A Game of Risk

Peter : On Rad's Radar?
Peter
| Peter Radizeski of RAD-INFO, Inc. talking telecom, Cloud, VoIP, CLEC, and The Channel.

A Game of Risk

Everyone blames the FCC. AT&T blames the FCC for all of its woes after the FCC (and the DOJ) said no to its merger with T-Mobile. Boo-hoo. It was a risk. It didn't work out. You probably shouldn't have given them the smoking gun memo. Not to mention that 4G is the new broadband and we need competition in that sector. You can't agree with the FCC and applaud them when they say that wireless is the future, then get mad when they want to maintain the competitive landscape.

Speaking of the competitive landscape: the FCC can not let VZW and the cablecos work together. The only competition we have is the Duopoly - cable versus telco. Letting the largest cellco joint venture with the top 3 or 4 cablecos will spell disaster for competition.

In the short term, we are talking job losses and rising prices. In the long term, we are talking bankruptcies. None of that is for the good of the consumer.

It's really a 2 horse race in cellular. Sprint sucks. T-Mobile is cutting another 900 jobs. They already have morale issues over there. This will just be another coffin nail.

T-Mobile does have options though. Merger with an ILEC like CenturyLink or Frontier. Merger with US Cellular, which TDS mainly owns and appears to manage well. Leap, Cricket and MetroPCS are all in play. Will it be Sprint or T-Mobile that go there first?

Lightsquared has filed for bankruptcy. It was another risky gamble to buy spectrum and try to use it for purposes other than what it was designated for. You went all in LSQD and you lost. Live with it. Business is a gamble. It's just the first time that the house (the FCC) wasn't totally bought and paid for on your side.

I guess without a stacked deck of cards, the telcos kind of suck at poker.



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