Granted this position probably helps them against the bigger competitors, that is why competition is good.
Already we are seeing network providers start to jockey for competitive positions just at the hint of change. Imagine the competition when this actually happens.
This position stands in stark contrast to what other carriers, including Verizon and AT&T, have espoused. In particular, the carriers have warned that Title II would provide a major disincentive to invest in upgrades to their internet offerings.
They are arguing that our current market setup is encouraging investment in upgrades? Where are they? The current system hasn't spawned investment and new upgrades, but competition will surely do this. Here in Phoenix (Tempe/Scottsdale), the moment Google announced Phoenix would be a possible Fiber market, Cox Gigablast initiative was launched, before that crickets.
The problem is, in most cities, it's impossible to take advantage of Sprint's "unlimited data plans" because their data speeds are abysmal. I would love to go back to sprint eventually, but for now I'm happy with T-mobile in Denver/Chicago.
Here on the outskirts of Atlanta, Sprint and T-Mobile have more or less equal coverage, with one picking up where the other doesn't most of the time. The issue with T-Mobile is that it's more difficult to get a signal indoors, depending on the building material.
For example, at my job we're in a large warehouse with metal walls and framing, lots of pipes, and suspended ceilings. That makes the building difficult but not impossible for radio waves to penetrate. All four major carriers saturate the area; stepping outside you get full service on all of them. But of the four, only T-Mobile has zero coverage once you step inside the building. The rest are usable to varying degrees, with AT&T and Verizon the two best, and Sprint is decent inside.
And just so this isn't purely anecdotal, T-Mobile has acknowledged issues with using their service indoors:
> On the other hand, have you looked at getting a femto cell for your warehouse (or using a service like Google Voice to get wifi calling)?
I'm the only employee using a T-Mobile compatible phone so it wouldn't be worth doing. We've put WLAN access points throughout the warehouse (one of my first projects when I went full time there) so it's saturated with Wi-Fi. I can't use Google Voice or Hangouts for receiving calls, since I mainly use a Windows phone, but I do have that set up on my Nexus and it works well there.
Basically, 99% of what I use my cellphone for at work is covered by Wi-Fi, and if anyone needs to reach me they can just call the company.
Phones have a clear indication of whether they are connected to 4G or not. What basis do you have to say that warfangle's signal strength is good in the buildings they spend the most time in?
Nose's point is that signal strength does not necessarily imply good Internet connectivity. Kinda like you can have great WiFi signal because you're sitting next to the router but unless the router is connected to a good ISP its still going to suck. Ie you can have 4G connectivity and it can still crawl if the backhaul sucks.
Bandwidth itself is impossible to value. The infrastructure providing the bandwidth is not free, no, but the idea of data caps to provide some sort of artificial value it fairly laughable, not to mention irrational. If they want to make this argument, charge me WHAT IT IS ACTUALLY VALUED (i.e. charge me for what I use based on a variable rate derived from maintenance costs), not some made up cap that likely has to do with what they'll estimate people might be willing to put up with.
No it's not. The amount of bandwidth available on a wireless network is a function of the amount of spectrum ($$), the sophistication of the cell equipment ($$), and the density of the cell sites ($$$).
Sprint's network is slow because it spends a fraction of what AT&T and Verizon do,[1] while trying to get the same nationwide footprint. It's a simple math problem.
As for prices--every company charges what they estimate people might be willing to put up with.
[1] Last year, $6 billion versus $17-20 billion. These are combined CapEx, but most of it goes into wireless.
You are describing the costs of total network capacity. The poster above is describing marginal costs of bandwidth.
If there is infrastructure in place that is going underutilized and I want to download a megabyte of data, the marginal cost of that data transfer is incredibly negligible. But that infrastructure exists to meet the conditions of peak utilization, when at capacity, and that is what is expensive.
If anything, Sprint should give flat rate mobile data and have fixed funding campaigns to increase capacity for each residential block around a tower. If the speeds are too slow end users would then pay to upgrade the infrastructure themselves, or more specifically heavy and business users would subsidize network upgrades.
It's not artificial if the network is overloaded by users. It's not like fiber where an optical running from user end point to the ISP can be fully saturated all the time without affecting other users.
