AT&T, Verizon Tangle Over 5G Service for Emergency Responders (wsj.com) 17
Two of the nation's major telecommunications companies are feuding over a plan to boost service for police, firefighters and other state and local agencies -- a move Verizon says would amount to a $14 billion gift to rival. From a report: AT&T and its allies are asking regulators to provide more wireless frequencies to FirstNet, a cellular network launched in 2017 to connect emergency responders and other public-sector groups. The Dallas-based telecom giant holds an exclusive 25-year contract to run the network for the federal FirstNet Authority, which oversees the project.
Rival telecom companies say the proposal would let AT&T's commercial business piggyback on those airwaves free. Verizon, which vies with FirstNet for public-safety contracts, called the proposal a giveaway of spectrum valued at around $14 billion that would give its competitor a "substantial windfall." T-Mobile US likewise urged regulators to avoid a "FirstNet takeover" of the spectrum. The carrier hasn't made its case as forcefully as Verizon, whose chief executive traveled to Washington twice in recent weeks to lobby regulators.
Rival telecom companies say the proposal would let AT&T's commercial business piggyback on those airwaves free. Verizon, which vies with FirstNet for public-safety contracts, called the proposal a giveaway of spectrum valued at around $14 billion that would give its competitor a "substantial windfall." T-Mobile US likewise urged regulators to avoid a "FirstNet takeover" of the spectrum. The carrier hasn't made its case as forcefully as Verizon, whose chief executive traveled to Washington twice in recent weeks to lobby regulators.
Yeah (Score:2)
Verizon? Oh, the people who tried to charge me money for a "find my phone" function?
Yeah. Fuck you.
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Wasn't Verizon the one who charged some California fire departments extra fees for exceeding their data cap right in the middle of fire season?
F* Verizon and f* AT&T. AT&T can't keep FirstNet running (our municipalities use it for data only). Listen to the tech support frequency on the scanner and laugh every time I hear "The network is down." Voice wireless is still handled locally and the cities would have to be nuts to change. Cellular coverage in my neighborhood is shit.
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Re: Yeah (Score:2)
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Verizon has always had true unlimited (i.e., no asterisks like throttling) plans for government agencies.
If only you would have signed over your eternal soul and firstborn*, you too could have had the DeLuxe government plan.
*And forever abandoned your public service bands to us so you can never go back.
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You should split them up. Separate the network operators and the service providers.
The network operator's job is purely to keep the network maintained and sell access to it. The service providers are the ones you contract with for data and call services, and they use part of the fee to pay the network operator. Removes conflicts of interest and creates an incentive to provide a decent service, because from the customer's point of view they have both a choice of networks and a choice of service providers. Se
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The cherry on top of this whole thing is that orange turd was shot by a conservative with an ar-15 https://www.theguardian.com/us... [theguardian.com]
“The majority of the class were on the liberal side, but Tom, no matter what, always stood his ground on the conservative side,” Smith said. “That’s still the picture I have of him. Just standing alone on one side while the rest of the class was on the other.”
died wearing a right wing shirt too
I'm just posting to undo an accidental moderation.
Re: Hahha (Score:2)
By posting useful facts? Yes, that is the best way, as evinced by triggering a troll still insulting people with the word "retard".
FirstNet is WorstNet (Score:3, Interesting)
My wife is a flight nurse. A couple years ago the company she worked for requested all employees move over to FirstNet for "enhanced coverage and priority for first responders". So dutifully we moved over. I can say from first hand experience that FirstNet by AT&T was literally the worse service we had, ever! Over the years we've been with the big 3 carriers in the U.S. and FirstNet blew them all out of the water in how bad it was. Constant dropped calls and missed texts. Abysmal "5G" speeds (.5Mbs vs 500Mbs on T-mobile, same spot, same phone). The flight crews discovered they couldn't receive texts and calls while airborne in the helicopter and FirstNet basically said it was impossible, even though they did on other carriers. It was such a huge success that the company dumped FirstNet a few months later. Luckily we brought our own devices and weren't locked in to a multi-year agreement. Others were not so lucky.
Verizon, is of course, Verizon and they suck in their own separate and special ways and T-mobile can't keep your data safe no matter how hard they try. But FirstNet by far is such a horrible disservice to first responders that the gov't should tear up that 25 year contract right now and take whatever hit financially by backing out of it. IMO, FirstNet trying to coerce Verizon into helping them out only underscores how bad a service it really is.
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It is the FCC, not the FAA.
The FCC prohibits civilian use of cellphones in flight because it's effective a DoS attack against the ground based towers. Your cellphone is only supposed to see maybe 2-3 towers at any one time (all the other towers are too far away to matter). However, at 30,000 feet up in the air, your cellphone can see dozens to hundreds of towers. And the cellphone band plan
A gift? (Score:2)
Funny thing, Verizon has had no problem with the hundreds of billions of dollars worth of taxpayer gifts it's received over the decades. Gifts, I might add, which were supposed to be used to increase broadband to the very U.S. citizens who paid for the gifts.
Anybody remember when there was ONE Bell company? (Score:2)
Yeah, unless we want to go back to that (and I sure know I don't), we're going to have this problem...something got done without appropriate oversight in place, no single carrier out there appears that interested in competing for this particular niche in the communications market - unless we chum the water with more good old-fashioned taxpayer dollars. Otherwise, whose toes you gonna hold to the fire for this one - AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, Bubba's Bait and Cellphone Store? Our government would seem to
Bad management and bad policy (Score:2)
It sounds like another phone company and it sounds small, so it won't have its own FO cables and points-of-presence: Since there isn't a single long-haul provider in the USA, it means FirstNet is renting cable from a competitor. How did a fly-by-night corporation get a contract to provide nation-wide service? That needs to be fixed.
Why don't Fire/medical/Police services already have their own frequencies? That should be step one, anything else is bad management and bad policy. It's kinda disgusting tha