Okay, my calls on what's gonna happen this year in telecom. Let's see how right I'm gonna be, since I called the AT&T+Bellsouth thing months ago in IRC. 🙂
Okay, AT&T/Bellsouth merger gets lots of press, then basically blanket signoff by the regulatory agencies by Q3, with token amounts of transfers of various areas to Alltel and Sprint landline.
Alltel's landline spinoff stays normal. The wireless part of the spinoff gets eaten by Verizon, Q3. No regulatory issues, because they forwent the landline stuff, which is a lagging market. Verizon won't want their landlines. They're all rural, and everyone's switching to cell phone anyway. Verizon's footprint goes from huge to superhuge. They buy the 40% stake Vodaphone PLC has in Verizon Wireless out finally, making it wholly owned by Verizon. The combined network, without Vodaphone's european/english interference, becomes even more encumbered than ever, as if that that were even possible. You can do anything on their network, as long as it's profitable for verizon. 🙂
Boost mobile builds into Sprint's prepaid reseller platform, Q2. New handsets, direct competition with Virgin mobile.
T-Mobile brings up HSDPA, charges $75/mo unlimited for the first year, Q4 – just in time for christmas. Video capable phones abound.
They'll also do something interesting regarding unlicensed mobile access. It's an interesting way to add coverage. woo.
Cingular would roll out HSDPA before T-Mobile, but due to the buyout of Cingular by AT&T fully, and the impending rebranding of Cingular as AT&T wireless lags out Cingular's deployment, and it hits the market big time at the same time, or slightly later than T-Mobile. The advertising messages will be really muddied and vague, leading more people to use T-Mobile, who will undoubtedly have better pricing.
Nextel finally rebands into 900Mhz. Sprint uses the 1.9Ghz PCS block that Nextel got as part of their spectrum swap deal to deploy even more capacity, and expand EVDO coverage to compete with Verizon for business customers who want wireless data.
Verizon vies for UHF TV bands in certain areas to add capacity in heavily loaded areas. TV special interests win, and they won't get it.
VoIP 802.11* phones with integrated GPS chips hit the scene, and a major carrier rolls out with E911 support on wireless VoIP phones. Vonage?
PS: I'm kinda pulling all this out of my ass here, don't sue me if I'm wrong. Don't sue me if I'm right. In fact, don't sue me at all.
Boost Mobile?
Where you at, dog?
haha, I've seen that one. It's actually still on my DVR. I like it a lot.
it had some amazing dialog, like:
"Yes, I do like my balls.. no, you don't need to hand them to me in front of the New York office".
It's something I can see you making someone say during an interview.
hah, I can see me saying that too.
Not to diminish your futuristic gazing but I think anyone who has followed the telecom world in the slightest saw the the whole Bellouth/AT&T thing coming, and sad to say though your probably correct on how it's going to come out in the end.
With Verizon, they have been hungry for Alltel's towers for a while now these two share the best roaming deals than any other carriers not because Verizon is nice but because Verizon needs Alltel's network to have coverage everywhere, except for the U.P. since Alltel leases towerspace from some guy who hates Verizon. Gobbling up Alltel won't change much for Verizon customers at first, how I perceive verizon's intentions is they are offering a lot of average things for free (mostly) between their customers but charge like mad when you wish to communicate outside their network ie other providers, I only see this worsening. Verizon will expand their network and proclaim it to be the savior of the american people by offer free this and that between subscribers and then when everybody and the dog is signed up you'll see that more and more will cost you, want to talk to your buddie on cingular well thats x dollars a month extra type stuff but this is all long term speculation I doubt it would happen in a years time.
I see cingular not really going anywhere kindof like 19th century Japan.
T-mobile needs a larger network if they could get it they would rock
my money right now would be on Sprint for all practical purposes they are the same as Verizon without the extra charges but I can see Verizon screwing things up for Sprint by effectively shrinking Sprints network by ending the roaming deals the two have.
I don't claim to know a thing about the wireless world these are just my observations.
I apologize for leaving such a huge comment but this is interesting shit.
Yea, I never said it was totally surprising, but there were tons of people that should know better (saaaaay, stock analyists) who seemed totally blindsided by this. Couldn't happen, still busy with previous merger, bla bla blah. They don't know Whittacre like we know him. I mean shit, the boy's probably dreamt at night about buying verizon. Wacko. I also heard "too big already, why would they want to try?" without realizing the sheer amount of money they dump into the pockets of both parties to get whatever the hell they want.
Verizon wireless price gouging: I agree. That's how they roll.
Cingular: oh, my ignorance of Japanese history is showing. I know they had an industrial revolution, but I'm not sure how that applies to cingular. 🙁
T-Mo definitely needs more spectrum.
Ending Sprint's roaming agreements would be bad. If verizon eats alltel, that may be one of the requirements that they have reasonable and non-disciminitory roaming agreements with any carrier that requests them. I can see it.
Sprint does, however, seem to have a serious lust for the business side that verizon has. Sprint also has tremendous use by the government, as does nextel. Every federal agent I've ever met, from Judges, Probation Officers, US Marshals, FBI agents, they're all either on nextel or sprint. (And hey, look, they're all the same company now!). That angle could get really interesting. They got a lot of spectrum on the nextel side that Sprint can use nationwide to just go absolutely insane with data coverage and voice capacity. Will be interesting, to say the least.
I agree it's interesting.
19th century Japan very isolationist, required foreign military force to open them up. The relation I was getting at is it seems cingular just sits there doing it's own thing to the exclusion of everybody else.
one way things look like they could go is Verizon will become larger and more evil and Sprint will come in and be resonable until they too grow to the size of verizon it could be a horrible cycle with each of them trading places every so often and the consumer being the only real loser.
The consumer is always the real loser in consolidation.
This is somewhat off-topic, but the only telecom related prediction that I'm willing to make for 2006 is that the Detroit area will have another community wireless networking project started. This one will succeed where past efforts have foundered.
see my comment below. MetroPCS… their offices are in Livonia and are in the midst of launching the detroit market.
That's not community wireless networking, dude 🙂
yeah. disk read error. abort, retry, fail?
dont forget MetroPCS which is in the midst of launching in the detroit market (I learned this last night) and is also in the midst of registering an IPO.
I didn't forget. They're gonna remain the small player they are. They'll launch here, become marginally popular, and launch a few more places. Most people will ignore them because their coverage area is so small.
I hope Nextel doesn't reband into the 900MHz range. Darn cellphone companies tromping around the ham bands!
There's some frequencies above the 33cm and part 15 bands in the 900Mhz block that are for ESMR use. Nextel being an enhanced specialized mobile radio system, rather than an actual "cellular" carrier, has been granted frequencies up there on a nationwide basis in order for them to reband out of the public safety bands.
Are you using Level3 ELS and LI services? Are you having echo problems with some of their gateways and one way audio at times? Just wondering… Because I AM!
No, I use a PRI trunk direct to a carrier on a colocated machine.