mobile broadband

T-Mobile, Sprint merger review widens in California

8 October 2018 by Steve Blum
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It seems someone jumped the gun at the California Public Utilities Commission, and prematurely sent out a ruling defining the scope of California’s regulatory review of T-Mobile’s proposed purchase of Sprint. On Thursday, the commissioner in charge of the inquiry, Clifford Rechtschaffen, issued an amended version of the “scoping memo” he released the week before, saying the first one “was mailed in error”.

There are several wordsmithing changes in the updated version, and a few that are more substantive.… More

California’s regulatory review of T-Mobile-Sprint deal has light years left to run

29 September 2018 by Steve Blum
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The proposed purchase of Sprint by T-Mobile will get a thorough workover by the California Public Utilities Commission, and a final decision on whether or not to allow it won’t come until next summer. The commissioner running the review, Clifford Rechtschaffen, laid out the issues that he’ll investigate in a ruling on Friday.

Rechtschaffen had to decide how wide ranging his inquiry will be. Sprint and T-Mobile wanted it to be very narrow, and focus on two particular issues: could a relatively small Sprint subsidiary that does some wireline business in California be sold to T-Mobile, and could T-Mobile take over Sprint’s California mobile carrier registration.… More

Self driving cars will be ready, but U.S. 5G networks won’t

26 September 2018 by Steve Blum
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Manufacturers might have self-driving cars ready to roll in the next five to seven years, but how far they’ll roll will, in large part, be determined by 5G mobile network deployments. To support fully autonomous driving, where no human driver is needed and passengers can just kick back and ignore the road, fast broadband connections will be necessary.

Nobody knows yet how fast, but minimum service levels will depend on three speed metrics: download throughput, upload throughput and latency.… More

5G reality still lags 5G hype in U.S.

16 September 2018 by Steve Blum
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Lots of 5G talk, not so much 5G action at the Mobile World Congress Americas conference in Los Angeles this week. No phones, no 5G-specific services, no schedules for 5G mobile deployments, Verizon’s fixed wireless plans and AT&T’s equally limited real soon now announcements notwithstanding.

Although it has a hemispheric mission, this year’s show was nearly all about U.S. carriers, content and services. The question on the minds of equipment and technology vendors – mostly from asian and european companies – was what will U.S.… More

Mobile industry moves ahead, but mobile trade show backslides

15 September 2018 by Steve Blum
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Ten years ago this week, I went to what was then the CTIA MobileCon show in San Francisco for the first time, and began this blog. My first post was about an app that turned a smart phone into a mobile hotspot – an unremarkable standard feature now, but back then it was controversial.

Carriers – particularly AT&T, which had an early lock on the iPhone market – were dead set against it. Networks were a mix of 2G and 3G technology, and capacity was severely constrained, compared to today’s 4G infrastructure.… More

5g, of a sort, coming to “parts of” two Californian cities in October

13 September 2018 by Steve Blum
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Verizon grabbed what media spotlight was shining yesterday at the opening of the second Mobile World Congress Americas show in Los Angeles. Its announcement that it would be first to market with 5G fixed wireless service wasn’t a surprise – it’s been talking about it for months – but putting a price tag and a launch date on it makes it much more real. Whether it’s really a big deal or not is a matter of how you look at it.… More

T-Mobile’s takeover of Sprint challenged in California

20 August 2018 by Steve Blum
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T-Mobile’s plan to buy its smaller competitor, Sprint, faces formal opposition in California. The California Public Utilities Commission’s office of ratepayer advocates and a pair of consumer advocacy groups filed formal protests to the merger, claiming, among other things, that it runs afoul of anti-trust principles and would result in a significantly less competitive mobile telecoms market.

The deal has to be approved by the CPUC, but the scope of that review is limited. So far.… More

T-Mobile’s purchase of Sprint has to clear a Californian hurdle

27 July 2018 by Steve Blum
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T-Mobile, the third largest U.S. mobile carrier, needs the California Public Utilities Commission’s blessing to buy Sprint, the fourth largest. Sorta.

The Federal Communications Commission has jurisdiction over mobile carriers and is doing the heavy lifting in the regulatory review of the transaction. But Sprint has a subsidiary – Sprint Communications Company, or “Sprint Wireline” as it’s referred to – that sells services to business customers in California. As a result, the company has a certificate of public convenience and necessity (CPCN) granted by the CPUC, and needs its approval to transfer ownership to T-Mobile.… More

U.S. senate looks at mobile broadband service standard for rural areas

27 May 2018 by Steve Blum
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The Federal Communications Commission will set a national mobile broadband speed standard by running tests in the 20 largest metro areas in the U.S., if a bill that’s heading toward a full vote by the U.S. senate makes it into law. The goal is to establish a benchmark for judging whether or not there’s adequate mobile broadband service in rural communities.

Although the language is vague, the bill’s intent appears to be to use that new standard to decide where federal broadband subsidies will go.… More

T-Mobile, Sprint combo is anti-competitive, but that’s the feds’ call

1 May 2018 by Steve Blum
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The $26.5 billion dollar proposed purchase of Sprint by T-Mobile can’t go forward unless it’s given a pass by anti-trust watchdogs. As a practical matter, that means the federal justice department’s anti-trust unit sits on its hands and doesn’t challenge it in court, and the Federal Communications Commission signs off on the license transfers involved.

In theory, the California attorney general could jump in. In practice, that’s unlikely. So let’s set it aside for now. Unless there’s some obscure wireline telephone asset involved – anything is possible, but I don’t think so – the California Public Utilities Commission isn’t in the game either.… More