Yes, but that's an entirely different problem. It's not like imposing fees after a certain point of use will help that problem at all, it would make more sense to a) absorb it and raise the monthly subscription when necessary, b) charge per byte, c) charge based on your % of network, or charge maintenance or service fees and don't charge for bandwidth at all. The current, tiered model only makes sense to use "overloading the network" as an excuse to abuse monopolies and overcharge customers.
The US mobile network system has plenty of competition presently. In fact, it's competitive enough that it has evolved faster faster and better than most European mobile networks. It took nearly all of Europe a very long time to get 4G adoption above even 50% of the population.
Maybe in some places, but the competition in the US is a joke. You either go with a decent plan but terrible service (Sprint), or you go with good service with virtually no control over your use (Verizon/AT&T).
Are you for real? It's easy. Look at prices and services from all major carriers in the US over the past 5 years. the prices are going down and you're getting more for less. It's a tough back and forth and every month or two they try to one up each other. So that's how prices are going down.
What you got in a different market doesn't matter. It's inarguable that prices are going down and it's inarguable that there is no monopoly. There isn't even a duopoly. What is arguable is that you should perhaps get more for what you pay. But the velocity is still down, even if it's not yet as low as it should be.
Original plans were unlimited 3g data. All t-mobile high speed data plans automatically included unlimited low speed data if you go over. They also have an unlimited 4g lte plan that's only $30 more than the basic 1gb plan. And they currently have a special offers to for 2 lines w/ unlimited data.
I had the original unlimited 3g data plan with AT&T. That also required paying $20 a month to get unlimited texts. I think I paid $10 a month for 250 monthly texts because that's all I needed. That was the height of mobile pricing bullshit in my eyes.
In South-East Asia, you often get a prepaid contract including 5 GB for between $5 and $20. This is 10x cheaper. Sure, salaries are lower, but the equipment is the same.
If they charged you on usage percent times maintenance cost plus future upgrade plans, they wouldn't make nearly enough for buying golden yachts. You'd be paying like 20$/month for 10Mbit unlimited data.
I have no fight in the game but I've been a Sprint customer for a long time and have never had any problems with service or speed. I've lived in 2 major cities and EBF fly over country and travel frequently.
For the month of December I used over 10GB of data and 8GB of that was Youtube, Netflix and streaming music.
That is true, but that doesn't make up for the sheer glacial speed that Sprint is moving at to improve their network. They have the most spectrum of all of the carriers but do not use it properly. Quarterly announcements of the Spark network upgrades not meeting their own expectations seems to have become common. You may have LTE but it's not very useful if you can barely get 1Mb/s.
T-Mobile on the other hand is having greater success with their CEO and all of the "uncarrier" tactics they are implementing. T-Mobile is now focusing on upgrading the last of their own cell sites to LTE to expand footprint in the rural parts of the country but they still have a ways to go. And that's not to say T-Mobile's existing LTE network isn't great, it's fantastic (if you can actually get it).
AT&T is out of new deployable spectrum so their LTE network is slowing down in congested areas. They are deploying tens of thousands of small cell sites to make their network more dense to help with this problem. So say a tower has 100 people sharing 20mhz (10x10) of LTE bandwidth at the same time. If there are now three small cell sites placed away from that tower, each additional site has 20mhz of spectrum to use. So there would then be ~25 on that main tower, and ~25 on each additional small cell site.
Verizon's original 700mhz LTE network is very congested in a lot of areas, but instead of deploying as many small sites as AT&T, they instead bought that very large chunk of AWS spectrum from cable companies and have it deployed to the majority of their cell sites. In major cities this is a full 40mhz chunk of spectrum (20x20) which theoretically can net you up to 150Mb/s if you have the right device that can use band 4. They also have started re-farming a small portion of their PCS spectrum (10mhz total) in some testing areas (san francisco especially). They will need to densify their network eventually but they sure have done a great job at buying an ample amount of time.
