AT&T is petitioning the Federal Communications Commission to impose network buildout conditions on Dish’s satellite spectrum –- requirements that would be passed onto AT&T if it acquired the satellite TV provider. Meanwhile, Dish insists it plans to use that spectrum to build a commercial LTE network to challenge the reigning nationwide mobile operators, including AT&T. These are hardly the actions of two companies about to tie the knot.

What we’re witnessing here is some very cynical pre-nuptial gamesmanship. According to TMF Associates satellite communications analyst Tim Farrar, Dish is playing AT&T off its competitors by threatening to partner with MetroPCS to build a nationwide LTE network over its satellite broadband and 700 MHz spectrum. To muck up Dish’s plans, AT&T is insisting to the FCC that the satellite TV provider face the same strict rollout requirements the commission imposed on fellow satellite spectrum holder LightSquared: An LTE rollout covering 100 million people in 33 months and 260 million in less than 6 years.

As Farrar wrote in his blog:

This submission is a blatant attempt by AT&T to put a thumb on the scales, as the FCC weighs up the appropriate balance between buildout mandates and clawback of any windfall. The reason for AT&T’s action at this very late stage in the process appears to be that DISH is trying to play off AT&T’s prospective bid against a potential venture with MetroPCS. MetroPCS would certainly be unwilling to commit to a 260M POP buildout, so if the FCC conceded AT&T’s demands, they would be the only game in town and DISH would lose its leverage in price negotiations. We’ll find out soon enough if AT&T’s gambit succeeds, but few would bet against [Dish chairman] Charlie Ergen’s poker playing skills after the events of the last year.

AT&T may seem like the bad guy here, but Dish’s motives are just as suspect. In an FCC filling Thursday, Dish maintained it plans become a competing mobile operator, launching an LTE network that would compete with the big 4:

The overly aggressive and unrealistic schedule AT&T advocates would likely set DISH up for failure or force DISH into unfavorable business arrangements with large Commercial Mobile Radio Service (“CMRS”) carriers.  It would erect artificial barriers to DISH’s plan to construct a new mobile broadband network on its own or consideration of partnerships with smaller companies, and could threaten DISH’s ability to roll out a retail service.  In short, an impracticably tight schedule would be a triple loss for consumers, the Commission, and DISH.

But as my colleague Stacey Higginbotham wrote when Dish first applied for permission to build LTE, Dish’s proposal sounds more like a financial gamble to cash in on the skyrocketing value of mobile broadband spectrum, rather than a legitimate bid to become a wireless competitor. One big clue is Dish’s insistence on deploying an LTE-Advanced network in order to “enter the market for the first time with the most advanced technology.” Of course, LTE-Advanced was just finalized as a standard so Dish claims it will have to wait several years before commercial equipment is available.

That’s absolute malarkey. LTE-Advanced is an iteration of LTE technology, not a completely new network. Claiming that you must wait until LTE-Advanced equipment is available before building a network is kind of like insisting you can’t move into a house before the shag carpeting is installed. There’s nothing stopping Dish from building an LTE network this year and evolving it into an LTE-Advanced network in 2013 or 2014.

Supposedly we face a spectrum crisis, but no one is acting like it. Instead of using public airwaves to deploy real networks, operators seem to be playing high-stakes poker with their licenses. AT&T’s motives may be self-serving, but maybe in this case it’s right. If it forces strict rollout guidelines on Dish’s spectrum and then buys those licenses, we may actually get a new mobile broadband network – rather than a bunch of operators whining about how they don’t have the spectrum to build them.

Poker Image courtesy of Flickr user Ross Elliott
Tower Image courtesy of Flickr user Nikhil Verma

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• 2012: Data, spectrum and the race to LTE
• Mobile Q4: The scramble for spectrum continues
• Confused about the wireless markets? Here’s a breakdown

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The iPhone might not officially be on the magenta network, but T-Mobile isn’t about to turn its back on a million paying customers, either. According to a document obtained by TmoNews, the network plans to offer new “common procedures, information about feature and specifications and other basic device questions” to iPhone users starting Monday. T-Mobile has long had an open-door policy for customers with unlocked iPhones, since it doesn’t have its own to sell — though T-Mo CTO Neville Ray is hoping really hard that will change. Someday.

