U.S. Wireless Network Quality Dips, Again

Wireless

from the expensive-but-mediocre dept

We’ve noted for a long while that Americans pay some of the highest prices in the developed world for mobile data. But U.S. network quality doesn’t really make that a great value equation. U.S. 5G networks are notoriously slower than 5G networks in many other countries, and studies have found U.S. video streaming over wireless also lags behind the rest of the world.

Last week, JD Power and Associates released a new study showing that US wireless network problems are on the rise, with slow loading times or network errors the most frequent complaints:

As wireless customers continue to increase their phone and device usage, more problems in network quality are being cited and the perception of network quality is declining. The most common reported problem is slow or failure to load content, according to the J.D. Power 2022 U.S. Wireless Network Quality Performance Study^SM—Volume 2, released today.

On the plus side, these problems are less frequent when 5G is present. But again, U.S. 5G is far slower than overseas due to an initial dearth of essential middle-band spectrum. And, like 4G, still isn’t uniformly available if you happen to live in any of America’s significant rural nooks and crannies.

As with most problems with U.S. telecom, the problem is multifold. Poor regulatory policymaking meant middle-band spectrum didn’t get to market quickly enough. Poor regulatory oversight meant regulators don’t punish companies meaningfully for poor performance, price gouging, or terrible customer service. And consolidation weakened competition, reducing organic market pressure to do better.

It’s usually the same story. And it’s usually blamed by captured policymakers on foreboding US geography, or not giving carriers enough subsidies, tax breaks, or regulatory favors. And while the U.S. wireless and fixed broadband segments will be the very first to try and claim US telecom services offer an incredible value and top-shelf performance, that illusion is generally shattered once you actually travel the planet.

Filed Under: broadband, lag, performance, video streaming, wireless

AT&T Gets Yet Another Pathetic Wrist Slap After Making Millions From Shitty Fees

Wireless

from the go-fuck-yourself-surcharge dept

At some point U.S. regulators effectively declared that it was okay to rip off consumers with a dizzying array of bogus fees, letting companies falsely advertise one rate, then sock you with a bunch of additional surcharges when the bill comes due. That’s particularly true of the cable and broadband industry, which has saddled consumers with billions in fees for decades, with little real penalty.

Case in point: since 2013 or so, AT&T has been charging its wireless subscribers an “administrative fee.” AT&T openly admits this isn’t a government tax or surcharge; it’s just a completely bogus bit of nonsense AT&T says “helps cover a portion of costs to AT&T related to wireless service.” But that’s what your full bill is for. What it really does is allow AT&T to nickel-and-dime you beyond the advertised price.

With regulators completely AWOL (a common theme on this front) a class action lawsuit attempted to hold AT&T accountable. That lawsuit (Vianu v. AT&T Mobility) was quietly settled in May for $14 million, netting each impacted user a one-time payment of between $15 and $29. That will be credited back to your account, so there’s no opportunity to use it for anything other than AT&T service.

The Verge’s Sean Hollister notes that a Judge tentatively approved the settlement in June and AT&T is now getting ready to refund users a tiny fraction of the money that was taken from them:

That’s only a fraction of what AT&T’s own records show it charged: $180 per customer on average since 2015, according to documents. The settlement “represents a refund of approximately 6-11 months of the average fees,” they read. Meanwhile, the lawyers are likely to get $3.5 million.

This is just what we do here in America. We pay billions upon billions in predatory, completely nonsensical fees charged by companies that rarely see any accountability for fraud. And when they are “held accountable,” it usually involves a settlement far smaller than the total money stolen from U.S. consumers, incentivizing the telecom, bank, airline, or hotel industries to do the same thing all over again.

Filed Under: broadband, consumers, fcc, fees, ftc, hidden fees, telecom, wireless
Companies: at&t

FCC To Finally Probe U.S. Wireless Abuse Of Customer Location Data

Privacy

from the collect-ALL-the-things! dept

We’ve noted for years how your mobile phone location data is routinely abused by a long list of bad actors, including your wireless carrier. We’ve also noted how the GOP Senate, hand in hand with the telecom sector, managed to kill FCC broadband privacy guidelines in 2017 that would have gone a long way in protecting consumer data in the post-Roe landscape.