I personally feel Sprint's current slump all comes down to the Clearwire/WiMax decision. Both Sprint and Verizon were in the same situation when it came to deploy their choices of 4G technologies. They both operated CDMA/EVDO 3G networks which with the revision they were using maxed out around 3.1Mb/s. AT&T was in the middle of deploying their HSPA/HSPA+, what they now call "4G" (not to be confused with LTE). Verizon and Sprint did not have the option of this transition period of significantly higher speeds that was not LTE or WiMax. Surprisingly Verizon got this right. They obtained a nationwide chunk of 700mhz block c (band 13) spectrum for their initial LTE network they started deploying in early 2011. This is the same spectrum that has the open access rules attached to it that made them back down on throttling on their LTE network. The sheer speed at which they deployed this LTE spectrum was just ridiculously fast. Right now they have 99% of their entire 3G footprint covered with that layer of LTE while AT&T's national map is still nowhere close to Verizon in terms of overall LTE deployment covering their entire legacy networks.
Meanwhile Sprint went ahead with WiMax and we all know how that unfolded. I hope they can recover as 4 national carriers is always going to be better than 3 competition wise, but I just don't see it happening for potentially years from now.
In terms of network, Verizon got it 100% right the entire time. AT&T struggled in ~2009 with the iPhone and recovered but is feeling the effects of congestion but they are countering with tons of small cell sites. Verizon has congestion on the band 13 LTE deployment, but band 4 is helping with that. T-Mobile's LTE deployments are great, but they are still focusing on expanding into more rural areas. Sprint is working on their Spark network, and where you can get it, it's good, but they just are moving so damn slow I don't know if it will be fast enough in the long run.
Maybe you guys can answer this. With mainland Europe using GSM across the board, do they have these frequency allocation problems across providers? It seems to me like it would be in everyone's interest to have a large shared pool of frequency allocations and share the burden of maintaining a network using them. Then you significantly more bandwidth capability per tower.
I haven't enjoyed reading a comment on HN this much in a very long time. Thank you for this very informative post!
(I realize this comment doesn't add value, but what's the point of a commenting system that doesn't let one echoes gratitude with more than just an upvote?)
It's worth noting that Sprint is also Virgin Mobile US and Boost Mobile ... which has a fairly large subscriber base and is very oversold. T-Mobile also has a few MVNOs that use their network (I use Simple Mobile)... It seems that AT&T has cut support for most MVNOs using their network, and Verizon afaik hasn't ever had any.
It's a bit of a race to the bottom in one way, but I never saw the point in paying more for AT&T or Verizon. At home I get very good coverage... the only time I'd rather have Verizon is on my annual road trip, and that's only a week or two. If you're in the northern us (Wyoming, Montana, Dakotas etc), Verizon is pretty much your only option.
AT&T isn't in as nice a spectrum position as Verizon, but the situation isn't what you've portrayed. AT&T has AWS spectrum in most markets, but it isn't a 40MHz chunk. That's still additional capacity. AT&T is also re-farming spectrum previously used for 2G/3G services for LTE. Likewise, the 150Mbps theoretical speed won't happen in real-world conditions (just as 10x10 LTE doesn't give you 75Mbps speeds). It will offer better speeds, but quoting theoretical speeds in wireless is somewhat useless.
Verizon is in a wonderful spectrum position. The 40MHz chunks that Verizon has in many markets is great. AT&T is going to have to do carrier aggregation and we'll see how well carrier aggregation works vs. larger contiguous channels. But overall Verizon doesn't have too much more spectrum than AT&T. If AT&T can pull off carrier aggregation well, there should be decent competition. Even before AT&T started diving into small cell sites, the Cingular/ATTWS merger had left the company with more cell sites than Verizon.
Verizon was really smart when it came to LTE. They knew that they could grab customers if they bought up the spectrum needed for LTE. Spectrum is a limited good and if they had the most/best, it would give them a durable advantage that's hard to compete against. They bought the open-access 700MHz spectrum whose open-access restrictions seem to have been watered down and while AT&T was fighting to buy T-Mobile (which wouldn't be approved because it would concentrate too many customers together and limit competition), Verizon bought the AWS spectrum from the cable companies which gave them a very powerful position to deploy LTE.
Verizon did very well with their LTE rollout, but AT&T covers the vast majority of their network. The area that's really different are the areas that AT&T never existed in prior to Verizon buying Alltel.
