T-Mobile hits back at AT&T and Verizon after spectrum-hoarding accusations
Carrier battle heats up as FCC prepares to auction more spectrum. …
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T-Mobile US CEO Mike Sievert yesterday fired back at AT&T and Verizon, saying the carriers’ complaints about T-Mobile obtaining more spectrum licenses show that they are afraid of competition.
“The duopolists are scrambling to block this new competition any way they can… Suddenly in the unfamiliar position of not having a dominant stranglehold on the wireless market, and preferring not to meet the competitive challenge in the marketplace, AT&T and Verizon are urging the FCC to slow T-Mobile down and choke off our ability to compete fairly for added radio spectrum,” Sievert wrote in a blog post.
As we wrote Monday, Verizon and AT&T have urged the Federal Communications Commission to impose limits on T-Mobile’s ability to obtain more spectrum licenses. AT&T complained that T-Mobile’s acquisition of Sprint allowed it to amass “an unprecedented concentration of spectrum.”
Verizon in August petitioned the FCC to reconsider its acceptance of a new lease that would give T-Mobile another 10MHz to 30MHz of spectrum in the 600MHz band in 204 counties. But “the main event,” according to Sievert, is the FCC’s upcoming C-band spectrum auction in December, which will distribute 280MHz of spectrum in the 3.7–3.98GHz band.
“Anticipated to raise many billions of dollars for American taxpayers, the C-band is the largest pool of new spectrum expected any time in the near future,” Sievert wrote.
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