With that as backdrop, the FCC announced last week that it would take a closer look at U.S. wireless carrier abuse of location data:

The FCC has sent letters to most major U.S. wireless carriers asking them to detail the entire scope of their wireless location data collection procedures, including how much data is collected, how it’s stored, and which organizations and companies it’s collected by, transferred, and sold to. The inquiry comes on the heels of an FTC report showing the rampant and unaccountable data collection by the telecom sector.

Activists for years have warned about the obvious threat of over-collection and sharing of sensitive consumer wireless location data, be it gleaned from your mobile phone or apps. Now, post-Roe, it’s all but guaranteed this and other data (search histories, app usage) is going to be used by states (and potentially vigilantes, since this data is often easy to purchase) looking to target abortion seekers and those who help them.

This is, of course, a pretty deep rabbit hole. Most companies claim that collecting this data isn’t a big deal because it’s “anonymized,” despite the fact that studies keep showing that word means nothing. Telecom giants often claim they don’t sell this kind of data, but that’s generally found to be a lie (they just call the practice of bundling and transferring and selling it to others something else).

How much the FCC can do here is of question. A good chunk of the agency’s privacy rulemaking authority was stripped away when the GOP and telecom sector gutted FCC broadband privacy rules in 2017. But they can still bring some transparency to the proceedings.

That should be good news to Trump appointed FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr, who has been breathlessly concerned about the abuse of user location data (albeit only when TikTok and China do it). As noted then, you can’t fight against oversight of the entire adtech and telecom snoopvertising apparatus as Carr does, then get singularly upset only when China abuses the broken system you helped build.

To actually fix this mess you need transparency and accountability for all companies and industries, and some well-written (I know that’s a big ask) privacy guidelines for the Internet era that prioritize market health and consumer safety over making money (also a very big ask).

Filed Under: abortion, brendan carr, fcc, jessica rosenworcel, location data, privacy, surveillance, tracking

Verizon, AT&T Delay 5G Due To Ongoing Scuff Up Over Airplane Interference

Wireless

from the dysfunction-junction dept

Late last year, we noted how the FAA and the FCC (the agency that actually knows how spectrum works) had gotten into a bit of an ugly tussle over the FAA’s claim that 5G could harm air travel safety.

The FAA claimed that deploying 5G in the 3.7 to 3.98 GHz “C-Band” would cause interference with certain radio altimeters. But the FCC conducted its own study showing minimal issues, and pointed to the more than 40 countries have deployed 5G in this bandwidth with no evidence of harm. Telecom lawyer Harold Feld had a detailed post on this if you’re interested in the particulars:

…the technical evidence on which the FAA bases its interference concerns have a lot of problems — not least of which that about 40 other countries operate similar 5G deployments in the same C-Band without any interference showing up. Either physics works differently in the U.S., or the report at the center of this controversy needs to explain why this hasn’t shown up in any other country where deployments are either authorized or have already taken place. 

This being about human lives, caution has generally prevailed, and AT&T and Verizon have promised to further delay the deployment of C band 5G service near airports until July 2023, giving the airline industry more time to retrofit any problematic altimeters. The airline industry still isn’t happy about it, claiming the entire thing is being rushed due to pressure from telecom companies:

“It is not at all clear that (air travel) carriers can meet what appears to be an arbitrary deadline,” trade group CEO Nicholas Calio said in a letter to Nolen. He said safety is jeopardized “by the rushed approach to avionics modifications amid pressure from the telecommunications companies,” and warned that if replacement parts aren’t ready in time, airline service could be disrupted.

AT&T and Verizon, which paid $45.45 billion and $23.41 billion respectively last year for C-band spectrum, very much want to get this spectrum deployed and in use (especially considering that U.S. 5G has generally underperformed so far). Much of this consternation is over who pays for these equipment upgrades (the airline industry has long wanted telecom companies to foot the bill, to no avail).

At the heart of this persists two government agencies that apparently can’t work well together. The FCC’s multi-year old reports on this issue say there wasn’t much of an issue. The FAA, in contrast, took to doing things like leaking scary stories to the Wall Street Journal instead of working with the FCC (again, the agency with the engineering expertise in how these things work).

Throw in some supply chain headaches and you’ve got a bit of a mess. So, again, taking time to do this correctly is important because of the fact that human lives are at stake, but this still wound up being way more avoidably stupid and complicated than it needed to be for a long list of reasons.