T-Mobile keen to help iPhone users, plans to offer new procedures for unlocked phones originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 29 Jan 2012 23:31:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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AT&T will also offer an additional 5 GB high-volume smartphone plan for a month, which includes tethering and mobile hotspot use. For tablets AT&T will offer the same and tiers as it does for smartphones, though without tethering, and it will keep its 250 MB plan in place. The same per gigabyte overage fee will remain in effect for all of the higher tier plans, though its rather discriminatory policy toward data excess on its lowest tier plans will persist. Customers with the 300 GB will have to pay another to get another mere 30 GB. All existing unlimited customers on the old capped and unlimited plans are grandfathered in (though throttling will remain in effect for unlimited), but existing customers can switch to the new pricing tiers if they wish.

There’s a way to look at this as a positive. AT&T is actually lower the per-MB cost of data as mobile Internet and app use skyrockets. That’s a trend that needed – and still needs – to occur if operators are to keep ahead of the increasing bandwidth demands of smartphones and tablets. AT&T still isn’t as cheap as Sprint, which is still clinging to unlimited, and T-Mobile, which offers gobs of data for dirt cheap prices, but it is definitely undercutting its primary competitor, Verizon Wireless which offers 1 GB less for the same price on the most popular plan. Unless operators want mobile broadband innovation to go stagnant pricing-per-megabyte will have to fall further.

But make no mistake about it: AT&T may be smoothing over the edges but this is most definitely a price hike. Some of AT&T’s current customers may switch over the plans by choice, particularly customers that often go just over their 200 MB or 2 GB caps each month. But AT&T will be collecting more month from all new customers. That’s going add up to a hefty pile in AT&T’s coffers, and most customers won’t be happy about it.

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• 2012: Data, spectrum and the race to LTE
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• Forecast: global mobile subscribers, 2010–2015

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For the last few years, an alternate wireless network has been emerging in the U.S.; one not built by the mobile operators but by cable providers. Cablevision, Time Warner Cable, and Comcast have all launched numerous Wi-Fi hotspots in their service areas, and last week Bright House joined the club, turning on 2,000 outdoor and indoor hotspots across the state of Florida. The Multiple Service Operators (MSOs) have latched onto the idea of Wi-Fi as a way of extending their home and business broadband services to customers on the go, and its paying dividends. Why haven’t their mobile counterparts followed suit?

Apart from AT&T, U.S. mobile carriers have been slow to adopt Wi-Fi in their networks. Verizon Wireless only began limited use of Wi-Fi hotspots in big public venues last year. Meanwhile, Sprint and T-Mobile have been content to let their customers take advantage of the plethora of free Wi-Fi in the public domain, they haven’t launched any hotspots of their own. Even AT&T is being fairly conservative. It makes extensive use of use of the café/restaurant/airport network it acquired from Wayport to offload mobile data traffic, but it has only built outdoor networks extensively in New York City. In the rest of the country, AT&T’s outdoor access points are limited to handful of high-profile, high-traffic “hotzones” such as Chicago’s Wrigleyville and San Francisco’s Embarcadero.

Time Warner's Los Angeles WI-Fi network

In comparison, Time Warner’s Wi-Fi coverage of Los Angeles is a dense mass of polka dots covering major intersections, parks and public venues from downtown all the way to Santa Monica and snaking down the coast to Redondo Beach. The MSOs have even expanded their reach by signing network-sharing deals with each another, creating the cable equivalents of roaming networks. Wi-Fi has proven to be tremendously popular with their customers, who get to access the networks for free as long as they’re home cable modem subscribers.

