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FCC Approves AT&T's $1.9 Billion Qualcomm Spectrum Purchase
An anonymous reader writes "Bloomberg reports that the U.S. Federal Communications Commission has granted approval for AT&T to buy Qualcomm's wireless spectrum licenses for $1.925 billion. The FCC admitted to having some 'competitive concerns' about letting AT&T snap up such a large swath of spectrum licenses, but were satisfied by simply imposing a number of conditions to prohibit interference on neighboring bands. They also said the deal facilitates their goal of 'expanding mobile broadband deployment throughout the country.'"
So... what does this mean for consumers? Better AT&T coverage? Cheaper wireless? Somehow I get the feeling the opposite is going to happen...
"We had concerns about AT&T not competing, but when we realized how big the bribes they paid us and our appointing politicians were, we decided to let the deal go ahead anyways"
Ma Bell! You were gone for quite a while.
There are no loopholes. It's either legal or it's not.
Is Qualcomm's spectrum something that can be used by either GSM or CDMA carriers? I am surprised that anything Qualcomm does would be of any use to GSM carriers like AT&T or T-Mobile. If Qualcomm needed to sell, one would have thought that they'd sell to Sprint or Verizon.
Or is this totally unrelated to whether the carrier is a CDMA or a GSM carrier?
Now, AT&T can quit whining or lying about not having enough spectrum to build out its LTE network. I'd never give AT&T a dime of my money even if their network was faster than T-Mobile's. Simply on principle alone, I will be staying with T-Mobile for some time to come.
So this is the consolation prize?
that the bureaucrats are going to be paid off to look the other way on instead of ya know actually enforcing?
Between this $2B spectrum purchase by AT&T and the $3+B spectrum purchase from the cablecos by Verizon, it is quite clear (if it wasn't before), that we in the US are lumbering towards a wireless duopoly, held by the former BabyBells. Sprint and Tmobile (if it will exist in the near future, which it probably won't), are all but doomed -- there is no way they will be able to effectively compete, nevermind survival a direct squeeze/war by the BabyBells, if and when they choose (probably under some Repub administration).
It will be surprising, in 5-10 years, not to have much higher prices and many fewer choices... (sigh)...
No one company should own any kind of spectrum for communications. It should be *licensed* from the government, with licensing fees paid yearly.
Multiple companies can use the same spectrum for the same purpose. Hell, the towers used today ought to be considered standard infrastructure like utility lines, telephone lines, etc... Revert to common carrier status and anyone can use anyone else's - that way all the different companies can invest in upgrading, all using the same protocols, same bandwidth, etc... Then it wouldn't be nearly as expensive as each company maintaining their own...
Sheesh - they did it 30+ years ago with telephone companies... Time to do it again with cellular companies...
the coming duopoly of the Baby Bells, also the prime holders of the cellular bands (850Mhz), drives home the answer to the question posed in the '90's:
Can upstart carriers who did not benefit from the massive cellular band giveway survive and overcome the market and technical obstacles presented by the spectrum resources they could acquire. Just how much of a headstart and intrinsic advantage did the cellular carriers get?
Through a gradual series of buyouts and mergers, the BabyBells (AT&T and Verizon) now have near total control over the cellular bands (850Mhz), spectrum that was given away initial (not paid for), and has tremendous inherent advantages in terms of coverage (distance) and building penetration, when compared with the PCS bands (1900Mhz), the primary bands that Sprint and Tmobile were forced to buy and utilize (they didn't get free spectrum and were not able to get any 850Mhz spectrum).
The struggles of Sprint and Tmobile, the primary PCS carriers in US, make the answer now extremely clear: The PCS carriers never really had a chance against the cellular carriers who happen to also be Baby Bells with the deep landline pockets.
1889: AT&T becomes the overall holding company for all the Bell companies.
30 December 1899: American Bell Telephone Company is purchased by its own long-distance subsidiary, American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T) to bypass state regulations limiting capitalization. AT&T assumes leadership role of the Bell System.
1974 Bell System Divesture (Collapse of a monopoly)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_System_divestiture
1995 Southwestern Bell Corp. became SBC Communications
2000 Bell Atlantic — (acquired GTE in 2000 and changed its name to Verizon)
January 31, 2005, SBC announced that it would purchase AT&T Corporation
October 31, 2005 the Federal Communications Commission approved it
Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approved the new AT&T's acquisition of a regional Bell Operating Company, BellSouth
June 29, 2007 AT&T announced that they had reached an agreement to purchase Dobson Cellular, which provided services in the US under the name Cellular One in primarily rural areas
2011 acquisition of Qualcom
Broken apart and then reassembled.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
That's a stupid idea... AT&T would have gotten approval for this spectrum purchase WITHOUT the Tmo debacle. See that Verizon is probably getting approval for a large $3+B spectrum purchase from the cablecos.
