gangrene

Yes, you pay for data access through your phone and it shouldn't be any business of the carrier how you ultimately use it so long as your usage level is reasonable. So outrageous! And yes, competiton for users in Europe is far more intense because devices are universal, there's no barrier as far as putting your device on another network. You pay your ETF and move your phone on another carrier, and if you bought your device unsubsidized you don't even have to worry about that. Truly unlimited plans are still available in certain European markets, particularly Spain and the UK. But even if they weren't, smartphone plans are across the board much lower than they are in the US. Pre-paid users also aren't generally subject to throttling and inferior coverage due to restrictions on roaming. if competiton here were healthy ATT and Verizon wouldn't feel secure enough in their market position to engage in blatant duopolistic behaviors, data prices would be headed down not up, and they wouldn't be able to raise ARPU on a whim.

I don't agree with that at all. You already pay for the data, you should be able to use it how you want. Tethering fees are a completely unethical double-dip and a symptom of just how weak the competition between the different carriers in US wireless market really is. it's akin to paying for water and being charged an extra fee for having a garden hose. Tethering fees are virtually unknown in Europe and Asia where competition among the different wireless carriers is much, much healthier.

Right now T-mobile is the best value when you combine their network performance + pricing. http://www.tmonews.c...artphones-free/ After the network vision upgrade that title will belong to Sprint if they maintain their current pricing structure. In general though, I suspect the pre-paid IPhones and upcoming pre-paid WiMax devices to lure many, many post-paid subscribers from other carriers to the pre-paid side and be a nightmare for them

The pricing options are pretty ridiculous, I wouldn't be surprised if they shed a ton of customers. They're really making life easy for Sprint and T-mobile.

Its a sign that Sprint wants to shed as many Iphones as possible before the Iphone 5 is released.

Robert, would it be wrong to assume that micro/pico/femto cells are going to be way more prominent in the future? This looked like a huge part of clearwire's strategy going forward and that the cost of installing them in shopping malls and schools is almost minimal.

You're completely missing the point. Those suburban markets don't need additional spectrum as long as TD-LTE micro-cells are deployed in high traffic areas where people congregate. It keeps the rest of the network, where there isn't a critical mass of people running smoothly. Textbook Example: It prevents the 2500 students in a High School from dragging down the network performance in an entire neighborhood. The extra capacity is only deployed where it is actually needed.

What you are proposing would turn their network into an overly complicated and difficult to support mess. TD-LTE is the long term solution to any capacity issues that might arise in their top 100 markets & in isolated high traffic areas within their peripheral markets. Converting the existing Clearwire footprint over to TD-LTE from WIMAX is basically trivial. Not to mention there's an ability to add capacity and eliminate performance bottlenecks wherever they start to appear by deploying small cells in high traffic areas like malls, universities, sports arenas, and airports. Their network modernization program is so important because it allows them to have fine grain control over their infrastructure, do real time monitoring and address capacity problems on a site to site basis. Its absolutely key in terms of using their existing spectrum and infrastructure in the most efficient way possible. Its inefficient/old fashioned thinking to view cellular networks as monolithic and assume that Sprint should purchase huge blocks of contiguous spectrum and blanket entire markets when performance bottlenecks are highly localized.

So basically the long and short of it is that access to Clearwire's spectrum gives Sprint a huge long term capacity advantage in all of the big urban markets where most of their customers live. Sprint's rural and semi-rural customers don't need to worry about Clearwire's TD-LTE because its unlikely that those areas will ever need additional capacity beyond whats offered on Sprint's native 1900/800 network.

Rev B would have required additional carriers and they've got a finite amount of spectrum, using the bulk of it for their LTE build out was the right decision. Besides, 3G performance is going to quickly become an afterthought once we're all on LTE.

The core issue here was that Sprint lacked a natural/easy upgrade path for its network because EVDO is an EOL technology that is not extensible like UMTS/WCDMA 3G and needed to explore alternate technologies in order to be competitive. HSPA+ has a long term upgrade path and is still going to be attractive for some gsm operators years down the line.

