Back in the early 1990s a young lady from AT&T came by to sandbag the Decatur, Georgia City Council.
I was at the meeting on other business, and after she finished I suggested that, instead of destroying the MARTA parking lot near my house (as AT&T demanded) the council could simply invite BellSouth into building a tower at their training center across the street.
I don’t know if I had anything to do with it, but eventually that’s just what happened.
Since then an important change has occurred. Instead of keeping the towers, as the cell companies could have done, the towers have been spun out into their own industry.
This is the cellular industry’s Achilles Heel, and a key to maintaining competition alive.
The Wireless Report (the picture is from their post) has a story out right now on consolidation in the tower space. It’s not really a great business (which is why the carriers got out of it). But it’s vital that this space be kept independent.
So long as tower companies are independent of cellular carriers, there is an incentive for competition. The tower outfits would be happy if there were a bunch of outfits on their towers, maybe with WiMax antennae providing backhaul to neighborhood WiFi networks. The cellular carriers, which are mainly owned by the Bells, would not be happy with this.
The Bells have succeeded in kicking competitors out of their switch
center, buying-off the government. Let’s make sure they don’t do it in
wireless as well.
As always, the simplest and best solution is a law saying that the network owner can only wholesale and no retailer can own a network.
As always, the simplest and best solution is a law saying that the network owner can only wholesale and no retailer can own a network.