Filed Under: 5g, airline safety, broadband, delays, faa, flying, telecom
Companies: at&t, verizon

Dish’s New 5G Network, Created By Trump Regulators To Justify Rubber Stamping T-Mobile Merger, Looks Like A Silly Dud

Failures

from the dysfunction-junction dept

A few years ago the Trump DOJ and FCC rubber-stamped the Sprint T-Mobile merger without heeding expert warnings that it would stifle competition, kill jobs and slowly raise rates. Working closely with T-Mobile and Dish, the FCC and DOJ “antitrust enforcers” unveiled what they claimed was a “fix” for these problems: they’d cobble together a fourth major replacement wireless carrier in Dish Network.

As we noted a few times, the proposal was never likely to succeed. One, because Dish had no track record in this space outside of a parade of empty promises. Two, because the remaining three providers (AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile) and Wall Street want less price competition and would be incentivized at every step to ensure it fails. And three, because an incompetent and feckless FCC (displaying various degrees of said incompetence and fecklessness under both parties) would not likely dole out more than wrist slaps should Dish miss major build out milestones.

So far, things are going just about as well as you’d expect. T-Mobile has already laid off 5,000 employees, wireless prices have slowly been creeping skyward, and the Dish network plan has seen repeated delays thanks in part to squabbling between T-Mobile and Dish.

Dish finally launched its “Genesis” 5G network in Las Vegas. And by “Las Vegas,” they mean select, poorly-defined, limited portions of Las Vegas. With only one phone and one plan available. And even then, The Verge reviewers, who recently tried to give the network a spin, had a hell of a time even signing up:

The problems started pretty much as soon as I hit launch.genesis5g.com. Clicking on the “order now” button, I was prompted to enter my email and home address. But once I did, the site told me I didn’t have a valid address — not that the service wasn’t available at my house but that the address I had entered (correctly, I checked, several times) wasn’t right.

It didn’t appear to be limited to just my building; my colleagues and I tried entering addresses in several supposedly supported cities, but the site would tell us they were invalid. To be clear, this wasn’t a situation where we were incorrectly formatting the addresses. (Project Genesis’ website suggests addresses to you and lets you autofill the form using them.) It was saying that the addresses it had provided weren’t acceptable.

The experience gets worse from there, with virtually no hardware or plan options, a bunch of restrictions (you can’t bring your own phone), and failures at checkout and password creation. Now the network is most assuredly in its early stages, but that’s a lot of warning signs.

As per the T-Mobile merger approval agreement, Dish had to deliver service to 20 percent of the country as of June 14. A Dish press release claims the company has already exceeded this threshold by launching the service in 120 cities. It’s possible, but nobody seems to have been able to independently confirm this. The hard part comes next: Dish has to cover 70% of the population by next year and 75% by 2025.

There are several problems. Again, Dish hasn’t shown the competency to pull this off. At any point. The FCC (be it under Trump or Biden) hasn’t shown it’s competent enough to hold Dish’s feet to the fire. At any point. Dish also continues to bleed money from its sagging satellite TV and existing wireless business (which was supposed to cushion the huge costs of building out this giant 5G network).

Again, the entire point of this network was to provide a massive competitive counterbalance to the competition lost by the T-Mobile Sprint merger. But AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile aren’t going to be threatened by a network with one device, one plan, that people generally can’t sign up for, run by a company with no experience who apparently can’t build a basic sign up website. All overseen by regulators that generally aren’t interested in standing up to big telecom providers.

There’s just a lot of wishful thinking involved in this project everywhere you look.

Based on 22 years watching US telecom repeat similar cycles, I suspect this project goes something like this: Dish strings regulators along for a few years with a few minor wrist slaps for missing some of next year’s bigger deadlines. But ultimately the project falls flat on its face due to incompetence, consumer disinterest, and AT&T/Verizon/T-Mobile covert political meddling.

Dish CEO Charlie Ergen ultimately retires after making billions of dollars offloading what network does exist, with any regulatory fines made completely irrelevant by the huge sums of money he’ll make selling off valuable spectrum to one of the three remaining incumbents. Lots of layoffs, lots of bloodshed, with the winners (as usual) being Wall Street, the biggest telecom players, and a handful of executives.

All of it blamed entirely on something other (inflation, supply chain issues) than the original culprit (greed, regulatory capture).

The Trump era folks who built this deal were looking for any flimsy justification they could find to approve greater U.S. telecom consolidation, which generally only benefits investors and executives. When the impact of this consolidation becomes clear in the form of more layoffs and price hikes, every last one of them will pretend none of it ever happened and that they played no active role in any of it.

