The AT&T steamroller and you!

This I suppose is more of an in-depth follow up from a brief rant I did about this on my blog, The Fn Icon.  Thanks to Amanda for giving me a chance to complain a little more.

Let me start by saying this....

I'm all for competition in any given market.  Anytime you have competition, fair competition that is, it benefits the consumer.  We get innovation, we get better pricing, and we're all winners.  OK that might be a bit of a stretch, but hey, I like to think positive.

The cellular market is no different than any other.  You keep a good amount of companies in the mix, they battle some back and forth on what they're willing to give up for subscribers (subs), and we pick and choose what we need most and jump on it.  Through time numerous mergers and buyouts have occurred for the sake of growth, or sometimes even survival.  Small market carriers group up into one to increase their overall base, large carriers eat up the small guys to increase their coverage maps.  It's all economics.

The most important thing is you must maintain balance in the market.  No one really gets hurt if Verizon picks up Local John's Wireless World.  More than likely, our friend John has a nice batch of towers already set up in some rural area that Verizon can't see as financially worth while to expand into on their own.  They buy out John, John makes a ton of cash to swim in on his bed, and Verizon makes that red coverage map a little bigger with less expense.  

Customers are also happy as their coverage options just jumped by leaps and bounds.  Previously, they may not have had the luxury of nation wide coverage as their small carrier couldn't foot the bill on all the roaming agreements, and Verizon had no towers out there so they were stuck.  Now they walk in the Verizon store and get a huge stash of phones to pick and choose from.  Again, this is a win for the consumer.

Most of these are just sideways moves for the most part.  There's no real innovation that comes out of it, just a jump in coverage and selection.  No one is going to jump out of their seat in excitement.  Take the Sprint Nextel merger.  To this day it still doesn't make sense as the two wireless networks aren't compatible, but Sprint got a nice jump in the business market with the direct connect service businesses love so much.  Again, all they did was increase market share and revenue.

Then you have those mergers that are purely for innovation.  Best example on current scenarios is the Sprint merger with Clear not long ago to help boost the 4G inception.  Sprint had nothing invested in 4G really, and Clear had a nice market they were building but needed financial backing.  Sprint jumped on the boat, 4G took off, and now it's being rolled out in various forms by all the major carriers.  Carriers are happy because they get more revenue, and customers are happy with all the cool new phones and blazing speeds for porn.

Now we have the proposition of a juggernaut.  AT&T is looking to purchase T-Mobile for $39 billion in cash and stock.  Now I understand T-Mobile is only #4 among the major carriers, but the combined sub numbers are pretty astounding.

Currently, Verizon has about 101 million subscribers, while AT&T has 96 million, Sprint Nextel 48 million, and T-Mobile 36 million. All of the other players have less than 10 percent of market share combined. 

Do the math.....that's about 132 million subs combined.

"Wireless competition will continue to flourish," AT&T said, arguing that the "transaction is in the public interest."

Really now?  I remember the last time they said that when they bought Cingular.  Their major claim was "more bars in more places".  Funny, my signal never went up any.  All I got out of that deal is never knowing the actual name of my cell phone carrier because it kept changing back and forth, and causing me hassle having to migrate from one type of account to another.  Thanks guys.

AT&T has also neglected to come out and say what few perks that T-Mo customers have now will carry over.  At the moment their prices are lower.....don't count on that to keep up.  AT&T I think at times is happy being the most expensive carrier.  Unlimited data?  Yeah, not so much.  AT&T is already on a tiered data system, and buying T-Mo is nothing more than an easy way to get into the 4G market they couldn't sink any real cash into.  They've taken enough of a beating over their over clocked 3G network being billed as 4G.  Now they can gut out T-Mo for their own gain to play catch up with Verizon and Sprint.

So who wins in this?  No one honestly.  When you have a monopoly like this happen, the consumer suffers.  All the other carriers have to eat each other up into one which creates less parity, or just chip away on the bottom end of the sub base for what they can get and try to wait out the storm.  

Once complete, they can set their own prices and gouge them however they choose.  They own the market, so what can you do about it?  All those new super sweet phones coming out you want so bad? Forget it....exclusive deals stick to the carrier who can shell out the most in subsidies.  With the revenue they would bring in, they can lock almost any phone they want.

Now, who are the biggest losers besides consumers?

Sprint:  They're #3 in the big boy market.  They only gain they'll have is T-Mobile's low end customers which are rarely profitable.  Now they'll be stuck between 2 carriers with a large advantage in subs, and pre-paid carriers that chew their ankles daily.

Small market carriers:  Take your pick....Metro PCS, Cricket, US Cellular, etc.  They'll never compete with the big boys.  They'll have to join together or die out.  For the most part, their coverage maps are based on deals to use space from the big boys.  Wait till their incurred rates get so drastic they're no longer an affordable option and fizzle out.

Google: Yeah, I said it.  AT&T's CEO absolutely hates Google.  This is common knowledge.  The few Google phones that made it to an AT&T shelf were so scaled down they're worthless.  T-Mobile is the only carrier with a Google developer-model GSM phone.  Don't expect that to continue.

T-Mobile Employees:  One thing is a constant when companies merge....employees get fired.  It's a normal cost cutting expense when it happens, and daddy isn't going to kick his own kids out on the street.

Here's the plus side to this whole scenario.  It's going to be about a year before anything is final.  During this time, there's going to be investigations by the FCC, SEC, FTC, Homeland Security, Congress, and every other all letter group that gets paid too much that you can think of.  FCC insiders have already claimed there's no way they'll give the OK to this.

Let's certainly hope so......

Nick

twitter.com/NickTheFnIcon

Article I originally posted on The Tech Support Cubicle!

