AT&T VP Slams Sprint’s Roaming Only Plan for Select Kansas and Oklahoma Customers
In a case of what seems like sour grapes, AT&T’s Senior Vice President-Federal Regulatory and Chief Privacy Officer, Bob Quinn went on a bit of a rant regarding Sprint’s plan to migrate some of Kansas’ and Oklahoma’s customers to roaming only coverage. Quinn stated that “instead of actually investing – and creating jobs – to build out its own network, Sprint wants its customers to roam on other carriers’ networks and investments.”
Quinn faults the FCC’s removal of the Home Market Rule, which prevented carriers from setting up roaming agreements where they already owned their own spectrum. AT&T’s VP concluded his tirade by adding that the current regulation changes are up for review by the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals later this year.
Sprint didn’t take Quinn’s attack lying down, earlier today the Now Network released the following statement:
It’s disappointing, but not surprising, that AT&T wants to challenge a consumer’s right to access email, the Internet and other mobile broadband services wherever they may travel in the U.S. Along with Verizon Wireless, AT&T is the only other wireless carrier in America which opposes the FCC’s pro-consumer data roaming decision from last year.
The facts are that Sprint, as part of its Network Vision program, doubled its 2011 capital investment over 2010 to make tens of thousands of capacity upgrades, resulting in a better wireless experience for its customers. With these network investments, Sprint continues to offer consumers a better value than AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile.
Something tells us that the war of words between these two is far from over. Feel free to share your thoughts on this hot topic.
Source: AT&T
Sprint quote via: The Verge
Further coverage: Sprint
Being one of those that reside in Oklahoma, I am not too happy about this and am considering moving services.
Despite whether his words were fueled by his frustration over the merger or not, he’s absolutely right. Sprint made a big fuss about how AT&T should just invest in their own network instead of buying another to increase, yet they’re doing the exact opposite of increasing coverage. When a carrier can’t even manage to keep the coverage up in their own state, there’s a problem.
Sprint will probably do it for you, once 100% of your usage is roaming usage.
Sprint has really been playing games with its cell towers ever since they sold them off. So if I am in Kansas and now roaming on another companies network doesn’t that mean that CDMA and WiMAX are no longer working? Therefore things like GPS mapping, and Internet speeds are greatly affected or non-existant. I can only assume things will only get worse; it seems that the financial burden that Sprint took on to get the iphone is dramatically affecting its other clients.
Of course the CDMA network is gonna be up, how else would sprint phones work? Maybe not WiMAX because I don’t think there WiMAX roaming.
Well actually there are two types of signal on the sprint CDMA network: 1X is the original signal available when I was using a Palm Treo 650; very slow and not capable of providing signal to GPS and related apps (call it 1G). This was basically a voice based transmission. This is the signal you often get when roaming.
Then EVDO (2Greally) came out to give you more speed with which to run Internet based apps….faster than 1X but nothing to brag about. When you are roaming you are often in the 1X mode and are limited in functionality. You can make a phone call but really not much else. There are many times when I still see signal strength stepping down to 1X especially when in buildings. sprint’s EVDO is very poor at penetrating buildings. The data rates are very slow compared to the lowest 3.5G signals out there
Wimax (finally 3G) is certainly not going to expanded beyond what is currently available because sprint has get into LTE (true 4G) in order to remain relevant. With the issues with Lightsquare’s LTE interferring with GPS signals and not getting certified, plus clearwires trouble, sprint is far behind AT&T and Verizon once again.
A comment (not mine) the original article that explains why Sprint will now be roaming here. Sprint isn’t disinvesting in their network, they are losing a roaming partner that basically let Sprint customers use their network without actually having to pay roaming fees:
A little background: Since 2005 Sprint has had a joint operation and roaming agreement in western Oklahoma and part of Kansas with Pioneer Cellular, wherein they shared construction and operation of 180 towers and had a fully reciprocal roaming agreement with each other. Verizon has no system in that area at all, they have licenses but have never built anything.
In 2010, Pioneer Cellular joined Verizon’s LTE in Rural America program, where a local carrier builds an LTE system, using Verizon’s licenses, and in exchange for allowing Verizon customers to roam on Pioneer’s LTE system, Pioneer’s customers are allowed to use Verizon’s nationwide LTE network.
Sprint has no LTE network and no plans for one, so in essence, Pioneer has dumped Sprint for Verizon, and has built an LTE system which will launch in “Spring”. AT&T has no LTE network here either, and probably never will have, as this area is part of what they are giving up to T-Mobile. AT&T has other coverage, pretty good, actually, so they are basically moaning over the fact they will never have LTE, while Pioneer/Verizon will be launching it in a few months. They are taking out their frustrations on Sprint instead of Pioneer/Verizon.
I love how they say they’re investing more then T-Mobile, have they not seen their 3G/4G coverage map lately? Or used one of their 4G devices those two things are self explanatory of them investing in their network.
Jason, You are partially correct. Pioneer is going forward with the LTE LRA program, however this has nothing to do with Sprint and the 3G roaming. Pioneer is capable of allowing Sprint 3G roaming to continue on their network. Sprint made the choice limit their customers 3G. Think about it… why would Pioneer choose to not have thousands of Sprints customers using their towers? Could it be that maybe Sprint is trying to cut costs at the expense of their customers unlimited data usage…