Filed Under: 5g, competition, consolidation, mergers, smartphones, wireless
Companies: dish

6G Hype Begins Despite Fact 5G Hasn’t Finished Disappointing Us Yet

Overhype

from the hype-and-bluster dept

Fifth-generation wireless (5G) was supposed to change the world. According to carriers, not only was it supposed to bring about the “fourth industrial revolution,” it was supposed to revolutionize everything from smart cities to cancer treatment. Simultaneously, conspiracy theorists and internet imbeciles declared that 5G was responsible for everything from COVID-19 to your migraines.

Unfortunately for both sets of folks, data continues to indicate that 5G is nowhere near that interesting.

A number of recent studies have already shown that U.S. 5G is notably slower than most overseas deployments (thanks in part to government’s failure to make more mid-band spectrum available for public use). Several other studies have shown that initial deployments in many cases are actually slower than existing 4G networks. That’s before you get to the fact that U.S. consumers already pay more for wireless than a long list of developed nations thanks to sector consolidation.

While 5G is important, and will improve over time, it’s pretty clear that the technology is more of a modest evolution than a revolution, and 5G hype overkill (largely driven by a desperate desire to rekindle lagging smartphone sales) is a far cry from reality.

That’s not stopping us from already hyping 6G, though. Nokia CEO Pekka Lundmark says that 6G will hit the market sometime around 2030. And, as we saw with 5G, 6G is already being heralded as near-magical and transformative by the folks looking to sell phones and network hardware:

“Right now, we’re all building 5G networks, as we know, but by the time quantum computing is maturing for commercial applications, we’re going to be talking about 6G,” Lundmark said. “By then, [2030], definitely the smartphone as we know it today will not anymore be the most common interface.”

According to Lundmark, the “physical world and the digital world will grow together.” The eventual result could involve a user going into a VR world, flipping a switch or turning a dial, and changing something in the real, physical world.

An industrial metaverse “could include models similar to comprehensive, detailed digital twins of objects that exist in reality,” according to trade magazine Industry Week.

So again, like 5G, a faster, more resilient wireless network isn’t good enough because it’s just not sexy enough. As a result, executives in the telecom space like to reach into a hat full of random buzzwords in a bid to make wireless network evolution sound almost like a miracle. In this case, that includes random references to quantum computing, an industrial metaverse, or a complete re-imagining of reality itself.

To be clear, AR, VR, and other technologies will evolve regardless of 5G and 6G, not because of it. Most of these technologies already work over gigabit WiFi. And while faster, more resilient wireless connections will certainly be of benefit, they’re not driving the innovation in and of itself. And the claim that the smartphone will be effectively dead by 2030 is just…silly.

Yeah, somebody will develop an amazing VR and AR experience (maybe it’s Apple, maybe it’s somebody nobody has heard of). Maybe they’ll even fix the simulation sickness problem and see widespread adoption. But 5G and 6G will supplement those efforts, not forge them, and the idea that a traditional smartphone will just cease to exist six or so years from now is just kind of silly.

You would think that after 5G landed with a big thud in the United States, wireless carriers and telecom executives would be wary of associating the standards’ branding with empty hype and bluster. But given we’re not keen on learning much from experience or history, the cycle of unrealistic hype and unfulfilled promises appears set to repeat itself all over again.

Filed Under: 5g, 6g, AR, hype, metaverse, smartphone, telecom, vr
Companies: nokia

FCC Wants To Put WiFi On School Busses

Wireless

from the something-is-better-than-nothing,-but... dept

The FCC has announced that it would be backing a plan to put WiFi on school busses in an attempt to bridge that pesky rascal ambiguously called the “digital divide.” According to the plan, the proposal would use the dwindling money available in the FCC’s E-Rate program to deploy hotspots on busses, allowing them to aid students and be used as portable hotspots on demand.

20-42 million Americans lack access to broadband. 83 million live under a monopoly. The end result of this market and policy failure was painfully clear during the home education and telecommuting boom during the COVID crisis. Our solutions to this problem often don’t involve fixing the cause (monopolization, corruption) but implementing a rotating array of somewhat helpful band-aids.

But even rudimentary, simple, common sense fixes often take decades to materialize in a system that largely panders to monopolies, not competition, innovation, or the public.

At the beginning of the pandemic, the nation’s libraries asked the Trump FCC if it would be ok to (1) leave their hotspots overnight to boost access, (2) use in-school hotspots to expand broadband beyond school grounds, and (3) utilize mobile hotspots to help provide on demand broadband access. You know, basically just do the bare minimum to help people struggling during COVID.