Sprint sticks to unlimited data, Dan Hesse just won't get off TV

Let me start by saying this.  I don't like Dan Hesse on TV commercials.  In fact, I normally race to change the channel when Sprint commercials would come on just because of him.  This time though, I find myself applauding him and Sprint for the decision to keep unlimited data options for smartphone users.

From the new commercial:

“The other day, I looked up the word unlimited in the dictionary. Nowhere in the definition did I see words like metering, overage, or throttling, which is code for slowing you down. Only Sprint gives you true unlimited calling, texting, surfing, TV and navigation on all phones.”

Don't take this as a direct fanboi post for Sprint.  This is simply support for going against AT&T and Verizon in their decision to move to a tiered data system.  Sure, 2GB sounds like a lot of data.  Normally, it would be.  


Smartphones however have evolved quite a bit over the years with their hardware capabilities and features, and continue to push forward.  This in turn uses more data up and down on the network.  Because of this, the standards of how providers operate have to change to accommodate.  Upgrades have to be done to cover the usage, which obviously requires more cash.  Thus far, the two most efficient options to cover this have been tiered data where you pay overages over the cap to cover your use, or pay a little more to maintain unlimited data.


This unfortunately has become a necessity to pick the lesser of the two evils.  In my personal experience, the more experienced smart phone users have come to understand the reasoning, and have even embraced the extra $10 charge a month to not have to baby sit their usage.  Most of the resistance has come from that group of users that have smartphones or are just buying them, and aren't familiar with what they're capable of.  I suppose if you're jumping ship from that old LG flip phone, you might not really know what you're getting into. 


In the case of Sprint, the extra charge doesn't apply to feature phones which are basically any non-smartphone.  As for AT&T and Verizon on the tiered system, I'm not completely sure at this point.  I would certainly hope this isn't the case.


Bottom line is this.  Technology advances, sometimes faster than we like.  Users want to do more, phones are made to do more, so the providers have to ensure the extra revenue is in place to go into the network so it can do more.  You can either go with it, or re-activate that old Motorola Razr you used to love so much.  

BBM to become cross platform?

This is being reported by BGR, and although not 100% confirmed is certainly interesting...

I don't normally give much time to the rumor mill stuff, but this caught my attention.  According to sources, RIm may launch their popular BBM service to Android and iPhone OS.  Being a Blackberry user, the possibilities of this definitely have me happy.  From what has gone out so far, it seems the realistic approach is the platforms will get a basic version of the BBM app.  This would likely include standard chat, profiles, group chats, and status updates.  Still not real sure on the more advanced stuff like file and picture transfers, video, and location sharing. It's possible that if these are locked out, may be available on some type of a paid model.

I never thought I would see something like this happen as BBM is one of the pride and joy items RIM has, but it does make sense.  There's competition on the market from third party apps like Kik, Ping Chat, WhatsApp, GTalk, and others trying to nudge into the IM market.  I've personally tested most of these, and wasn't real fond of the majority of them in comparison.  The UI's on most weren't very appealing or clean, they lacked features, and in some cases just didn't work right at all.  I'll admit RIM has an advantage on BBM considering they've been running it for a while now so they've polished it up.  Fact is, it works...and it works very well.  People who use BBM love it.  People who doesn't use BBM have and love it, but they won't admit it.

I hope this is a rumor that comes true.  I would like there to finally be one dominant IM app that works across the board, and isn't a disappointment.  It would eliminate a lot of hassle that most smartphone users experience in communicating.  I personally use BBM, GTalk, and texting.  Wrap this up into one package, and I'll be a happy #geek.

Sucks to own a sidekick

Well, if you're a Sidekick owner (they exist?) on T-Mobile, I'm sure you've received your notice already of impending doom.  As of May 31st, Microsoft's Danger Services which powers the Sidekick, will be shut down. This effectively means the phone will basically brick, as those cloud services are needed for the phone to operate.  You Sidekick owners will remember last September when the services had a major outage and users lost their contact, pics, bookmarks, etc.  To my knowledge, at least almost everyone finally got their data recovered.

"After May 31, 2011, the Danger Service (a subsidiary of Microsoft) used by T-Mobile Sidekick customers for data services will no longer be available on Sidekick devices.

T-Mobile will provide offers for our Sidekick customers before May 31, 2011, to help make an easy transition from their existing Sidekick device to a new device. We will have more information to share about these offers with our customers in the weeks ahead.

To ensure the best possible transition for our loyal Sidekick customers, an enhanced Web tool is available on myT-Mobile.com to easily export their personal data, including contacts, photos, calendar, notes, to-do lists, and bookmarks, from the Danger service to a new device, computer, or a designated e-mail account.  An application is also available in the Sidekick Catalog to make it easy to export personal data to the Sidekick’s memory card.  Many T-Mobile stores can transfer data from that card to a new T-Mobile device if the customer brings in the memory card and Sidekick."

So what do the lonely owners get in exchange you ask?  Well, two options.  One, you can get out of the service with no ETF between March 31st to May 31st.  Or, you can get 50% off select Samsung devices if you decide to stick around with a new 2 year agreement (how considerate).

I tried to take a look at their Sidekick transition page here but it doesn't look to be live, as it goes to a standard login page.  Also, nothing on their main page.  Looks like we'll have to wait until March 31st to see the options.  Let's hope the 50% off isn't a ripoff as I assume that's off regular retail price.  Normally the full upgrade discount is more than 50%.  If it's not full upgrade price, a 1 year agreement would be a bit more fair to require as users are being forced out of their phones they signed an agreement to get.  Full discount would be fair to ask a 2 year agreement on.

If you're nice, you might even manage to talk your friendly T-Mobile rep into giving you a discount on a nice new Blackberry device!  Hint hint, nudge nudge.