The Beginning of the End of the First Round That Leads Up to the End

Confusing title aside, the first of what will likely be many meetings with AT&T, T-Mobile, other companies, and congress took place. Needless to say, it was just fucking hilarious. Most of the proceedings can be read on tmonews (AT&T Senate meeting).

Try as they might, AT&T and T-Mobile's CEOs couldn't sneak in an inch on the first round of senators. Some highlights I thought were fun were:

 * AT&T claims merger will help rural areas with better converage - Franken (comedian who used to be on SNL) launched this one out of the park by saying that AT&T advertises nationally, not locally so why should the deal be looked at as such. Totally valid but not a blockbuster point. Building rurally tower-wise is more of an issue with the land owners. Many rural people don't want towers in their backyard because they are visible like a sore thumb unlike urban areas where towers can be concealed. Plus, I've rarely had issues with coverage in rural areas. I didn't have high speed data, but I was able to make calls and texts which are really the primary functions of the phone. This merger is more about data than coverage, after all AT&T says they cover 97% of Americans.

* Dan Hesse, CEO of Sprint tells the committee that this merger will likely spell the end of Sprint through a Verizon merger...potentially - Very true. Both AT&T and Verizon would cover 82% of Americans if this deal passes. Sprint will have about only a third of the customers that the Big Two would. Eventually, Sprint would no longer be able to compete as the companies now have basically buyout other companies until there is more spectrum up for sale. Sprint would find themselves merging with Verizon since they use the same technology for their 3G network and have loads of spectrum to use. Of course, this could be a bit of fear-mongering, but is a very realistic future.

* AT&T continues to ignore T-Mobile's position as a competitor - AT&T is still saying that the smaller companies (with less than a tenth of AT&T's customer base) are competitors while almost refusing to admit that T-Mobile is one. Senator Kohl finally blurted out that they were competitors, asking them to just admit it. This is something I don't fully understand. I fail to see how AT&T thinks all of these regulators and politicians are simply going to believe that a company with 33 million customers isn't a competitor to AT&T. T-Mobile has maintained consistent build out of their network and generate excellent data speeds at affordable prices. My only guess is that AT&T has to downplay T-Mobile in order to convince everybody that T-Mobile needs them. Truthfully, they don't. HSPA+ and HSPA Evolved have the capabilities to reach 680 Mbps. Not as fast as LTE, but still very good with minimal impact on battery life. Just because T-Mobile may not have the capital to upgrade to LTE doesn't mean they are out of the game.

* The deal is worth a total of six billion dollars if it fails - This is the three billion dollars in money, two billion in spectrum, and one billion in roaming charges that T-Mobile gets if the deal fails. Certainly I would like to believe that T-Mobile is just playing AT&T, but the truth is more than likely this is the limit in how much AT&T will push in bribes, lobbying, and advertising to make this deal look good to politicians and officials. Technically the actual value of T-Mobile is only about half as much as AT&T is paying. It shows how desperate AT&T is for TMo's spectrum. I doubt AT&T even cares about the customers so much as it is in keeping up with Verizon that already has their 4G network building out rapidly. Even Clearwire, the company that Sprint rents spectrum from, has gone on to say that switching to LTE is nothing more than having the proper phone and a software upgrade for their towers. AT&T runs the risk of falling behind and losing customers with it.

There are plenty more of interesting tidbits, but these are what I find most interesting. As more of these bits of information come out, I realize how badly AT&T wants T-Mobile's spectrum. The reality is that AT&T's spectrum issues are not quantity, but quality. They own spectrum at tons of frequencies, but not many that are close to each other. This results in dropped calls, data loss, etc. While T-Mobile on the other hand, pooled their spectrum close together (mostly in the 1700 MHz band range for 3G/4G) which is why their network suffers a bit in buildings but has far fewer dropped calls and issues.

The thing is, AT&T wants to use the 1700 MHz spectrum from T-Mobile to build their LTE network. While it's common knowledge now that LTE is the future of cellular technology, why waste time reconfiguring an entire network when they could just get pentaband phones and build on top of T-Mobile's existing network? It would be cheaper, faster to do, and wouldn't alienate the T-Mobile customers that swing over after the merger from having their smartphones rendered useless. AT&T sure isn't thinking this through. I only hope the deal gets rejected.

This 4G nonsense is getting old....

Typically, I don't pay much attention to advertising. I've already generally made up my mind on what I'm going to purchase before I ever see a commercial about it. For me, anything over $50 is extensively researched to see whether or not it is worthy of purchase. Excessive? Probably, but the economy is in the toilet here and my wallet is empty. So any high dollar item better be worth it. In all my years I've only had a few buyer's remorse from my purchases.

That little diversion aside, this 4G nonsense is getting out of hand. The constant advertising of it feels like the carriers are attempting to beat me over the head with it. The worst part of it all is that it's complete and utter bullshit.

Now, I'm not going to go down the route of whether or not existing technologies like WiMax, HSPA+, and others are 4G. The reason why I'm not going to is because they are. The ITU re-established the guidelines for 4G after certain advancements have been made in tech like HSPA+ which can now exceed 100 Mbps. These techno nerds need to get a life constantly arguing that HSPA+ isn't a 4G tech when the ITU has already declared it so. I can't imagine the level of self-entitlement these people have to believe that they are a greater authority than the ITU.

No, my issue with this nonsense is that the carriers are shoving this crap down our throats like it means something. First, our hardware isn't truly capable of the official definition of 4G which states that the data must maintain 100 Mbps consistently. Right now the best we have (or going to have) is the Samsung Galaxy S 4G at 21 Mbps. Generally, a lot of the "4G" phones out now can only go to 14.4 Mbps.

Secondly, and most importantly, network coverage of 4G isn't really widespread right now. If you live in a 4G city like me then great. Those that don't will never benefit from this technology. The max we have in speed is only 21 Mbps with T-Mobile predicting 42 by the end of this year. Verizon's LTE seems to hover around 30 Mbps. Sprint's WiMax around 10-15 Mbps max. So the technology isn't really ready for prime time right now. You're better off waiting for about three years or so when these technologies start maturing.

Finally, what good is having blazing fast speeds when for one, cell phone browsers typically use data compression needing only a fraction of a desktop browser and screen resolutions aren't to the point that streaming HD video is relevant. Then, you have these draconian data caps that the carriers enforce. What's the point of being able to download at 100 Mbps if I can only reach 2-5 GB of data.

While it seems that the carriers really want to push the whole wireless internet thing with laptops, cell phones are their major forte. Data caps need to be eliminated before 4G matures otherwise its like have a supercar that can only go 30 mph.

Also, Sprint's recent change of adding $10 to all smartphone data plans is suspect if you ask me. Sprint is renting airwaves from Clearwire and this just seems like a stab at paying that bill rather than any arbitrary reason they feed the public.

Long story short, 4G isn't ready for public consumption. The hardware isn't there yet, the signal speed and coverage isn't there, and heavy handed caps on data only enforce the notion that 4G is pointless at this time. Until these things change, don't bother with 4G. You're only spending more money on a service and hardware that will just be outdated. Getting locked into a contract for 2 years with a phone that can only go a fraction of the optimum speed is a joke as well. Just stick with what you have and avoid companies that want to gouge you extra for their "4G".