Sidecut Reports

AT&T’s Ralph de la Vega at CTIA keynote. Credit: Sidecut Reports

Editor’s note: The following is the first in a series of major U.S. market cellular provider “status updates” from the recent CTIA Wireless show in Orlando, Fla. First up is Ma Bell, no surprise given the $39 billion headline-grabbing acquisition announcement AT&T made last Sunday.

So Now You Tell Us There’s A Spectrum Crisis?

It was just about a year ago — roughly the time that we put out our Sidecut Report about Clearwire’s spectrum advantage — that AT&T and Verizon participated in a very friendly press call together where they sang the praises of LTE and pooh-poohed any claims that the country’s two biggest cell service providers might be a bit hamstrung when it came to licensed wireless airwaves. Our favorite quote from that call came from AT&T senior VP of architecture Kris Rinne, who forcefully said that Clearwire didn’t have a spectrum advantage over AT&T, which would be able to, y’know, refarm its current cellular airwaves to take care of LTE. No worries, right?

“You need to make sure you count all of our spectrum when you make these comparisons,” Rinne said at the time. Though we openly asked for the chance to count the available spectrum, that plea fell on deaf ears.

Now fast forward to the T-Mobile acquisition announcement and all of a sudden, AT&T has a spectrum crisis. Everyone from top mobile honcho Ralph de la Vega to Chief Technology Officer John Donovan was stopping random strangers in Orlando, even the bike rickshaw guys, to tell them that Hey! We’ve Got a Spectrum Crisis! You’ve got to wonder, what exactly changed between last spring and now? Did AT&T go looking in the spectrum barrel only to find it empty? Or is it some other combination of factors, not the least of which is that by admitting to a spectrum shortage, AT&T can gain more regulatory favor for its market-consolidating purchase?

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ORLANDO, Fla. — In his numerous panel appearances Tuesday here at the CTIA Wireless show, AT&T Chief Technology Officer John Donovan had a simple, one-word answer for the reason behind the proposed purchase of wireless competitor T-Mobile: “Spectrum.”

Specifically, Donovan said in a brief interview with Sidecut Reports following one of his panel appearances, T-Mobile’s big swath of AWS (Advanced Wireless Services) spectrum and the role it might play in AT&T’s 4G network of the future is a big reason why it makes sense for AT&T to offer the big bucks — $39 billion of them — to buy T-Mobile outright.

“It’s all about the future,” said Donovan in the interview, explaining both his and AT&T Mobility CEO Ralph de la Vega’s insistence that Ma Bell is facing a potential “exhaustion” of its existing licensed spectrum assets. While some industry observers have accused AT&T of hoarding a big patch of unused spectrum while crying wolf, Donovan said AT&T already has plans for all the spectrum under its current ownership, including plans to use both its own AWS spectrum and its 700 MHz spectrum for its forthcoming LTE network rollout.

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The big Mobile World Congress show hasn’t even really started yet and already we are swamped with news of new superphones, tablets and pads, all vying to become the next big thing in wireless. The problem is, no matter how cool, fast or fun each one is, no single device can perfectly answer the needs of all our mobile Three Cs: Communicating, Creating and Consuming. But if we had one data plan to use across all types of devices? That would be something to write home about.

No pad or tablet will ever handle calls as well as a phone, and few phone-size devices can match tablets or pads for making content consumption so pleasurable; and there’s still nothing that really tops a full-feature laptop with its full-sized keyboard for being able to create content on the go. That’s why I subscribe to the theory that says most mobile professionals will soon own a “stack” of mobile devices, each with a singular purpose. Device manufacturers and service providers alike are out there now, nodding their heads, saying Yes! Please let it be so!

But what’s needed to make that happen quickly is a brave mobile carrier to be a trailblazer and provide a single data plan that covers multiple devices, allowing a user to spend their “bucket of bits” via the device, the time and the manner of their choosing. Otherwise, the device stack option is going to remain something that only the budget-rich can afford, and many cool devices will fall by the wayside simply because there isn’t enough reason for folks to sign up for yet another expensive 2-year contract with big early termination fees.

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