T-Mobile Hits Back At AT&T and Verizon After Spectrum-Hoarding Accusations (arstechnica.com) 33
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: T-Mobile US CEO Mike Sievert yesterday fired back at AT&T and Verizon, saying the carriers' complaints about T-Mobile obtaining more spectrum licenses show that they are afraid of competition. "The duopolists are scrambling to block this new competition any way they can... Suddenly in the unfamiliar position of not having a dominant stranglehold on the wireless market, and preferring not to meet the competitive challenge in the marketplace, AT&T and Verizon are urging the FCC to slow T-Mobile down and choke off our ability to compete fairly for added radio spectrum," Sievert wrote in a blog post. As we wrote Monday, Verizon and AT&T have urged the Federal Communications Commission to impose limits on T-Mobile's ability to obtain more spectrum licenses. AT&T complained that T-Mobile's acquisition of Sprint allowed it to amass "an unprecedented concentration of spectrum."
Verizon has the most spectrum of any US carrier "by far" but "has the anti-competitive instincts and sheer audacity to complain that a much smaller T-Mobile has too much," Sievert wrote. "After holding massive spectrum advantages over T-Mobile and others for decades, Verizon and AT&T just can't stand the idea of anyone else being ahead of them or having a fair shot in an auction where they plan to use their financial might to do what they have always done -- dominate." Sievert also wrote that the 600MHz spectrum T-Mobile is leasing was previously controlled by AT&T. "AT&T had won at auction the spectrum that Columbia Capital is now leasing to T-Mobile and -- guess what -- AT&T decided it didn't want it and sold it to Columbia," Sievert wrote. "Verizon, the ringleader in opposing this lease, never bothered to even show up and bid for any 600MHz spectrum. In short, we have AT&T and Verizon seeking to block T-Mobile from using spectrum that AT&T decided to jettison, and Verizon had no interest in pursuing. Now both companies are seeking to block T-Mobile from putting this spectrum to use for the benefit of American consumers."
Verizon has the most spectrum of any US carrier "by far" but "has the anti-competitive instincts and sheer audacity to complain that a much smaller T-Mobile has too much," Sievert wrote. "After holding massive spectrum advantages over T-Mobile and others for decades, Verizon and AT&T just can't stand the idea of anyone else being ahead of them or having a fair shot in an auction where they plan to use their financial might to do what they have always done -- dominate." Sievert also wrote that the 600MHz spectrum T-Mobile is leasing was previously controlled by AT&T. "AT&T had won at auction the spectrum that Columbia Capital is now leasing to T-Mobile and -- guess what -- AT&T decided it didn't want it and sold it to Columbia," Sievert wrote. "Verizon, the ringleader in opposing this lease, never bothered to even show up and bid for any 600MHz spectrum. In short, we have AT&T and Verizon seeking to block T-Mobile from using spectrum that AT&T decided to jettison, and Verizon had no interest in pursuing. Now both companies are seeking to block T-Mobile from putting this spectrum to use for the benefit of American consumers."
This is all BS anyway. (Score:1, Funny)
Re:This is all BS anyway. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Radio signals do not adhere to governmental borders.
And they do not adhere to state borders. There is an explicit right in the constitution to regulate interstate commerce.
Re:This is all BS anyway. (Score:4, Insightful)
>"There is an explicit right in the constitution to regulate interstate commerce."
Which has been severely abused, way beyond what the Founders could ever imagine, such that now almost ANYTHING could be construed as "interstate commerce."
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Sorry I meant to upmod your post but I think I accidentally downmodded it. Still new at this.
By posting in the discussion of the article you canceled any moderation you'd done to any response within it. So though you haven't (and now can't) give him the upmod you intended, your downmod is now gone. So you're cool.
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Sorry I meant to upmod your post but I think I accidentally downmodded it. Still new at this.
By posting in the discussion of the article you canceled any moderation you'd done to any response within it. So though you haven't (and now can't) give him the upmod you intended, your downmod is now gone. So you're cool.
Oops: You posted as an Anonymous Coward, so the cancelation DIDN'T happen. Post another reply using your i.d. and you'll cancel the downmod.
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>"There is an explicit right in the constitution to regulate interstate commerce."
Which has been severely abused, way beyond what the Founders could ever imagine, such that now almost ANYTHING could be construed as "interstate commerce."
I always find this line or reasoning to be curious. Could the writers of the Constitution have imagined today's economy? If not, why would underlying motivations of the writers' extremely limited comprehension of a very different economy be given credence? It's ironic that an ostensibly "strict" interpretation of the Constitution could mean that the explicitly allow governmental right to regulate interstate commerce could be construed to ignore the explicit wording and instead appeal to the implicit thou
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>"if not, why would underlying motivations of the writers' extremely limited comprehension of a very different economy be given credence?"
