T-Mobile Amassed 'Unprecedented Concentration of Spectrum,' AT&T Complains (arstechnica.com) 54
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: AT&T and Verizon are worried about T-Mobile's vast spectrum holdings and have asked the Federal Communications Commission to impose limits on the carrier's ability to obtain more spectrum licenses. Verizon kicked things off in August when it petitioned the FCC to reconsider its acceptance of a new lease that would give T-Mobile another 10MHz to 30MHz of spectrum in the 600MHz band in 204 counties. AT&T followed that up on Friday with a filing that supports many of the points made in Verizon's petition. T-Mobile was once the smallest of four national carriers and complained that it didn't have enough low-band spectrum to match AT&T and Verizon's superior coverage. But T-Mobile surged past Sprint in recent years and then bought the company, making T-Mobile one of three big nationwide carriers along with AT&T and Verizon. T-Mobile also bolstered its low-band spectrum holdings by dominating a 600MHz auction in 2017.
"The combination of Sprint and T-Mobile has resulted in an unprecedented concentration of spectrum in the hands of one carrier," AT&T wrote in its filing to the FCC on Friday. "In fact, the combined company exceeds the Commission's spectrum screen, often by a wide margin, in Cellular Market Areas representing 82 percent of the US population, including all major markets." T-Mobile's large spectrum holdings demand "changes in how the Commission addresses additional acquisitions of spectrum by that carrier," AT&T said in another part of the filing. AT&T also posted a blog on the topic, saying that "Additional spectrum leases with Dish will cause T-Mobile to exceed the 250MHz screen by as much as 136MHz." Officially, AT&T said it "takes no position on whether T-Mobile's lease applications were properly accepted by the FCC," but the company said that the FCC "should provide an explanation of why it permitted T-Mobile to further exceed the spectrum screen." "The Commission's failure to issue a written order in a transaction allowing spectrum aggregation in excess of the screen to this degree is highly unusual... Moreover, without a written order explaining its analysis, there is no evidence that the Commission has carefully attempted to evaluate the potential for competitive harm," AT&T wrote.
"The combination of Sprint and T-Mobile has resulted in an unprecedented concentration of spectrum in the hands of one carrier," AT&T wrote in its filing to the FCC on Friday. "In fact, the combined company exceeds the Commission's spectrum screen, often by a wide margin, in Cellular Market Areas representing 82 percent of the US population, including all major markets." T-Mobile's large spectrum holdings demand "changes in how the Commission addresses additional acquisitions of spectrum by that carrier," AT&T said in another part of the filing. AT&T also posted a blog on the topic, saying that "Additional spectrum leases with Dish will cause T-Mobile to exceed the 250MHz screen by as much as 136MHz." Officially, AT&T said it "takes no position on whether T-Mobile's lease applications were properly accepted by the FCC," but the company said that the FCC "should provide an explanation of why it permitted T-Mobile to further exceed the spectrum screen." "The Commission's failure to issue a written order in a transaction allowing spectrum aggregation in excess of the screen to this degree is highly unusual... Moreover, without a written order explaining its analysis, there is no evidence that the Commission has carefully attempted to evaluate the potential for competitive harm," AT&T wrote.
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How about instead of complaining go to the Firehose [slashdot.org] and vote on submitted stories?
And submit a story now and then.
Re: Bleh, more spam! (Score:1)
Boohoo (Score:1)
Then bid higher next time. Verizon and AT&T have been suckling on Pai's teets for so long there's scars on his areolas.
Re:Boohoo (Score:4, Insightful)
Verizon just didn't bid.
AT&T bid, and then sold those spectrum licenses.
This is pretty much the classic case of the man who killed his parents asking the court for mercy because he's an orphan.
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I wonder if we could do the same. Say that all us carriers have to offer an plan with a certain amount of data for qualified customers for $20 a month, because that is all we want to pay
Unfair (Score:1)
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T-Mobile has $15 and $25 monthly prepaid plans with unlimited talk/text and 2/5GB of data [t-mobile.com], with their 5G offering (whatever that means) included. It's pretty competitive.
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It's especially annoying on an iPhone, as iMessage will stop working.
