AT&T Takes The Gloves Off: Acuses Sprint Of Exploiting Roaming Laws – Sprint Fires Back
Grab the popcorn, folks. AT&T’s Bob Quinn must have had a bad taco for dinner because he’s spittin’ some fire in Sprint’s direction after accusing the #3 carrier of relying on roaming deals in Kansas and Oklahoma to cut costs. In an blog post Bob said,
“Sprint can now use other folks’ networks rather than pony up its own investment dollars. 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.”
This comes after some material changes to Sprint’s network in those areas in which Sprint will be shutting down some of it’s own coverage in favor of roaming agreements with CDMA competitors like Verizon Wireless. The FCC recently changed a few policies like requiring carriers to offer high-speed data roaming (in addition to voice) and abolishing the old “Home Market Rule” which prevented carriers from creating roaming agreements with competitors in markets where they owned their own spectrum.
Sprint was quick to respond saying,
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.
We’ll let you know if AT&T takes another jab at Sprint in the meantime, what are your thoughts on this whole mess?