Worst of the Week: Big plans for small towns

Hello! And welcome to our Friday column, Worst of the Week. There’s a lot of nutty stuff that goes on in this industry, so this column is a chance for us at RCRWireless.com to rant and rave about whatever rubs us the wrong way. We hope you enjoy it!
And without further ado:
Wow! That’s all I can say about this week’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, and I didn’t even attend in person this year. But, just watching the amount of news from the wireless industry that spewed from the event was overwhelming, even from afar.
There is no way humanly possible to even try to attempt to cover all the news, though I think we tried, so instead I would like to hit on one topic that grabbed my lapels, slapped me in the face and called me Lucky.
It appeared that wireless carriers waged some sort of numbers warfare at this year’s show, throwing around plans to cover hundreds of millions of “pops” with their “4G” networks over the next dozens of months. This is good news for all those folks who can’t wait to start clogging up these super networks with their Netflix watching and cat video uploading. (We will ignore the whole pricing issue of these activities at the moment as it seems carriers still have no idea how to approach this subject. They know what they want to charge, but if they publicly announce what they want to charge, they know they are going to get throttled in the media and eventually on Capital Hill.)
However, from looking at the numbers and some of the markets announced to be covered, it looks like all of this awesome 4G coverage is going to be concentrated in the same areas. What the hell? Sure, if you are lucky enough to live in a top 50 market this will be good news as you will have a wide selection of 4G service providers to choose from, but for the other 100 million or so people who live in between these markets, it looks like you will have to just suck it up and wait. Slowly. Like dial-up modem slowly.
For this reason I have a bit of unwarranted advice for one carrier. You see, AT&T Mobility announced at the show that it was going to speed up its planned LTE network rollout that is to include covering 70 million people by the end of the year, but did the smart thing by not mentioning any markets. Now, I am sure they will go along with the herd and begin rolling out services in all the same big markets where the other guys already offer their 4G services, and who can really blame them. I ain’t much good with numbers and stuff, but I am guessing there is some sort of population-density equation that makes these markets more attractive to rolling out wireless services.
But, why not break from the pack and do something bold? Something that will resonate in commercials and marketing material and on Capital Hill. Go rural!
That’s right. Instead of throwing up new antennas on top of where your competitors are already beaming 4G services to the elite in big cities, start putting up antennas on all the weather vanes, grain silos and 200-foot tall towers that dot the countryside.
Hear me out on this (or don’t). You would likely be the only game in town in many of these locations, and probably for some time. This would allow you not only a near monopoly on wireless high-speed services (and who at AT&T wouldn’t like to have a monopoly again?), but you would also have very little competition from wired broadband services that are still vacant in most rural areas.
Besides most people already have speeds Internet connections where they live and where they work, and in all of those places in between these people should be more concerned about focusing on how they are moving between these locations than with trying to watch high-definition kitten videos on YouTube.
Also, and this is the best part, if you set up the network right, all of those Verizon Wireless LTE customers with their bright and shiny new smart phones and tablets will be reliant on you to power their devices once they venture outside of the “red shadow” of their native coverage. Sure, most of those Verizon Wireless LTE devices will want to fall back to the carrier’s CDMA coverage, but my guess is that consumers won’t. You could even put up billboards near the fringe of these locations touting to Verizon Wireless customers: “Now leaving Verizon Wireless’ network. Feel free to continue using your fancy-pants devices at blazing fast speeds thanks to AT&T.”
Don’t think Verizon Wireless is not well aware of its issues of rural coverage as evidenced by its LTE in Rural America program.
Are there holes in my plan? Sure. But those coverage holes for 4G services in rural America are bigger and in some serious need of filling. Be bold AT&T Mobility. Go rural.
OK, enough of that.
Thanks for checking out this week’s Worst of the Week column. And now for some extras courtesy of our RCRBlog at uplugged.www.rcrwireless.com:
—(From Dan Meyer) How do I know the world’s economy is set to rebound? Because the Yankee Group just released a report forecasting tablet sales will triple by the end of 2014. Sure, there were not that many sold to begin with so a tripling is not such a big deal, but the fact that so many people are going to buy a device that is so utterly useless shows how much discretionary income we as humans really have and our lack of thought into where we spend it. The perfect scenario for economic recovery.
I say this because I have yet to hear one valid argument for the usefulness of a tablet device.
E-readers? I can see a reason for those to exist. They are fairly cheap, you can buy books on them for less than what a real book costs and they are easy on batteries.
Netbooks? They make sense for those who are tired of lugging around a five-pound laptop and 10-pound charger when all they need to do is some Web browsing, e-mail and word processing. Plus they are again fairly cheap and do not require users to make any real adjustments to their computer usage compared with traditional devices.
Smart phones? Really? You have to ask about smart phones? We all know that the ability to play “Angry Birds” is enough of a reason for these devices to exist.
Tablets? I just don’t get it. They are expensive. They are just big enough that they can’t fit safely into one hand, but small enough to make us think that we can somehow carry them around until we drop them. Sure you can surf the Internet with them or at least surf most of the Internet dependant on which tablet OS you are using. Some might say that the bigger screens on tablet devices are a perfect avenue for consumers to watch television and movies. I agree that a bigger screen is better for this, but there is no way a wireless carrier is going to just let people download television programs and movies in high-definition (is there really any other kind?) on their networks without charging a prohibitively large amount of money.
What about Wi-Fi? Why(-Fi) would anyone want to watch a television program or movie on a 10-inch screen over Wi-Fi when they are likely to be doing so in the comfort of their own home or a hotel room somewhere, the only places where a Wi-Fi signal is likely to be located and where people will be in a position to spend a couple of hours watching such
programming, when they are likely to have some 40-inch or larger high-definition
television screen in that same location?
If someone can find a legitimate reason for the existence for tablets, I am all ears. But, in the meantime, hello economic recovery!
—(From Tracy Ford) So when did the wireless industry decide that news can only be released on three weeks of the year? Evidently the only weeks worthy of making announcements are during CES, Mobile World Congress and CTIA – and from the looks of my inbox, wireless companies are announcing more and more at CES.
The problem with this is that we journalists get overwhelmed about what to cover. While the operators are giving keynote speeches touting how fast their networks are, and the device makers are showing off every new tablet and super phone (Really? Super phone? Can’t we just agree that smart phones are really smart and are super too?) there is other news on every aspect of the wireless ecosystem but only so much time energy to type. (Feeling like a deer caught in the headlights, I am choosing to blog about this problem instead of tackle all of the worthy announcements in said inbox.) And then of course, Apple Inc., which generally snubs wireless trade shows, has to be monitored as well because it has a history of trying to usurp CES news. (I take comfort in the fact that I am not the only person around who is petty from time to time.)
Any company on shaky ground financially or otherwise can submit any kind of filing at the SEC that is sure to go unnoticed because everyone is waiting in a line at CES or online waiting to hear Steve Ballmer say something new.
Frankly, if I were in charge of a company’s PR campaign, I would make my splash two weeks from now. Everyone will spend next week digging out from all of the email this week, but be looking for something fresh the week after that. That is when I would introduce my Super-Duper Phone.
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