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Analyst Estimates AT&T Needs To Spend $5B To Catch Up
itwbennett writes "The public's perception of AT&T's network is poor and declining, apparently because of real shortcomings when compared with Verizon Wireless and Sprint Nextel,' says Gerard Hallaren, director of research at TownHall Investment Research. 'AT&T's capital expenditures on its wireless network from 2006 through September 2009 totaled about $21.6 billion, compared with $25.4 billion for Verizon and $16 billion for Sprint (including Sprint's investments in WiMax operator Clearwire). Over that time, Verizon has spent far more per subscriber: $353, compared with $308 for AT&T,' Hallaren said. 'Even Sprint has outspent AT&T per subscriber, laying out $310 for network capital expenditure.' All this means AT&T has a choice, says Hallaren: 'spend or suffer.'"
My big complaint with Sprint is cross carrier SMS and MMS. Everyone I know finds Sprint extremely unreliable about sending or receiving anything which comes from or goes to Sprint's network. I've literally waited an hour for text message to appear on the phone next to me. They also seem to drop a huge number of messages; again, cross carrier. At one point, I'd guess perhaps as high as 80% drop rate - though that high is not what I'd call typical.
I don't know if other carriers are purposely causing problems for Sprint or if Sprint is purposely causing problems for other carriers, or they are just well beyond their capacity. But, unless things improve and you SMS or MMS heavily with people on other carriers, I could never recommend Sprint.
Also, one last note, Verizon has not crippled any Android phone features. While Verizon has a terrible history here, thus far they've been true to their word on Android. Now hopefully Verizon's upcoming Android 2.1 update will fix various bugs and incompatibilities vs every other Android phone available. If not, then I'd recommend people staying away from Android+Verizon.
Then I guess the real question is why do voters fall for it? If we swapped out tax cuts with welfare benefits and large corporate entity with welfare recipient, voters would howl. We place restrictions on what someone can or cannot buy with their food stamps, why not do the same for tax cuts that are specifically targeted for infrastructure building?