The obvious answer as to why mobile carriers haven’t been as quick to pull the trigger the trigger on Wi-Fi is that they don’t need it from a geographic standpoint. Their networks already cover every conceivable area they could hope to reach with Wi-Fi, so the business case for carriers isn’t coverage; it’s capacity. As more customers consume more network resources, they place tremendous loads on the network’s high-traffic zones.

Many international operators have already gotten wise to the benefits of Wi-Fi for cheap data offload, probably none more than Free.fr, which is building its Free Mobile unlimited and data service on the back of 5 million Wi-Fi “nano cells” embedded in the set-top boxes of its broadband subscribers.

If you’re looking for an example closer to home, Republic Wireless is signing hotspot deals to create a “Wi-Fi first” service that, allowing it to offer unlimited voice and data for a mere a month. Republic acknowledges that it’s service is still experimental and it’s not sure if it can make its unlimited business case viable, but if it weren’t for Wi-Fi, it wouldn’t be able to make the attempt.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
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• 2012: Data, spectrum and the race to LTE
• Mobile Q4: The scramble for spectrum continues
• Report: The Ongoing Battle for the Digital Home

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Engadget Podcast 269 – 12.23.2011 originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 23 Dec 2011 11:41:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The launch of the 710 is the opening salvo for Nokia as it works to re-establish itself in the U.S. following its decision to adopt Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 platform. It might disappoint some users who are more anxious to see the Lumia 800, which has gotten positive reviews since it launched in Europe. But T-Mobile said the 710 fits with its strategy of targeting the 150 million Americans who have yet to buy their first smartphone.

“It’s been T-Mobile’s strategy to really upgrade folks who haven’t used a smartphone before to their first smartphone,” said Rhone Rarick, senior product manager for T-Mobile. “The barriers for that are really cost and intimidation of something too complex. From T-Mobile’s perspective we think Windows Phone is a great platform for those folks and from a hardware perspective we need to make certain things happen to get down to great price point of .”

The 710 offers a 3.7-inch WVGA display with a 1.4 GHz Snapdragon processor, 8 GB of storage and a 5 megapixel camera. It will be able to access speeds of 14.4 megabits per second on T-Mobile’s HSPA+ network. The T-Mobile version of the Lumia 710 will also get Netflix pre-loaded along with T-Mobile TV, a streaming video service. The Lumia 710 will join two other Windows Phone 7 devices, the HD7, T-Mobile’s first WP7 smartphone, and the HTC Radar 4G.

”The Nokia Lumia 710 is the perfect first-time smartphone: a well-designed product that delivers the most compelling Windows Phone experience in its price range and with access to great content and thousands of applications,” said Chris Weber, president, Nokia Americas in a statement. “This is the perfect first Nokia Lumia experience and the start of our re-entry into the U.S. smartphone market.”

The news was widely predicted after Nokia and T-Mobile sent out invitations to a Wednesday night event. An FCC filing also indicated the upcoming device would be the 710, removing any doubt about a possible Lumia 800 launch. But the choice of the 710 is still a disappointment in some ways considering the mounting pressure on Nokia to show that it’s serious about its new direction with Windows Phone 7. Our reviewer Kevin really enjoyed Nokia’s N9, the design the Lumia 800 is built off of.

Launching with T-Mobile would also seem to be weak choice for Nokia to debut its Windows Phone 7 line in the U.S. But it makes sense in that T-Mobile has been a strong supporter of Nokia for years. And Nokia is familiar with T-Mobile’s bands so preparing the devices for the network was relatively easy. But it still means that Nokia is starting with a struggling fourth-place carrier and will need to move quickly to roll out on the other operators. This is just the first step for Nokia but it will need to do a lot more to really make good on its bet on Windows Phone 7 in the U.S.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
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• The future of mobile: a segment analysis by GigaOM Pro
• The Case for Increased M&A in 2011: Actions and Outlooks
• Mobile Q4: All Eyes Were on Android, 4G and the Rising Tablet Tide

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