Because their intent, in the context of their time, is very important to understanding the system they designed. A good example example is the word "papers" in the 4th amendment of the bill of rights- they could not imagine a world where our papers would be completely abstract and electronic and not necessarily on in our "effects" or on our "persons" or in our "houses
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>"if not, why would underlying motivations of the writers' extremely limited comprehension of a very different economy be given credence?"
Because their intent, in the context of their time, is very important to understanding the system they designed.
It's not clear that the writers expected the interpretation of the document to follow their implicit intentions. Such intentions are hard to tie down, there are multiple writers, and the writers explicitly created a path toward amendment. Furthermore, a court was created to interpret the document, strongly implying that interpretation of the document, even at the time of creation was not necessarily obvious.
As for the regulation of interstate commerce- the founders were setting up a type of government where rights were INHERENT and the government had to be CONSTRAINED. That lens and flavor needs to be applied to things like "interstate commerce" to make it relevant to today. Instead, since things are now so complicated and interconnected, the concept of "commerce" has been expanded and expanded to the point that such regulation violates the entire premise of the role of the Federal government as it was intended.
This is the crux of the argument, but this argument while reasonable depends completely on the spec
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Right. They don't stop at the Mexico-US or US-Canada border either. So what makes States unequipped but the Fed can?
As for the constitutional question I think it falls within interstate commerce but not strongly enough to argue the position. It has been a greased up slope.
Re:This is all BS anyway. (Score:4, Informative)
The federal government is allowed to, and does, make treaties and other agreements with foreign governments on how to handle resources like that. The Constitution prohibits states from making such agreements without federal approval. That's one reason the federal government is a better forum for managing spectrum.
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No they don't which is why radio spectrum is assigned in ways that it is not significantly strong enough to cross borders.
Location and land mass isn't an issue. Just look to the EU, they have no problem having spectrum allocated on a national level, and many countries there are significantly smaller than American states.
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Congratulations, you just invited the International Telecommunication Union 155 years after it was founded.
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No, but it *does* assign power to the Congress, which can create such things as the FCC to regulate it as they see fit.
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That's a derptastic analysis, did you hear that on AM radio? Or social media?
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Texas Air Force?
They have their own electrical grid and their own gold reserves. I would not be surprised if they had an Air Force too.
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Re: This is all BS anyway. (Score:1)
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If you think that relying on the states to handle the allocation of spectrum would make anything better, you are insane. There are many things that not only need to be dealt with on the national level, but IMHO should be done globally, and assignment and purpose of spectrum is one of those things where bigger is better from a regulatory perspective.
Use it or lose it (Score:3)
No, I didn't RTFA, but if they are buying up spectrum, and just 'sitting on it' to block competition, they deserve to lose it AND be locked out of it for 10 years. And their system, within a year or less, must be fully up, running, and operational and covering the geographical areas they were given access to (this is to stop legal trickery like building one tower forever in 'test mode')
I see this as both preventing abuse and forcing companies to build a working infrastructure as fast as they can, with motivation of not losing their spectrum to someone else.
Re: Use it or lose it (Score:2)
Oh yeah, trying to transfer 'ownership' of the spectrum to shell companies or whatever in order to try to get around this should cary very heavy penalties.
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You have a radically naive idea of how easy it is to build new towers. The US is not quite as bad as the UK, where people burn down towers because they're paranoid about 5G giving them coronavirus or cancer or whatever, but there are plenty of people who scream "not in my backyard!" or "not outside my apartment!" when a cell phone company (or other tower operator) want to build a new tower or hang antennas off a building.
And that doesn't even begin to consider the government permitting processes that need
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No, I didn't RTFA, but if they are buying up spectrum, and just 'sitting on it' to block competition
From TFA:
Sievert also wrote that the 600MHz spectrum T-Mobile is leasing was previously controlled by AT&T. "AT&T had won at auction the spectrum that Columbia Capital is now leasing to T-Mobile and -- guess what -- AT&T decided it didn't want it and sold it to Columbia," Sievert wrote. "Verizon, the ringleader in opposing this lease, never bothered to even show up and bid for any 600MHz spectrum. In short, we have AT&T and Verizon seeking to block T-Mobile from using spectrum that AT&T decided to jettison, and Verizon had no interest in pursuing. Now both companies are seeking to block T-Mobile from putting this spectrum to use for the benefit of American consumers."
If that's accurate, it's a pretty compelling argument against Verizon and AT&T.