AT&T’s acquisition of T-Mobile USA will leave AT&T as the only national provider of Global System for Mobile (GSM) technology, paving the way for the telecommunications giant to unilaterally set the rates that smaller wireless providers pay for roaming access, according to a trade organization in a filing Tuesday asking the Federal Communications Commission to reject a merger that it claims is not in the public interest.
Smaller GSM wireless providers “will be dependent on AT&T for roaming arrangements in order to provide their customers with nationwide, seamless connectivity and will be subject to the rates, terms and conditions that AT&T dictates," asserted COMPTEL, the trade group whose members include AT&T rival Sprint Nextel.
The FCC adopted an order in April that requires facilities-based providers of commercial mobile data services to offer data roaming agreements to other providers on commercially reasonable terms and conditions. (Verizon Wireless has appealed the order). But COMPTEL contends in its filing that it “is not possible to negotiate ‘commercially reasonable’ terms and conditions in a monopoly environment because there is no basis for competition."
In a statement issued Tuesday, Rural Cellular Association (RCA) President and CEO Steven Berry declared that AT&T’s $39 billion acquisition of T-Mobile USA “would only further impair smaller competitive carriers – especially GSM carriers – trying to negotiate voice and data roaming agreements and obtain the most up-to-date devices."
COMPTEL also implied that AT&T, post-merger, could use its position as the largest provider of special access services to raise its competitors’ costs for backhaul traffic from cellular sites to the public switched telephone network. AT&T’s indication that it plans to move T-Mobile’s backhaul traffic onto its own network also would prevent competitive providers of special access services from serving T-Mobile, according to the filing.
In a blog posting last month, an AT&T executive, Bob Quinn, noted that T-Mobile doesn’t provide special access services and indicated that the nation’s fourth-largest mobile operator has been moving away from reliance on landline special access services.