The Trump FCC said the first was fine, but effectively punted on the other requests, implying FCC rules wouldn’t allow it. This was an FCC that routinely broke the rules when trying to kill media consolidation or consumer protection rules, but balked at the request because it viewed community broadband efforts of any kind (including expanded library access) as a threat to monopoly hegemony.

The DNC, which is often notably better on telecom, is at least allowing these common sense solutions to move forward, based on a speech recently given by FCC boss Jessica Rosenworcel. The speech goes to great lengths to outline the problems folks’ had trying to embrace home education with shitty, pricey, spotty broadband:

I took my on-the-road learnings back to the office and I combed through all the data I could find. I found that seven in 10 teachers were assigning homework that required internet access. But FCC data consistently demonstrated that one in three households do not have broadband at home. I started calling where those numbers overlap the Homework Gap because I felt that this portion of the digital divide really needed a phrase to describe it because it’s so important to fix.

Rosenworcel is 100% doing a good thing by working on revamping and expanding the E-Rate program to help people, something her predecessor Ajit Pai generally seemed disinterested in. But again, notice how this “digital divide” is framed as a nebulous, causation free problem, and not, say, the direct result on 30 years of government policy that coddled and protected regional telecom monopolies.

This government failure to specifically call out the cause of mediocre broadband generally gets passed along to the press. For example, Gizmodo isn’t an outlet that shies away from calling a duck a duck, but their article on the FCC plan mirrors the FCC framing. As in, it doesn’t specify why U.S. broadband sucks (again, lack of competition thanks to monopolies) and adopts ambiguous digital divide terminology:

As the pandemic begins to maybe, hopefully, wind down, the digital divide—the gap between certain demographics and access to technology like high-speed internet—is still wide.

Again, why does this “digital divide” exist? Why is it still “wide” after countless government initiatives and untold billions in tax breaks, regulatory favors, and subsidies thrown at industry?

Because telecom monopolies have waged a thirty-year campaign to crush any and all meaningful competition, often with the help of very corrupt state and federal lawmakers. This isn’t hyperbole, or opinion, it’s provable, documented fact. We throw billions in subsidies and tax breaks at these monopolists in exchange for half-built networks or nothing at all.

The solution to the “digital divide” involves aggressively disrupting monopoly dominance by any means necessary, including (as a majority of the public does) supporting community broadband, cooperatives, utility broadband, and various other ad-hoc, localized solutions (instead policymakers often demonize them). The solution also involves acknowledging corruption is a real thing that needs addressing.

It’s hard to fix this problem when your policy leaders, lawmakers, and press can’t even be bothered to mention that monopoly power is the primary cause of the problem they’re trying to fix. It’s also hard to do that when policymakers have failed for thirty years to accurately map the impact of this monopoly power and its impact on coverage and affordability — especially in marginalized communities.

That we can’t and won’t meaningfully address telecom monopolization is particularly weird given the recent obsession (by the Biden camp and the GOP alike) with “antirust reform.” But only, apparently, as it relates to “big tech.” The Biden executive order pays some passing lip service to broadband competition, but again the cause of this limited competition is left nebulous, unexplainable, and free of causation.

So again, putting Wi-Fi on school busses is great, sure. But it’s still representative of our tendency in telecom policy to treat symptoms instead of the disease. In large part because seriously challenging giant monopolies bone grafted to our intelligence gathering comes with a political cost most career-oriented DC regulators and lawmakers aren’t willing to pay.

Filed Under: covid, digital divide, e-rate, fcc

Dish’s 5G Network, The Trump DOJ ‘Fix’ For Harmful Wireless Consolidation, May Miss A Major Deadline

Wireless

from the sound-and-fury dept

Two years ago the Trump DOJ and FCC rubber stamped the Sprint T-Mobile merger without heeding experts warnings that the reduced competition would likely degrade service, kill jobs, and slowly raise rates. Working closely with T-Mobile and Dish, the FCC and DOJ “antitrust enforcers” unveiled what they claimed was a “fix” for the problematic nature of the deal: they’d cobble together a fourth major replacement wireless carrier in Dish Network.

As we noted a few times the proposal was never likely to succeed. One, because Dish had no track record in this space outside of a parade of empty promises. Two, because the remaining three providers (AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile) want less price competition and would be incentivized at every step to ensure it fails. Three, because the government would not likely dole out more than wrist slaps should Dish miss major build out milestones.

