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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.'"
These numbers are misleading. AT&T doesn't need to spend as much money to be as productive in infrastructure expansion as its CDMA competitors because their engineers can talk and surf at the same time.
Calling out bogus battery capacity claims.
For certain patchy values of Canada.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
I've never understood while Sprint get's bashed every time they are compared to other providers. I've been with Sprint for ~10 years and they have always provided me with good service and coverage with reasonable rates. I can not remember the last time I had no service or a call was dropped. Maybe it's because I live in a metro area, but I have nothing bad to say about them.
Have you used the Sprint network lately?
My guess is that you have not.
Sprint used to be bashed because of customer support and rightly so but they have made a lot of effort to improve in that area.
Sprint used to have a not great selection of phones. Right now they have a few really good phones like the Blackberry Tour, the Samsung Moment, the HTC Hero, the Palm Pre, and Palm Pixie.
Their prices are cheaper than Verizon and AT&T and the didn't cripple their phones like Verizon did as far as Bluetooth, WiFI, and even loading software.
They are CDMA which is a downer if you are going to travel outside the US but so is Verizon.
Oh and you get to roam on the Verizon network. I have never been without service on my phone for more than five minutes anywhere in the US.
I would say that unless you MUST have an iPhone or you really want a Droid that Sprint is a really good choice.
The crappy old Sprint has been gone for a while but then you will find people that hate every carrier.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
But my iPhone would probably just drop the call.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
I couldn't agree more. I've been on Sprint for five years. I also can't remember the last time I had a dropped call or no service, and the "everything" plan can't be beat. I talk to the Apple fanboys at work toting their iPhones, and they try to compare who has the least number of dropped calls - they can't believe that I don't have any at all, ever.
I strongly believe that beyond an initial marketing push, if a product is truly good, it can sell itself.
Well, we do have the computer field as a major counterexample. The best-selling computer system for a long time has been MS Windows, which has always been the crappiest product available. They're a prime example of an old business guideline: The best way to be a major vendor is to have the biggest advertising budget. If you have that, there's no point on paying extra money to have a good product, because it won't get you a significant increase in sales. Only a tiny part of the market understands how to judge quality, and you can safely leave those sales to the small companies that will never be large.
Of course, the telephone business has long worked on a different basis. Their business plan has always been to make deals with governmental authorities to get a local monopoly wherever possible. Then quality doesn't matter because the regulators will guarantee that you always have a profit and no competitors.
At present, there is a small amount of competition allowed in the recently-developed wireless phone market. But this is only a temporary situation. The phone companies are hard at work on mergers and acquisitions, plus "campaign contributions" to reestablish regulated local monopolies. So we can expect that fairly soon they'll be back to their normal non-competitive situation. AT&T's only real problem is management that hasn't heard about the competitive market. But this is only a temporary situation.
"We're the Phone Company. We don't care. We don't have to."
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
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.
No, let me clarify here.
Nextel's network was *necessarily* built from the ground up, because *it is not Cellular*. It's not licensed as cellular by the FCC. It's on frequencies completely disparate from cellular.
Nextel was created and expanded by buying out Specialized Mobile Radio licensees in the mid 80s, and using their freqs to build what is, effectively, a digital trunking radio system (iDen) with autopatch capabilities.
> Sure, they are in more places, but that's because they snatched up all the "going under" real estate from failing telco's before they went away.
That? Just didn't happen. Nor anything that remotely resembles it.
> Both companies ultimately benefited from the merger, but it was and is a long and expensive road for them both.
And they're not done walking it. While I disagree with you on the technical points of how they came to be, it is in fact the case that they out-expanded themselves, growing their footprint without expanding their backbone to match.
At least, that's my diagnosis, and until someone with facts steps up to contradict me, I'll continue to tell people that.
On reflection, I guess I'm saying they have to take *even more* of the blame for their current state -- and it's not just me; I have 8 customers who've ditched Nextel in the last 10 years; big ones; some 25 radios -- than your "cobbled together from people's leavings" assertion would justify.
<title>Analyst: AT&amp;T needs to spend US$5B to catch up | ITworld</title>
That title is so &ed it goes to 11.
They have a fiscal responsibility to their long-term shareholders, too, not just those looking to cash out after a few quarters of artificial pumping.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
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?
VZW is on EV-DO Rev. A which supports 3.1Mb transfer speeds NOT 2-300kbps and is MUCH faster than EDGE. HSDPA actually supports up to 18Mb not the 20 you claim. However as seen below you will never see anything close tot hat in the real world.
Also PC World did a piece in June comparing REAL world transfer speeds (http://www.pcworld.com/zoom?id=167391&page=1&zoomIdx=1)
AT&T averaged: 717 Kb/sec
Sprint averaged: 745 Kb/sec
VZW averaged: 890 Kb/sec
For reliability...
AT&T: 66%
Sprint: 84%
VZW: 83%
Please get out of here with your misinformation.
I was with sprint for 2 years. Half my calls dropped, My phone wouldnt even ring some of the time. the customer service was horrid, they tried to charge for over $250 in download services i never used (The said i used it when i was in denver when i have never been west of the mississippi, not to mention how i got from denver to making a call in new york in about 1 hour, I must have a concord availible to me!), it took over 8 hours on the phone to get the charge canceled even though it was obviously bogus. In my opinion sprint deserves every piece of its crappy reputation and more. I am with verizon now.
All misspellings and grammatical errors in the above post are intentional and part of my artistic expression.
My 2 cents...
I'm a software consultant, averaging about 80% travel with a typical meantime of about 2 weeks before changing locations. I've been doing this for about 6 years. For the first two years I was desperate for a mobile data solution because (most of the time) hotel internet connections are absolutely horrendous.
For the last 4 years I've tried both AT&T and Verizon for mobile data, and I've got to say Verizon has beat AT&T into the ground in every respect. When I was on AT&T, I achieved an honest-to-god HSDPA connection for a grand total of three wonderful weeks. But three weeks out of a 2 year span do not make for a happy consultant.
With Verizon, I've consistently received a 3G connection time and again. The only time I didn't receive a 3G connection was when I was stuck for two weeks in the middle of northern Wisconsin.
Verizon's 3G IS slower than AT&T's 3G, that much is true. But unless you live in one of the very few areas that AT&T chooses to bless with its almost mythical HSDPA, its not worth it. Verizon's 3G has a vastly superior coverage and maintains about 800Kb/sec. AT&T's EDGE (2G) will get you about 100Kb/sec if you're lucky.