WiMAX was probably always going to remain an urban-centric technology due to the frequencies it ran on, but what really did it in was the poor execution by clearwire. My real guess is that at some point Sprint probably envisioned mixing its WiMax deployments with future revisions of EVDO, until it became clear that Qualcomm canceled R&D on everything after Rev B and left them without a long term upgrade path.

AT&T is notoriously unreliable in the NYC market, its absolutely needed.

When I say New York, I'm referring to the state as a whole. And thats absolutely the case, exploding pension costs for Tier 2 and Tier 3 public employees are pulling the entire state under and its something that the state won't recover from for decades. http://www.nypost.co...gLQtlrgx6xqkkdI

Maybe. But salaries in several suburban jurisdictions border on obscene. Public sector workers averaging 120 with some getting as much as 180 is unjustifiable in any context. New York is completely underwater financially due insane to public sector pension deals that were made in the 70s and 80s. The property taxes on an average suburban house is 11,000-13,000. Needless to say, nobody in my age group is planning to stick around here long term and buy a house, we're all getting out.

NYPD starting salary is 46 and after 5.5 years the average salary is 78 And I was giving an average for the state, not talking about NYC specifically. Everything I said was accurate, your info is out of date.

That's not true everywhere. Average police pay tops $80,000 in NY, NJ and California with detectives earning well over $100,000. The benefit packages and pensions that these guys get would blow your mind. There's a reason certain states have massive budget deficits and much higher taxes than others.

http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Sprint-Changes-Smartphone-Tablet-Tethering-Pricing-119636 It goes from $30 for 5GB To $20 for 2GB and $50 for 6GB.

Working conditions in China's manufacturing sector are almost uniformly bad across the board. Apple vendors get an undue amount of scrutiny due to their visibility, but its hard to imagine that conditions are any better in the Chinese factories that pump out an endless amount of Android devices, OEM PCs, and game consoles. Or in the segment that manufactures clothing, everyone remembers the Nike, Adidas, and Reebok sweatshop scandals from a decade ago. Recently, a Chinese manufacturer of drywall and other sorts of building materials was caught using slave labor. Authorities raided their factories and freed close to 500 people who had been held captive and force to work without pay for up to 5 years. And as bad as the manufacturing sector is, China's mining industry is likely even worse and has been the subject of multiple forced-labor scandals over the past couple of years. This isn't really an Apple problem, poor labor conditions are a pan-Chinese problem. And as working conditions improve, and wages rise, vendors (especially in the less visibile industries, less high tech) are going to other asian countries with less regulation like Vietnam, Malaysia, and Indonesia.

Whether the equipment gets scrapped or repurposed for international use would really depend on the health and status of the Nextel/iDEN networks in Latin America.

The wireline and wireless markets are inherently very different, none of the Ma Bell stuff is relevant here as long as further consolidation isn't allowed.The competitive model of the wireless industry is a lot closer to Airline industry, where carriers mirror the pricing, and policies of each other in order to avoid meaningful competition. And corporations don't have emotions, they have a singular, legally mandated drive to make as much money for their investors as possible.Acting with any other motive, if you're the CEO of a public company is literally a crime. Sprint keeps unlimited data because its advantageous to them considering their market position. Focusing on APRU isn't as appealing because they haven't reached a critical mass of subscribers like ATT and Verizon, Dan believes he can lure millions of customers from the AT&T and Verizon over the next couple of years if he retains unlimited data and favorable pricing, APRU is secondary compared to subscriber growth.

Service providers shouldn't be allowed to unilaterally change the terms of service and impose new conditions on long term, grandfathered subscribers, the terms of the service agreement should be binding for both parties. Regulations that protect consumers don't hurt competition and wouldn't remove the incentive to invest in network infrastructure. What it would do is force the big carriers to offer new, compelling services and compete for new subscribers in order to increase revenue and not move in an oligopolistic lockstep that allows them to raise ARPU at the drop of a hat and avoid most meaningful forms of competition.

It could be literally weeks away from being announced or it could be over a year away, its very hard to know with Apple. Sprint also needs to offer a compelling Windows Phone device or two, the Lumia 900 is selling like gangbusters on AT&T.

Sprint and T-mobile should partner on Clearwire. Deutsche Telecom has very deep pockets.

Allowing carriers to unilaterally change terms and impose rules like this has got to go.