So far, things are going just about as well as you’d expect. T-Mobile has already laid off 5,000 employees, and the plan has been mired with endless squabbling between T-Mobile and Dish. And both the beta and commercial launch of Dish’s 5G network, first in Las Vegas, keeps being delayed. 

FCC rules require that Dish deploy its shiny new 5G network to 20 percent of the U.S. public by June. But so far, the promised network consists of a relatively underwhelming not-even-public-beta deployment in Las Vegas. To be clear there is something being built in Las Vegas, and Samsung just announced it would be providing radios for the project, but it’s still not clear the effort will ever really scale:

The project has been plagued with delays, and for those keeping score at home, June is next month. Dish’s last earnings call didn’t paint the rosiest picture of the network’s current status, either; as of February, the network was still in beta testing with friends and family in Las Vegas. Vegas has a lot of things, but it does not, in fact, include 20 percent of the US population within its borders.

Dish is spending big bucks to get this deployed, but Wall Street has been skeptical if it’s willing and able to spend the kind of money that will truly be needed to build a viable fourth competitor with the runway it has.

If Dish meets its June deadline, it then has to focus on delivering 5G service to 70 percent of the US population by 2023. But the company’s satellite TV service has been losing subscribers hand over fist. Dish has also been losing what few wireless customers (mostly prepaid, MVNO users) it already has.

Dish has been hoovering up valuable spectrum for years, and stringing regulators along that entire way as the value of that spectrum appreciates (just ask T-Mobile). It’s not entirely clear that this current FCC will dole out more than a few wrist slaps should Dish miss its deadline. It’s also not clear that the network, which Dish says will be largely focused on the enterprise “Internet of things” market, will ever become the T-Mobile, Sprint, and Verizon direct competitor the Trump DOJ and FCC promised, even if successful.

I can still see this project easily falling apart, with Ergen cashing out his massive spectrum holdings, selling his incomplete build to one of America’s three major remaining wireless carriers, and riding off into retirement. And despite the show and initial expense, I’m still not sure that wasn’t the entire plan all along. Especially for regulators looking to find ways to justify rubber stamping consolidation.

If that winds up being the case, absolutely nobody anywhere will be held responsible for any of it, and any fines doled out against Dish will be miniscule in relation to the money made off of a spectrum sale. All thanks to the fact that competent telecom oversight isn’t something the U.S. government does.

Filed Under: 5g, competition, consolidation, fcc, internet of things, mergers, telecom, tv, wireless
Companies: dish, sprint, t-mobile

Verizon Loses Wireless Subscribers Despite Three Years Of 5G Hype

Wireless

from the meet-the-new-boss dept

If you listened to Verizon fifth-generation wireless (5G) marketing at any time during the last three years, it went something like this: fifth generation (5G) wireless was going to absolutely transform the world by building the smart cities of tomorrow, revolutionizing medicine, and driving an ocean of innovation.

In reality, US 5G has largely landed with a thud. Studies showing how the US version is notably slower than overseas 5G (and in fact often slower than the 4G networks you’re used to). Actual innovative uses for it are hard to come by, and by and large consumers couldn’t care less.

If you ask consumers what they really want from a wireless network, it’s usually better coverage, and lower prices. So it’s not too surprising that despite all of its marketing hype, Verizon lost 292,000 “postpaid” (month to month, the most profitable customers) subscribers last quarter:

Verizon lost 292,000 consumer postpaid phone subscriptions, the metric used by the industry as an indicator of success. In a Friday press release on its earnings for the quarter, Verizon chalked the loss up to “competitive dynamics.”

But “competitive” dynamics in the U.S. market have eroded slightly since the T-Mobile merger reduced the number of overall competitors from four to three major players. T-Mobile continues to leech subscribers from Verizon in large part because it’s still widely considered the least annoying of the three; it’s all likely to get less competitive as investors pressure all three to compete less on price.

None of this is to say 5G isn’t important. It does provide faster speeds, lower latencies, and more reliable networks. But 5G was always a fairly unsexy evolution, not some amazing revolution. Verizon marketing, desperate to suggest the latter, often utilized claims that 5G would do things like help cure cancer. This ultimately associated the concept of 5G with hype, bluster, and unfulfilled promises.