Use a phone that actually knows what an SMS is, then.
(I refuse to feel sorry for iPhone users who know perfectly well that I don't have one and yet insist on using iMessage to communicate with me anyhow.)
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That would be nice if SMS worked reliably.
If a sender uses AT&T to send me an SMS message, there is about a 50% chance I will receive it.
I suspect that this is because my number was hosted by a service that was later bought by AT&T and when I switched to T-Mobile, a database in AT&T''s network was never updated with the port of my number to T-Mobile.
WhatsApp works reliably for me. Network operators got greedy with their pricing for a service t
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You realize how absurd a statement that is right?
SMS uses the back-channel, and will work with less than 1 bar of signal. If you can get a proper 3g (or better) connection, SMS is pretty much guaranteed to be available.
Now, "Multimedia SMS" is another beast entirely-- but simple texts? It literally uses the backchannel used by the towers to communicate signal quality and handoff messages. It works even when you cant make a voice call.
the point of the prior poster stands; Get a phone that knows how to prop
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SMS hasn't used the backchannel process in quite some time, all those things are now packetized and converted with shoddy middleware handing off between the providers.
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Cut off from wireless data, yeah. You still have unlimited talk and text, you can still use Wi-Fi (if you haven't already been using it during the month anyway), and if you *really* need more wireless data, you can still buy it in 1GB increments. Plus an annual 500MB/month data cap increase.
While it's more expensive than it is pretty much everywhere else in the world, those costs are $15/$25 *flat* (i.e., tax- and fee-inclusive), are still better than what AT&T and Verizon offer, and "better" is compe
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Cut off from wireless data, yeah. You still have unlimited talk and text, you can still use Wi-Fi
Again, unlimited text with the caveat you're not using an iPhone, which will shit itself as it attempts to send/receive iMessages over a nonexistent data link. Claiming you "can still use WiFi" is kind of disingenuous, because if you primarily had access to WiFi while out and about, you wouldn't burn through your data allotment in the first place.
and if you *really* need more wireless data, you can still buy it in 1GB increments.
Which is both inconvenient and negates the savings of choosing this plan in the first place. Hell, Mint Mobile (a T-Mobile MVNO) has a $15/mo plan which throttle
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I pay $25 flat ($40 but I have 3 "friends" that reduce the cost $5 per month) for Visible, which is Verizon. Unlimited talk, text, data, and no limit on tether data. I used it one month for my primary internet connection and pulled nearly 200GB of data that month. Never slowed down, only cost $25.
Deals are there, if you bother to look.
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Re:Unfair (Score:5, Insightful)
Nah - just set up servers that dynamically assign frequencies on requests and then bill the operator based on actual usage.
That way you can get new small operators and even temporary operators. But that would cause competition for the big operators and they wouldn't like that.
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The usual way it's done is to split up the mobile service and the infrastructure parts of the business. The infrastructure side charges everyone the same for access to the network but doesn't deal directly with consumers. The service companies only have to supply bandwidth to the edge of the network and pay for every customer using it.
This has been partially done in the EU where "virtual mobile operators" are common. They have some legal backing to keep the deals fair and I use one that is on the 3 infrastr
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...and has a mandate to keep prices 10% lower than the average of the big 3.
Ten percent? Wow. Be still, my beating heart!
We're talking about a cell phone bill here, not a mortgage payment.
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T-Mobile has all this spectrum (Score:2)
But what are they actually doing with it? Why is their network so weak at my house, my mom's house, our friends' house, our friends' vacation house, and my in-laws' house (that's five points scattered over about 400 miles - some of that's rural, but not all)? Perhaps they should stop buying up spectrum and start building more towers?
Much of the time it doesn't matter, thanks to wi-fi calling; but Comcast has been less reliable of late, so that weak cellular signal has impacted my ability to work effectively
Re: T-Mobile has all this spectrum (Score:1)
Comcast/Xfinity mobile uses Verizon's network and phone+texts are free if you have comcast's internet service
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And how does that help the poster?
But also be aware that signal strength and availability depends on seasonal changes. Summer sees more vegetation impacting signal propagation and there are more users out and about in rural areas.