Verizon got a lot right, but definitely not 100% of the time. The iPhone hit AT&T hard. EDGE (2G GSM data) used a lot of spectrum for the original iPhone and put AT&T in the position of investing a lot in a dead technology. If you were Verizon with the knowledge we have today and had the opportunity to grab exclusivity on a 2G iPhone that would have you investing in 2G capacity (and using up your spectrum for several years), would you do it? I think they'd probably say yes. Ultimately, I think AT&T wishes the iPhone had come out a year later with 3G. The 2G iPhone put AT&T in the crappy position of using up a lot of spectrum that could have gone to 3G and requiring a lot of investment in 2G that could have gone to 3G. But it also really helped gain customers.
Sprint was a sad situation. They wanted to outsource their 4G network to Clearwire. You can't outsource your core competency. Sprint starved Clearwire of funds which meant that an aggressive network buildout just wasn't possible. Clearwire's high-frequency spectrum meant that a very large number of cell sites would be needed to cover an area. By contrast, AT&T and Verizon's 700MHz spectrum means that they can roll out fast and then add cell sites for capacity as needed. Sprint/Clearwire didn't have that option. I think Sprint was genuinely worried that if Clearwire succeeded, Sprint would become nothing more than a Clearwire MVNO.
Sprint lost a lot of time. It didn't want to fund Clearwire. Then it thought it was going to buy LightSquared's spectrum and dump Clearwire. Then Clearwire was going to build TD-LTE for Sprint. Then Sprint was going to build 5x5 LTE on their PCS spectrum. Then Sprint was getting bought and buying Clearwire. Then Dish started competing for Clearwire. This is just years of wasted time on direction.
I think Spark is moving slowly because it's hard to roll out such a high-frequency network in such a low-density country. On top of that, I think the permitting/approval process and the ability to get fiber to so many points was underestimated. SoftBank (majority owner of Sprint) has said that they deploy a ton of cell sites in Japan on the same high frequencies and get fiber to them all. But Sprint has been complaining of getting fiber and a lot of locations make it hard to build lots of cell sites.
But Sprint is doing a lot better recently. They're deploying 5x5 LTE on their 800 and 1900MHz spectrum. It doesn't have the capacity that the other three have, but it's a much better situation than a year ago. And Sprint is gaining customers (about 1M last quarter, though post-pay subscribers were flat). Sprint seems to be in the kind of position that T-Mobile was a year and a half ago and I think that bodes well for competition in the future. Sprint's 800MHz spectrum should offer good coverage and reliability for their LTE network. Their 2.5GHz spectrum could help with capacity and speed in cities. Their new CEO seems to price wisely and aggressively. I think Sprint is in a stable point today. Their network is a bit slower, but the difference between 8Mbps and 12Mbps or 12Mbps and 18Mbps isn't as relevant as the gap from 2Mbps to 10Mbps that was often the case.
I think 2015 will see a more competitive wireless landscape than we've seen in a long time. T-Mobile is draining customers from competitors and has announced bold intentions for coverage. Sprint is pricing aggressively and has a network that is reasonable and will hopefully get a lot better. The auction for 600MHz spectrum might be happening this year and might have rules favoring companies not named AT&T and Verizon. Two years ago, Verizon and AT&T had LTE while Sprint and T-Mobile languished. Today, the vast majority of Americans have four carriers that would service them well. Some might be better than others in different locations or for different purposes, but it's a huge difference from the era when we were wondering if T-Mobile would even launch LTE and when Sprint completely lacked direction.
Do T-Mobile and AT&T still have the roaming agreements with each other in place from back in the day when they were SBC/PacBell and Voicestream respectively ? I seem to remember in the early days of T-Mobile in California for the most part you were roaming on AT&T and T-Mobile branded phones had the firmware hacked to show 'T-Mobile' instead of 'SBC'.
(I noticed a month or so ago my T-Mobile SIM ended up on an AT&T network when I was out in the wilds of Arizona so have been curious if this was still the case)
The very fact that Comcast, Verizon, TWC, et al are arguing that consumer-side bandwidth pricing is inadequate incentive for them to upgrade networks is strong evidence that the market is so broken that net neutrality and municipal broadband are the right policies.