Some of Verizon’s issues here are technical. Unlike T-Mobile, Verizon initially lacked middle band 5G spectrum, which provides both great range and very good speeds. Its network was initially heavily reliant on higher band millimeter wave spectrum, which offers great speeds, but has terrible range and struggles with things like signal penetration through building walls.

Things will all improve as Verizon and other U.S. wireless carriers acquire and deploy more middle band spectrum, but in the interim all of the overly effervescent 5G marketing did more harm than good.

Filed Under: 5g, broadband, competition, hype, marketing, prices, wireless
Companies: verizon

The ‘Race To 5G’ Was More Of A Waddle To Nowhere

Wireless

from the meet-the-new-boss dept

We’ve noted for several years how the “race to 5G” was largely just hype by telecoms and hardware vendors eager to sell more gear and justify high U.S. mobile data prices. While 5G does provide faster, more resilient, and lower latency networks, it’s more of an evolution than a revolution.

But that’s not what telecom giants like Verizon, T-Mobile, and AT&T promised. Both routinely promised that 5G would change the way we live and work, usher forth the smart cities of tomorrow, and even revolutionize the way we treat cancer. None of those things wound up being true.

When 5G dropped in the U.S., network performance was significantly worse than most overseas deployments due to a dearth of middle-band spectrum. Less talked about (because it’s a preferred outcome for many) is the fact U.S. wireless data prices continue to be some of the highest in the developed world, something that only tends to increase with greenlit consolidation.

To hype the technology and sway regulators and lawmakers into doing whatever they wanted, wireless carriers have historically framed 5G deployments as a sort of “race.” But repeatedly data suggests that the U.S. has waddled its way to a mediocre showing:

America’s average 5G mobile internet speed is roughly 75 megabits per second, which is abysmal. In China’s urban centers 5G phones get average speeds of 300 megabits per second. Though that’s not quite the fastest 5G in the world—South Korea claims that title at over 400 Mbps—it’s still fast enough to download a high-definition movie in two minutes. 

U.S. consumers of course don’t care what’s happening in China and vice versa. Studies routinely show that U.S. consumers want two things: reliable coverage and lower prices. While the U.S. will slowly get the former as we increase deployment of middle band spectrum (which provides better coverage and high speeds), the latter has long been a non-starter in the face of regulatory capture.

That we must defeat China specifically in the nonexistent “race to 5G” was a very specific point made for years by telecom giants and the regulators and politicians beholden to them. Yet oddly very few have been willing to acknowledge that the U.S. is not only far behind China on 5G network performance, but we’re also significantly behind when it comes to 5G affordability:

Prices have been coming down fast in the ongoing price war, with China Mobile now selling its entry level 5G package for just 69 yuan ($9.76 US) a month, 31% off the original price. A premium 5G package that originally was priced at 128 yuan ($18.08 US) now sells for 88 yuan ($12.43 US), if the customer signs a one-year contract.

China Unicom, another competitor, has responded with price cuts of its own, reducing some plan prices by 30 percent. A popular 5G package called “5G Refreshing Ice Cream” costs 90 yuan ($12.72 US) per month, not including a small prepaid service fee and a 12-month contract. A premium 5G package is priced at 103 yuan ($14.55 US) per month and comes with a 24-month contract.

Please notice that most of the hand-wringing about losing the “race” to 5G that has bubbled up lately always excludes any mention of high prices. Almost as if industry is dictating most discourse in media coverage in a bid to downplay that aspect of the conversation.

Regardless, much of the “race” rhetoric was a specific rhetorical weapon of lobbyists used specifically to nudge regulators and lawmakers toward a preferred outcome (like mindlessly rubber stamping the T-Mobile Sprint merger, gutting town and city authority to determine 5G tower placement and rate structure in their own back yards, or killing net neutrality and FCC consumer protection authority).

But you’ll notice that giving wireless carriers and large hardware vendors like Cisco everything they wanted over the last five years (once again) didn’t result in the miracle improvements industry and its policy allies promised; it resulted in mediocrity–a fairly common story in U.S. telecom.

Time and time again, handing out favors to the biggest sector players trumps policies geared toward generating meaningful competition or protecting consumers and market health. And time and time again, across both wireless and fixed-line U.S. broadband networks, the end product is spotty service, slower speeds, and high prices.

Wash, rinse, and repeat to infinity, with nobody (usually quite intentionally) learning much of anything from the experience.

Filed Under: 5g, mobile data, wireless
Companies: at&t, t-mobile, verizon