Re:T-Mobile has all this spectrum (Score:5, Insightful)
Verizon and AT&T's 800 MHz bands for voice date back to the analog cell phone days. They were around back then, so acquired licenses to those bands, which they later repurposed to digital. Analog was also less efficient than digital, so when these bands were repurposed to digital it resulted in lots of excess capacity. So Verizon and AT&T customers also experienced less interference from other customers.
There were no 700-800 MHz frequencies left when T-Mobile got started, so they were forced to use 1.7-1.9 GHz bands for voice. (Although the link lists Sprint has having a 850 MHz band, that dates back to their acquisition of Nextel which had a 850 MHz license in a small part of the U.S. - around the DC area if I recall. So Sprint also had to rely on a 1.8 GHz band for voice in most of the country, which is why they too had poorer coverage. Well, that and the contractor they hired to build towers screwing up their rollout on the west coast, by spacing the towers apart at the maximum theoretical allowable distance to lower cost. That put Sprint in a position of trying to make their service work with towers spaced a bit too far apart, or quadruple the number of towers.)
With 4G and especially 5G, and voice over LTE and 5g Voice service, this should become less of an issue. Phones with that capability can conduct voice calls over data, instead of over the dedicated voice radio. That helps in urban and suburban areas, but Verizon and AT&T will continue to have an advantage in rural areas, where the low population density only justifies towers spaced further apart.
Yeah T-Mobile's merger with Sprint gave them a ton of higher frequency bands. But they still lack a 700-800 MHz band for voice. So if you buy AT&T's logic and the FCC should make things fair, they'd take back some of T-Mobile's higher frequency bands, but also chop up Verizon and AT&T's 700-800 MHz bands and give a portion of them to T-Mobile. (My personal thought on all this is that cellular service providers should be prohibited from owning towers and bands. Companies which build and own tower networks should be allowed to license bands, but be prohibited from selling cellular service to end-users. The cellular providers could then contract with whichever tower companies they wanted to provide their service. Lowers the barrier to entry for new cellular providers or tower companies. You don't need a nationwide network - your service company can offer service just by inking deals with multiple tower companies, and a rural community could set up their own tower company with a few towers which the cellular providers could rent. It also forces cellular providers to compete based on price and service, rather than network coverage.)
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(My personal thought on all this is that cellular service providers should be prohibited from owning towers and bands. Companies which build and own tower networks should be allowed to license bands, but be prohibited from selling cellular service to end-users. The cellular providers could then contract with whichever tower companies they wanted to provide their service. Lowers the barrier to entry for new cellular providers or tower companies. You don't need a nationwide network - your service company can offer service just by inking deals with multiple tower companies, and a rural community could set up their own tower company with a few towers which the cellular providers could rent. It also forces cellular providers to compete based on price and service, rather than network coverage.)
In other words, you want to take the colossal failure that is our cable internet market and replicate it with the cellular network, where local cell tower monopolies limit you to only one carrier in a given area, and every time you move to a different area (say on your morning commute or going to the store) you need to buy a roaming plan on a completely different carrier.
That seems counter-productive. Better to make cell towers (and for that matter local cable / fiber data lines) public utilities, like they
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Re:T-Mobile has all this spectrum (Score:4, Informative)
T-Mobile's signal (for voice service) is weaker because they don't have a 700-800 MHz band for voice [wilsonamplifiers.com]. So they have to use 1 .7-1.9 GHz band instead. The higher frequency has more trouble penetrating obstacles like trees and walls, so results in worse coverage at the same distance from the tower.
Your link is terribly out of date. T-Mobile uses band 12 (700 MHz) since 2014 and band 71 (600 MHz) since 2017 for LTE coverage. Any iPhone newer than 2014's iPhone 6 supports VoLTE on band 12 and while iPhones newer than the iPhone 8 support band 71.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
GP should check that his devices support these two frequency bands and VoLTE.
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GP should check that his devices support these two frequency bands and VoLTE.
Yeah, my 6S supports band 12, although not band 71. But I think the fundamental problem is that T-Mobile simply hasn't built out much infrastructure once you get more than a few miles away from I-5 and I-90. In Seattle, I'm golden... it's everywhere else that's a problem (and I'm not in Seattle much these past 6 months!)
