Stop it, AT&T.

AT&T commented that they’re going to stop expanding U-Verse after they reach “60% of homes”. What about the rest of them?

He suggested that 25-30% of AT&T homes will only be offered ADSL. 20% are “not a heavy emphasis for investment,” i.e. 5-10 million of AT&T’s 50 million homes are screwed unless they have a decent cable alternative. (Yes, rounding means not necessarily equal to 100 %.)

Because when you’re the only game in town, why would you spend the extra money upgrading when it could go towards something more productive? Like more C-level bonuses, for instance.

Reuters reports that California may review the AT&T/T-Mobile deal:

The California Public Utilities Commission told its staff, in a meeting on Thursday, to open a proceeding to gather information about the merger for the state regulator to consider at its next voting meeting on June 9.

The commission said it wants information about the merger proposal “in light of relevant state law and public policies.”

If the deal can be blocked in at least one state, it makes it that much harder for the overall deal to be worth more than the reported $3 billion that AT&T would have to pay T-Mobile to back out of it. Let’s hope California at least takes a look at this deal.

Sprint wants California and Louisiana state regulatory agencies toreview the AT&T/T-Mobile merger. One concerning bit:

Sprint on May 2 asked the West Virginia Public Service Commission to review the deal. AT&T in a May 12 filing asked the agency to reject that request, saying Sprint offers limited service in the state.

The states should indeed be reviewing the deal, and companies should not have the power to reject proper review. Simple as that.

The OECD came out with new broadband rankings today, and the results shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone:

The good ol’ US of A ranked ninth (out of the 29 member countries of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) in fixed broadband penetration on a per capita basis, and 12th in terms of pure percentage — behind the UK, South Korea, Iceland, the Netherlands, and plenty of others….Worse still, even those with broadband reported slower connections than folks in other countries. Olympia, Washington had the highest average download speeds of any US city with 21Mbps (New York and Seattle tied for second with 11.7Mbps), but was easily topped by Helsinki, Paris, Berlin, and Seoul (35.8Mbps).

This is what happens AT&T and the cable companies can get away with whatever they want, folks.

Bad news, folks: North Carolina governor Bev Perdue is going to let TWC’s anti-competitive municipal broadband bill become law:

“I will neither sign nor veto this will,” Perdue said in a statement. “Instead, I call on the General Assembly to revisit this issue and adopt rules that not only promote fairness but also allow for the greatest number of high quality and affordable broadband options for consumers.”

If a governor does not veto a bill, it will automatically become law. By not signing it, Perdue is symbolically signaling her displeasure.

Or…veto it and make the Legislature try again. But that would require actually having balls and using them.

So a few days ago I posted this article. It was admittedly a departure over what I usually post, since this site isn’t usually about Apple rumors. However, it is about competition and Sprint getting the iPhone is relevant since it would help to even the mobile device playing field.

Anyway, the article was originally linked on Reddit but didn’t really get much traction. Or so I thought. Within a few hours it ended up on MacRumors and it spiraled up from there. And then Apple changed the job posting, heh.

Some awesome places that linked to this site include:

• CNet article
• Washington Post blog entry
• PC World
• PC Magazine

(And I’m sure more as well, but those are the ones that I caught in the server logs while skimming them over.)

The other awesome thing is that this site now has some name recognition, it seems. I’ve noticed people coming in through Google searches for the site’s name. Top Google search terms (May 2011):

• myusage.att.com (92 visits)
• stop it at (53 visits)
• stop it att (20 visits)
• at (18 visits)
• stopitatt (10 visits)

I just want to say that I’m happy that there’s more recognition of this site now and thank you all for your support 🙂

EDIT: added reference to Apple changing the job posting.

Engadget posted some very interesting insight about the hearing that happened in Congress recently. A few bits of discussion:

One of the primary concerns in the hearing was determining whether or not AT&T actually has enough spectrum on its own. Think of spectrum like the number of lanes on a busy highway: during rush hour these highways get clogged up and causes traffic to slow to a crawl, but when more lanes are added, more traffic can be accommodated. Stephenson argues that one of the major reasons his company needed to purchase T-Mobile is to have enough spectrum to properly build out its upcoming LTE network.

The FCC’s 2008 auction of the 700 MHz band would like a word with you:

Block B – AT&T Mobility was the biggest buyer in the B block, with 227 licenses totaling $6.6 billion. U.S. Cellular and Verizon bought 127 and 77 licenses, respectively. AT&T Mobility and Verizon Wireless bought licenses around the country, while U.S. Cellular continued with its strategy to buy licenses in northern regions. [18]

This doesn’t sound like a company that’s particularly hurting for spectrum to me.

But the real reason why this is a bad idea is because this effectively creates a GSM monopoly in the United States. AT&T will be the one who gets all of the roaming revenue from foreign visitors, vs. the current situation, for one thing. (AT&T and T-Mobile are the two national GSM carriers in this country.) Not to mention that Verizon and AT&T combined will end up controlling 80% of the US mobile phone market in general.

Let’s hope that the FCC and DoJ hear your voice loud and clear.

Saw this today. From the job description:

Location Kansas City, MO
…
Member of the Carrier Engineering team that supports taking products through technical approval at the carriers. A Carrier Engineer team is responsible for day-to-day technical interactions with the one or more carriers to track down issues reported by the carrier, assist the carrier with testing they might be conducting and working with program management, software development and test teams to get products approved by the carriers.

Combined with the rumors floating around, this sounds like a Sprint iPhone is a possibility. (Note: Sprint is based in the Kansas City area, hence the Apple job posting.)

Sprint will definitely need the iPhone if the AT&T/T-Mobile merger goes through to stay relevant, so this could be very good news for them.

EDIT: here is a screenshot, in case Apple takes it down.

EDIT #2: welcome, MacRumors members! 😀 While you’re here, I invite you to browse the rest of the site and find out more about usage caps and the T-Mobile merger 🙂

EDIT #3: looks like Apple changed the job posting. See the screenshot for what it used to be.

Looks like Sprint is pretty serious about fighting the AT&T/T-Mobile merger by going directly to the state regulators. West Virginia’s, to be exact:

AT&T Inc.’s plan to acquire rival T-Mobile USA Inc. drew fire from Sprint Nextel Corp. at West Virginia’s utilities regulator.

Sprint cited its concerns that the merger would hurt consumers in seeking the state’s permission to intervene there.

As a FYI, here’s a list of the state public utility regulators, so they can put the pressure on AT&T as well. 🙂