It's a sort of an accepted insanity that the positions which these large businesses take are considered important.
Certainly information from these businesses on how they believe different legislation will effect them is useful to voters, their representatives and their appointees in performing a legislative calculus.
But what certain companies 'advocate' for? This is hardly useful information for the design of legislation (it's a single bit, and a complicated one). As these large businesses should have no direct say in how they are regulated, I don't see why we the people should care what companies 'endorse'. They don't get a vote.
Whether Google or Sprint or AT&T or Comcast sanctions or opposes net neutrality should mean nothing and should not be worthy of news. The companies that happen agree with the general public do not do so on the ground of ideals or liberty or heroism but on the ground of profit. They are not the stewards of public interest or champions of the public - only the public can do and be this. We can't count on Sprint or Google or any other company to get the legislation we want passed - because if we condone that we also condone their passing of legislation we don't.
Why is it insanity? You are implying that the companies are adding no value to the discussion by chiming on the topic. Shouldn't the entities most impacted by the change be listened to when it comes to decide on policy?
You can certainly make a case that you need to adjust for their self-interest, but ignoring them completely is even more questionable than taking their statements at face value.
> Certainly information from these businesses on how they believe different legislation will effect them is useful to voters, their representatives and their appointees in performing a legislative calculus.
> But what certain companies 'advocate' for? This is hardly useful information for the design of legislation...
We agree. I'm not saying ignore everything they possibly say. What I am saying is ignore what they merely advocate for and pay attention to why they advocate for it and what information they can give relevant to the design of a healthy and flourishing industry.
When political discussion devolves into a series of corporate for-against it looks more like a sport and cheerleaders than a democracy. Legislation can not be about deciding who wins in the market but about designing markets that eliminate rent seeking, moral hazard, and externalization of costs while promoting fair competition between businesses of all sizes. You can't know how to design such legislature without understanding the conditions of an industry and how changes will effect current players. But you also can not design markets within the confines of regulatory capture or by merely noting which current players will stand to benefit or lose from a given legislative delta.
The word insanity here is meant to convey a lack of grounding in the reality of the situation: advocation doesn't signal whether legislation will make a market healthier or serve customers/citizens/nations. We know what Sprint wants - more money. What we need to know from Sprint is not whether given legislation will or will not lead to their getting more or less money but details that clarify how proposed legislation will or will not "eliminate rent seeking, moral hazard, and externalization of costs while promoting fair competition between businesses of all sizes."
I don't think insanity is the right word—these companies definitely have expertise in the field that should be considered valuable. It's kind of insane that the positions are taken at face value, though.
Sprint understands that it hurts their competitors more than themselves. NN is unlikely to be strong on the mobile side, and Sprint has little in the way of consumer wireline business. Verizon and AT&T have more substantial wireline businesses.
Similar to Walmart supporting a higher minimum wage. Hurts the other guys more. And a nice bit of PR.
Little consumer wireline but substantial wireline overall. NN is an extremely positive thing for Sprints network planning/design, as they are building capacity over intelligence. Source: I stare at Sprints network maps every day.
Note the repitition in the letter: 'light touch' and 'allow differentiation'. I think this is likely reasonable, but it certainly gives the carriers enough wiggle room to still play shenanigans. Which is likely fine; Sprint's right that there needs to be room for having differing services. But the good news is they clearly signaled that if they have to, they'll differentiate at the network layer instead of giving up at the services layer. (That's what I read into it - time will tell if it's merely a political gambit :)
Not mentioned in the article (and perhaps Legere will change his mind) but TMobile is aligned with AT&T and Verizon in opposing Title II reclassification.
Disappointed with that stance, since otherwise, I'm thrilled with TMobile from a customer standpoint.
> So long as the FCC continues to allow wireless carriers to manage our networks and differentiate our products, Sprint will continue to invest in data networks regardless of whether they are regulated by Title II, Section 706, or some other light touch regulatory regime.
This is really huge, because it endorses applying Title II to wireless networks, not just wired broadband.
