Hello! And welcome to our Friday column, Worst of the Week. There’s a lot of nutty stuff that goes on in this industry, so this column is a chance for us at RCRWireless.com to rant and rave about whatever rubs us the wrong way. We hope you enjoy it!
And without further ado:
My goodness, how times change.
Just a couple of years ago, AT&T and T-Mobile USA could not complement each other enough, what with AT&T dangling $39 billion in front of T-Mobile USA’s management. I am going to just assume that the money part had nothing to do with it and the compliments coming from company executives were honest and heartfelt.
Now, with that deal but a distant memory, something appears to have dashed the one-time friendship, with both companies now taking off the gloves and going to battle the best way possible: through contradicting advertisements.
AT&T earlier this month ran full-page advertisements in a handful of the nation’s largest newspapers (remember those?) claiming T-Mobile USA’s network dropped twice as many calls and produced data speeds just half of what AT&T’s network was producing.
Pow!
T-Mobile USA, in its “new” role as scrappy upstart, fired back with an ad of its own noting “What keeps AT&T up at night? Apparently us.”
Zing!
As for tactics, it must be noted that T-Mobile USA does not really refute AT&T’s claims, only saying that the public can get the real scoop by visiting the coverage map on its website. And we all know how on target those things are.
Now, some might think that AT&T is picking on the wrong person here, as its real competition is coming from Verizon Wireless primarily and Sprint Nextel to a lesser extent, and that picking on T-Mobile USA is just the big kid taunting a small kid.
But, maybe AT&T is smarting over T-Mobile USA’s recent announcement that it was now serving 1.8 million former AT&T Mobility iPhones on its network?
Or tired that T-Mobile USA continues to tout its HSPA+-based network as “4G” in its advertising, and a corresponding grand national footprint for “4G” services that would seem to put it on equal footing with its larger rivals.
(Oh wait, AT&T does that as well. Nevermind.)
Regardless of how this bickering is viewed or the merits of such advertising claims, let’s just enjoy the fact that millions of dollars are being spent on such trivial matters and not on improving customer service or network quality.
OK, enough of that.
Thanks for checking out this week’s Worst of the Week column. And now for some extras:
–Ruh Roh!
Word this week from Verizon Wireless is that the carrier is not through adding new customers to its network, something that might have a few of its rivals quaking in their boots.
Speaking at an investor conference earlier this week, Verizon CFO Fran Shammo said the carrier was not yet through with net customer additions, a statement that could be taken in a couple of ways. Shammo could be hinting that the carrier is expecting to continue seeing current customers adding multiple devices to its Shared Data plans, or that the carrier expects to continue seeing robust growth from non-humans in the form of machine-to-machine services. Both are inert ways to look at the situation, backed by expectations by many in the industry.
Or, Verizon Wireless could be gaining confidence that it will continue growing net customer additions by luring away customers from its rivals. Now, that’s what I’m talking about.
–There are a lot of awesome things about Canada: maple syrup, hockey, curling, polar bear monitoring. Let me now add one more item to that list: spectrum auction.
That’s right. Our neighbors to the north said they are on track to conduct a spectrum auction, which have become events I get way too excited over. The auction is not scheduled to begin until Nov. 19, but it will be for precious 700 MHz spectrum bands that here in the United States carriers spent nearly $20 billion to acquire back in 2008. Not that I think Canadian operators will spend anywhere near that amount, but just thinking of the amount of Canadollars that will be curled at this auction has my head spinning like a hockey puck in maple syrup hurled down a lane of ice being chased by a polar bear.
I welcome your comments. Please send me an email at dmeyer@rcrwireless.com.
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