Posted by: Bob Quinn on February 8, 2012 at 4:23 pm
Sometimes a blog just writes itself. Other times, the beneficiaries of the FCC’s so-called “competition policies” write your blog for you. And that is the situation I found myself in when I happened upon the transcript from this morning’s Sprint 4Q2011 Earnings Call. To bring you back up to speed if you’re not a regular reader of our Public Policy Blog, when last we met, I was suggesting (ok, saying) that the FCC has enacted “Roaming” policies over the last two years that have actually cost the American economy much needed network infrastructure investment and the jobs associated with that investment. At the time, I was commenting on Sprint’s recently announced decision to “roam” at regulated rates in large portions of Kansas and Oklahoma (where it owns spectrum) rather than make the investments necessary to replace its network infrastructure in those areas.
While those comments were met by denials and accusations that AT&T was anti-consumer, Sprint’s CEO today, speaking to analysts confirmed our assessment of those business decisions and actually quantified exactly how many billions of dollars that Sprint avoided investing by “trading off” roaming for capital investment and job creation.
To preempt any criticisms that Mr. Hesse’s comments are being taken out of context, here is the entire section in which these remarks were made:
Read More 
Posted by: AT&T Blog Team on February 1, 2012 at 12:41 pm
Jim Cicconi, AT&T Senior Executive Vice President of External & Legislative Affairs, responds to comments made by former FCC Chairman Reed Hundt regarding spectrum auctions:
“Despite Reed Hundt’s recollection, the FCC’s track record on auctions is not an unbroken string of successes. In fact, Hundt’s tenure saw perhaps the biggest single fiasco of this sort, the PCS C Block auction. In that situation, the FCC used its discretion in a way that set aside valuable spectrum for ‘designated entities’, and excluded otherwise qualified companies from bidding. Over half of the 493 licenses from that auction were later returned to the government for non-payment, and the licenses of the largest winner, NextWave, were tied up in bankruptcy litigation for years. In that case, the FCC’s use of its ‘discretion’ ended up costing the U.S. Treasury billions, and left vitally needed spectrum unused for years.
“No one is suggesting the FCC’s conduct of auctions be micro-managed. But Congress – not the FCC – sets policy, especially when it directly impacts revenue needed for deficit reduction. And there is no more fundamental policy point than whether a spectrum auction should be open or closed. Congress has every right to tell the FCC it should not be picking winners and losers in the wireless market, or using its ‘discretion’ to tilt the playing field. We need open auctions where every competitor has a fair chance to participate, and that is what the House bill provides.”
Read More
Posted by: Bob Quinn on January 26, 2012 at 3:08 pm
“Broadband is the great infrastructure challenge of the early 21st century.”
That is the opening sentence of the National Broadband Plan, and the challenge that the Plan spends almost 400 pages trying to address. And that’s the point Sprint has ignored entirely in responding to my recent blog.
Fact: There are vast territories in rural Kansas and Oklahoma where Sprint used to offer their customers a 3G on-net broadband wireless experience where they will now rely on roaming (or, the practice of piggy-backing on competitors’ networks). Sprint may now claim that it had some type of “infrastructure” deal which it characterizes as “roaming” but that is not what Sprint proclaimed in its maps in identifying the “Sprint footprint” and it is certainly not what Sprint told its customers in the affected areas when it started selling them iPhones last year.
Read More