Much of the discourse so far has been around wired broadband, and many of the proposals so far (including the FCC regulations that were shot down last year in court) carved out special exemptions for wireless networks.
The FCC regulations that were shot down in court, and the proposed follow up, did not differentiate wireline from wireless, they differentiated fixed from mobile. Those are approximately the same, but the definitions and explanations made clear that broadband delivered wirelessly could be "fixed" (e.g., via microwave transmitter to a fixed location.)
Its important to note, because in addition to opposing net neutrality overall, ISPs have pitched that any regulation in that direction should use a wireline/wireless distinction rather than fixed/mobile distinction.
Not that surprised, they own a minority share of the market and infrastructure, in their case its too their advantage that they be able to use other's networks uninhibited (roaming, long distance fiber, etc).
Was a Sprint customer for two years then last year I kept seeing all these great deals pop up due to T-Mobile. I kept calling them asking if they had anything competitive. The only thing they had was this terrible framily plan where I had to work to find people/anyone to join this plan with. Even deadbeats. Stupid & when I started to travel I noticed how bad their network is!
I have since switched to an ATT family plan. 15 Gigs split between 4 users, free WiFi hotspot (had to pay $15 additional a month to Sprint for that) and I pay less then $50 a month. ATT coverage is solid everywhere in this state and up and down the east coast.
I second this. Switched from Verizon to AT&T. I can get good speeds on AT&T's 4G LTE network in some of the lowest population spots - in the middle of nowhere - on the east coast. Their network has been impressive so far.
Is this a case of wireless vs wired? Most Title II talks are with respect to wired connections due to last mile issues. Wireless doesn't have that particular issue. And right now wireless has plenty of roaring competition so there's certainly less of a need for a regulatory hand.
Wireless is already under Title II (also Sprint probably wants in on wired so they are for open competition there), that is why AT&T, Verizon, etc take their winnings from the wired internet market and invest it into competing in wireless because they have to compete as there is competition.
The monopolies on the ground were used as wireless investments/banks, nearly all investment went into the wireless side, not fiber or residential internet.
We have seen 3G, 4G, LTE etc all rapidly rolled out by all wireless providers, yet we are still running late 90's speeds on wired. The reason is the competition. Title II is at least a start because it somewhat works in wireless, better than wired anyways.
Wireless is only nominally under Title II. Section 332 of the statute instructs the FCC to forbear on most of the parts of Title II when it comes to wireless.
And Title II is one reason there is competition in wireless, but you've got the effect backwards. Sprint, AT&T, and Verizon are not cable providers, so their wired networks were heavily regulated by full-on Title II. They invested money in wireless because it was much less regulated. But the big thing was that bandwidth demand for mobile exploded, while growing much slower for wired.
Agreed. Wireless was a blue ocean just like cable/broadband was in the late 90s/early 00s where mobile really hit in the last decade. So of course most of the money and investment would go there, but being under Title II somewhat helped rather than, like in wired, a full on monopoly over areas creating stagnation and less demand. They are still competing it out for your business over wired even though Google Fiber may be in even higher demand.
However, part of the promise of getting $200B in investment/breaks was to finish building out the wired side, which really has not been done and is now harming us competitively with the world. Part of their promise was to spend it on the less demand areas of wired. Had they built out fiber and competed there would be more demand for it. Google Fiber is in high demand and all Google is doing is using broadband late 90s playbook, just give the people faster speeds and whole unrealized economies emerge that our GDP has been missing for a decade during wireless laser focus.
Granted this position probably helps them against the bigger competitors, that is why competition is good.
Already we are seeing network providers start to jockey for competitive positions just at the hint of change. Imagine the competition when this actually happens.
This position stands in stark contrast to what other carriers, including Verizon and AT&T, have espoused. In particular, the carriers have warned that Title II would provide a major disincentive to invest in upgrades to their internet offerings.
They are arguing that our current market setup is encouraging investment in upgrades? Where are they? The current system hasn't spawned investment and new upgrades, but competition will surely do this. Here in Phoenix (Tempe/Scottsdale), the moment Google announced Phoenix would be a possible Fiber market, Cox Gigablast initiative was launched, before that crickets.