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But what are they actually doing with it?
Supposedly, they're going to start offering home internet service [t-mobile.com], for exactly the same monthly cost that I already pay to the current broadband monopoly provider of my neighborhood (Spectrum).
Yeah, eventually I might have the choice between crappy unreliable wired service or crappy unreliable wireless service, and no savings either way. What a time to be alive.
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Start having all of them call and complain every week or so. T-Mobile is still building out their 5G network (per an employee I talked to), so the squeaky wheel may get the grease in this case. Plus while COVID is locking everyone down, they can probably afford to do somewhat more disruptive upgrades (like cut off service for a couple hours while doing a new-technology forklift upgrade) without pissing off people who have places to go, people to see, and things to do.
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How's Verizon's signal in the more rural areas of Washington state?
That would depend on where in the state you're talking, and then specifically where in that area you live. Generally, VZW and/or AT&T will have the best coverage for the rural areas. I live on Whidbey Island. It's low population with a lot of trees and hills, but we can get some signal from the mainland so not exactly rural for coverage. VZW has the best coverage here but still has a terrible time covering the south end of the island. They all cover it, by the maps, but pockets of no signal everywhere b
Lest we forget (Score:2)
It was not all that long ago when AT&T tried to merge with T-Mobile. ( It failed spectacularly resulting in AT&T paying several Billion to T-Mobile )
I can't help but think that had the merger been successul, I doubt they would be whining quite as loudly about all of the spectrum they would now possess :|
Besides, even IF the spectrum were up for sale, AT&T is so far in debt they couldn't possibly afford to buy it anyway.
So let me get this straight ... (Score:2)
Let me guess ...this is a prelude to them demanding that the government will give them free spectrum next. To restore fairness.
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Winner, winner, chicken dinner!
At last, AT&T & Verizon have real competit (Score:2)
A number of people on Slashdot were complaining that Sprint and T-Mobile merging would mean less completion.
Note that AT&T never companied about T-Mobile spectrum holdings before the merger.
In the first of many discoveries to come, we see just one way in which T-Mobile and Sprint companied are ACTUAL competition to AT&T and Verizon. Alone they were no real threat.
Now T-Mobile can actually force change in AT&T and Verizon because there will finally be competition in the cellular carrier space.
Re:At last, AT&T & Verizon have real compe (Score:4, Insightful)
One of the first things T-Mobile did after assimilating Sprint was ending Sprint's least-expensive plan offering. Sprint had a $35/mo unlimited everything plan, and it was even $10/mo cheaper if you signed up through Best Buy. An old Slickdeals thread [slickdeals.net] now stands in silent tribute to the days when there was still actual competition in the wireless industry.
Yet, somehow, AT&T bellyaching about T-Mobile's spectrum is supposed to be a net win for consumers, rather than more affordable service? I mean shit, that's like saying it's great that your local McDonald's went under, because now more people can enjoy eating at the super expensive sushi restaurant across the street. How deluded to you have to be to assume that's the way the world actually works?
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so the deal you are talking about has this: "Data deprioritization during congestion". While it may be unlimited, you get what you pay for.
"Waah, we don't like being competed against!" (Score:1)
Waah! Waaah! Make the big bad T-Mobile go away, we don't like them!
Crybabies.
For what it's worth I hope the FCC does nothing and T-Mobile starts kicking the crap out of AT&T, they deserve it, almost as bad as Verizon deserves it.
Waaahhhhhh (Score:4, Funny)
The original monopoly that was broken up and then later reformed bigger than it was is now complaining about competition?
AT&T should have bid more for the spectrum (Score:1)
AT&T is a big fat shithead. They got outbid in the spectrum auctions and now they want the courts to award them the spectrum anyway.
Imagine if you sold something on ebay and were forced to sell it to the lowest bidder out of "fairness."
Correction (Score:2)
What an injustice! (Score:2)
Boo-fucking-hoo. No pity whatsoever for AT&T and Verizon who have bullied T-Mobile & Sprint for decades.
Market consolidation is good (Score:2)
Until it's not.
They made their own bed.