a way to get the growth in the industry, if a particular transaction makes sense for anybody.” He went on to say, “I think consolidation will be healthy for the industry, some consolidation. It is, needless to say, very competitive.” And in January of last year at a Citi Global Conference, Mr. Hesse said, “Well, there is no question that we have an extremely competitive wireless industry in this country and that the pricing is getting much more aggressive.”
Given that Sprint is a major competitor to AT&T in the hyper competitive wireless market Mr. Hesse describes, no one should be surprised that they would oppose this merger. But it is self-serving for them to argue that the highly competitive wireless market they cited only months ago is now threatened by the very type of transaction they seemed prepared to defend previously.
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