The idea that the Tmo debacle, for which AT&T is paying $4B for its FAILURE, was a strategy to get this $2B spectrum purchase approved is just silly... (total price tag of $6B? lol)
Ah, so AT&T gets what they wanted out of the T-Mobile deal - more spectrum can be substituted for more towers as far as capacity goes, except they're going to need to get new handset hardware deployed. But, perhaps that's cheaper, including the penalty payment to T-Mobile, than actually buying T-Mobile.
Cheaper in the face of government obstruction, anyway.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Well now, this is a significantly cheaper way to get more spectrum than buying out T-Mobile. That is the reason why you said you needed to be allowed to buy them, right AT&T? Didn't you say that was the only way to deal with your lack of frequencies for all your customers? There was no other way?
Good thing you had this second chance to approach the problem the find another solution. I'm sure you're happy with all the money you saved doing it this way, too.
.....AT&T Oligarchs instead resort to an Iron curtain and fear driven domination over QUAL-COMMIES.
Agreed. The spectrum belongs to the public and private companies should not be allowed to buy and sell it.
the sign of a bad joke is having to have it explained.
So this is the consolation prize for not winning T-Mobile (and that hot T-Mobile girl).
Of course the real cost here is $1.925B + $4B deal breaker fee to T-Mobile. Buy that girl a new pair of heels.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
DOJ and FCC objected to the ATT/TM merger on the basis there would be a >60% subscriber concentration. To me that is a good thing because uniquely to Telecom we do not need more competition, we need more concentration, to serve rural areas, to amplify connection speed roll outs and to recapture much needed capital investments. The merger kill will be a capital investment kill. The minor difference in "pricing power" would have been more than offset by access to more rural customers, better connection speeds for existing customers, and speed to market of those things.
Although ATT got screwed for $4B already it's not too late for some enlightened regulator to read these words and reverse the decision, and rather than forcing the sale of assets, simply impose a rural component to the build-outs. It would be sufficiently socialist for this administration, who believes in single payer anyway . . . . .
JJ
I remember reading an article during the opening phase of the purchase. In it; it stated that should AT&T spend the $30B to upgrade their network, etc. It would be vastly superior to their rivals in any form. Which is why the red flags went up. As proven, this was about eliminating competition and eventually an assumed increase in prices. The cost of the $30B merger would have been offset by the increase in the X millions of customers that Tmobile has. Not to mention that AT&T had planned to phase out Tmobile's system, so that people would be forced to buy new phones with the AT&T frequencies.
I hope that with the ever decreasing price of bandwidth and increase in end user access to that will help smaller companies. However; should a future spectrum be auctioned off then once again we're screwed.
No one company should own any kind of spectrum for communications. It should be *licensed* from the government, with licensing fees paid yearly.
Multiple companies can use the same spectrum for the same purpose. Hell, the towers used today ought to be considered standard infrastructure like utility lines, telephone lines, etc... Revert to common carrier status and anyone can use anyone else's - that way all the different companies can invest in upgrading, all using the same protocols, same bandwidth, etc... Then it wouldn't be nearly as expensive as each company maintaining their own...
Sheesh - they did it 30+ years ago with telephone companies... Time to do it again with cellular companies...
"owns" *means* licensed from the gov't now...
I don't see what you mean about landlines, which *are* owned by only a few large carriers.
Mostly I don't see what you mean by multiple carriers can use the same spectrum. And SOME POINT or level of granularity, there has to be exclusivity of use. Even Ethernet works that way. Only ONE carrier signal can be running at that level of granularity, be it in time, space, frequency band, locality, etc. Therefore there MUST be SOME amount of dividing up between the carriers. I don't think you solve much if you push this level of exclusivity below frequency bands and into channels or time slots or whatever -- still will have the same problems.
And you don't really address how the tower infrastructure would be paid for and maintained, nevermind any incentive for upgrading. Are you saying the gov't should pay for all intrastructure (then license out slot/localities)? gawd. Or all carriers should "chip in" (into what? and in what proportion?)
I don't see a coherent workable solution in your post here. But I do agree that wireless carriers SHOULD revert to common carrier status, instead of this silly "information service" nonsense. Of course I also believe in net neutrality, but the carriers don't...