“The rules are so fluid, you can drink out of them right now,” said Stephenson.Chanel iPhone 4 Case|Chanel iPhone 4S Case|Gucci iPhone 4 Case|Gucci iPhone 4S Case
AT&T’s fourth-quarter loss of $6.7 billion reported earlier today was largely due to the failed merger’s fee, and it likely fumed Stephenson’s vinegary comments. The CEO accused the FCC of shifting standards and said the T-Mobile deal used one set of metrics, while AT&T’s successful acquisition of Qualcomm’s spectrum followed another set. He further implied that AT&T’s biggest problem is not spectrum acquisition, but rather the delicacies of pursuing a deal.Burberry iPhone 4 Case|Burberry iPhone 4S Case
“Our biggest problem is identifying what the rules are,” Stephenson explained. “It’s figuring out how much we’re allowed to buy.”
Stephenson called upon Congress to pass legislation that would sanction how the FCC can approach its next auction, which would inadvertently deprive the regulatory body’s ability to allot conditions on potential bidders and spectrum usage. It is worth noting that the House of Representatives drafted a similar bill, but the FCC is adamantly opposing it.
Moreover, the CEO said AT&T’s spectrum crunch would force AT&T to increase prices and take further actions against its highest data users to manage connection speeds.Today’s comments come in lieu of AT&T announcing it sold 9.4 million smart phones including 7.6 million iPhones in the fourth quarter of 2011. Meanwhile, AT&T is continuing to mewl over its spectrum scarcity that has heightened over several years with the iPhone and other smartphones upping the ante and causing an explosion of excess data flowing through the carriers’ pipes.
“The No. 1 issue for us, and the industry I believe, continues to be spectrum. This industry continues to see just explosive mobile broadband growth. It provides one of the few bright spots in the U.S. economy, but I think we all understand that this growth cannot continue without more spectrum being cleared and brought to market,” Stephenson contended.
Stephenson further explained:
“Despite all the speeches from the FCC, we are still all waiting. The last significant spectrum auction was nearly five years ago now. This FCC has made it abundantly clear that they will not allow significant M&A to help bridge these delays in clearing up new spectrum. So, in absence of options, our company and others have taken the logical step to make smaller transactions to acquire the spectrum we need to meet demand.
First, while our overall spectrum position is competitive, we’ve led the way in mobile data. Therefore our utilization rates are running very hot and demand continues to accelerate. So, we will continue to do a number of things. In a capacity-constrained environment we will manage usage-based data plans, increased pricing and managing the speeds of the highest volume users. These are all logical and necessary steps to manage utilization. LTE deployment is also going to play a roll. We ended 2011 with 74 million LTE POPS covered and will accelerate that pace considerably in 2012, setting us up to complete deployment to 80% of the U.S. population in 2013. LTE does give us a 30%-40% lift in network efficiency, but at current growth rates that equates to only a year’s growth in traffic. So, LTE is important but it is not the silver bullet in terms of capacity planning. What that means is that to meet customer demand we need to continue our spectrum push.”
In line with Stephenson’s warnings, AT&T announced last week it is raising data-plan prices for smartphone and tablet users by $5 a month while increasing the usage ration on each package. The reassessed plans start at $20 for 300- megabytes, $30 for 3-gigabytes and $50 for 5-gigabytes. The previous plans offered 200-megabytes for $15, 2-gigabytes for $25 and 4-gigabytes for $45 a month.
AT&T’s monopoly whims are a hope of the past, and its future is full of spectrum-need and threats against the FCC that will likely result in iPhone users punished with data restrictions and higher prices. AT&T’s plans are also lackluster for rural broadband.
“To be perfectly candid, we don’t have a mobile broadband solution for rural America right now,” Stephenson said.
The company’s CEO said AT&T would be able to reach near 99 percent of the country with broadband if the T-Mobile USA merger succeeded. However, with the acquisition deal in the grave, AT&T does not have a current strategy aside from strengthening its LTE network across the country.
