Posted by: Joan Marsh on April 14, 2011 at 2:26 pm
A few weeks ago, AT&T announced an agreement to acquire T-Mobile USA. While some people were surprised by the announcement, the main reason for the deal was obvious to anyone who has been following the rapid growth of the wireless industry – we need more capacity to address the surging demand for mobile broadband.
AT&T’s wireless broadband networks continue to carry a tremendous amount of data traffic. You’ve heard the stats: wireless data traffic on our network is up over 8000% in the last four years and we anticipate it will be 8 to 10 times greater by 2015. The surest, fastest and most efficient path by far to addressing the capacity limitations we face in the near term is to acquire T-Mobile and its highly complementary spectrum portfolio and network assets. It was the deal hiding in plain sight.
The result of the combination will be extraordinary: the denser network of cell sites will drive capacity improvements and speed gains; spectral efficiencies will be gained by the combinations of two 2G networks into one, including less spectrum used for call set up and control, and more opportunities to migrate bands to support mobile broadband services.
By Jeanine Poltronieri, AT&T Assistant Vice President-Federal Regulatory
Imagine you are on a beach somewhere in Florida, relaxing and, perhaps, sipping a margarita. Naturally, you want to call your friends back in D.C. to gloat. But your cell call drops. Why? A luxury yacht named New Frontier just entered the port. How does that work, you ask? Well, this luxury yacht has been using a signal booster to get a stronger cell signal when out at sea. Unfortunately, these boosters can cause massive interference to commercial and public safety cell systems, so that while New Frontier’s signal gets through, other users experience dropped calls or degraded service.
This isn’t just a hypothetical situation. It actually happened back in November 2007 when the signal booster New Frontier was using caused severe harmful interference to six AT&T towers in Florida for 21 hours. It led to 2,795 dropped calls and 81,000 blocked or impaired calls. Troubling, huh? We thought so.
But boosters are not limited to use on boats. They are sold for residential use, office use, and use in cars and motor homes. In response to a Public Notice on the topic the FCC issued in January 2010, the Commission has received reams of documentation about the harm that boosters cause to consumer and public safety communications, including blocking E911 calls and interfering with the accuracy of E911 location information. The FCC has been aware of this problem for years thanks to a white paper CTIA released in 2006. And we filed a complaint at the FCC against a particular booster manufacturer in April 2009. That complaint is still pending.
Yesterday, AT&T’s Jim Cicconi talked about federal spectrum policies while on a panel at the Brookings Institution here in Washington, D.C. Although there was a question or two (ok, maybe a few more) about our recent announcement, panelists spent a good amount of time discussing the need for incentive auctions.
If you’re a regular visitor to our blog, you know that we’ve been talking for a while now about the critical need for sensible spectrum reform, and how broadcasters should become a part of the solution.
In case you weren’t able to attend yesterday’s event, below is a clip of Jim on why it doesn’t make economic sense to allow broadcasters to continue to sit on such valuable spectrum (which they got for free, btw). He also asks, if broadcasters really need all this spectrum for over-the-air broadcasting, why do they also need must carry – government rules that require competing video providers to carry broadcasters’ signals?
Oh, and be sure to stick around after listening to Jim. Blair Levin has some interesting remarks on this subject as well…
