Monthly Archives: March 2016

landline, Verzion

Frontier All Set to Take over Verizon’s Landline Assets

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Frontier Telecom is all set to acquire all of Verizon’s landline related assets in California, Florida and Texas in the coming month. Clearly this acquisition doesn’t include Verizon’s wireless cell phone services but includes Internet, video and phone services. The transfer is scheduled for April 1.

frontier

Verizon officials have already announced that it will solely focus its business efforts on the wireless service although it continues to hold the landline operations in the northeast industry, said Les Kumagai, Verizon spokesperson. With this move, the home phone services will be exceptionally be affected.

Landlines are expected to be obsolete in the coming years, and other telecommunication networks are aiming at wireless assets, said Jay Prag, professor of economics and finance at the Drucker School of Management at Claremont Graduate University.

Frontier Communications officials state that they plan to maintain the existing products and services including internet, voice, video, and online security. The company also announced that it will honour Verizon’s previous promotional pricing via their advertised deadlines. “We’re excited to be in this business and to be the new service provider for these customers, welcoming them into the family, and we are 100 percent focused on creating a great experience for the new customers,” said Cameron Christian, Frontier Communications vice president of marketing for the West region.

Stamford officials said they were unable to break down the number of employees or customers it will acquire regionally but as per state they are welcoming approx. 5000 Verizon employees to Frontier. Plus, the company is absorbing 3.7 million new customers throughout the states. Other cheap home phone services will have to pull up their socks so as to be competitive enough to defeat the clever move made by Frontier and Verizon telecommunications. New Frontier customers can expect that their bills will be sent out in April with the instruction on some payment options available to them.

AT&T, At&t and T-mobile

“Strong & Centralized FCC leadership” in post-auction transition, urges AT&T

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AT&T, one of the biggest wireless carrier in the US, is all geared up to begin with the preparations for the upcoming incentive auction. Again, AT&T has urged the FCC to lay a foundation for the event, saying that “strong, centralized FCC leadership on the transition will be essential.”
at&t

Later this month, the FCC will begin a “reverse” auction that will eventually see it buy back unwanted airwaves from TV broadcasters. That spectrum will then be auctioned off later this year to companies looking to use it to launch mobile communications services. The FCC has proposed a 39-month timeline for repacking, although that schedule has come under fire by TV broadcasters who say it doesn’t provide enough time.

AT&T didn’t offer an opinion on the proposed timeline in its latest filing, but it did cite the 800 MHz rebanding effort, which began in June of 2005 and was expected to take 36 months but continues today. “We also believe that there are important lessons that can be learned from other FCC projects of similar size, scope, and complexity that underscore the importance of up-front logistical and programmatic planning, careful execution, and robust program management,” wrote Joan Marsh, AT&T’s vice president of federal regulatory, in the filing. “While the 800 MHz rebanding in many ways was more complex than this effort, there are also many similarities. Notably, the 800 MHz rebanding effort began with the belief that the band could be fully re-organized within 36 months. We now know, in hind sight, that the effort will in fact take more than a decade to complete.”

AT&T went on to urge the FCC to make sure it has the resources in place to produce a detailed transition plan for comment and feedback within a few months of the auction’s conclusion. “A carefully developed and regionally prioritized plan, coupled with strong project management, is essential to managing key dependencies and to controlling constraints and challenges,” the operator wrote. “AT&T urges the FCC to utilize all means available to it to ensure that it has the necessary expertise and resources available to establish and execute on an effective and expeditious repacking plan as soon as the auction concludes.”

It is expected that AT&T would be the dominant bidder at the FCC’s upcoming incentive auction, and is even planning to spend around $10 billion on the licenses.

FCC

FCC Plans to Subsidize Internet Access for Low Income Families

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People who do not have regular access to internet can fall behind in school, at work and even in other everyday tasks. It has become quite the norm for grade school teachers to assign students work that requires internet access. Also, internet has become a major component of today’s professional world. You need to check your emails regularly so that you don’t miss any business opportunity. But for that you need internet access.

Federal Communications Commission

Being aware of how important internet access is to every home, the Federal Communications Commission announced a final proposal to its members to approve a broadband subsidy of $9.25 a month for low-income households, in the government’s boldest effort to date to narrow a technological divide that has emerged between those who have web access and those who do not. “While more than 95 percent of households with incomes over $150,000 have high-speed Internet at home, just 48 percent of those making less than $25,000 can afford the service”, said the F.C.C.’s chairman, Tom Wheeler.

The new plan is said to be a part of an overhaul of a $2 billion phone subsidy program called Lifeline and will go to vote on March 31. “When we talk about digital equity, we need to remember that we’re talking a key part of the answer to many of our nation’s greatest challenges — issues like income inequality, job creation, economic growth, U.S. competitiveness,” Mr. Wheeler said last month in a speech on the plan.

“Five million American families with students at home go without regular broadband access,” said FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel. “We need to bridge this gap and fix this problem because our shared economic future depends on it.”

Senior officials at the FCC who prepared this new Lifeline proposal said “the agency hopes the subsidy will also encourage Internet service providers like Comcast, AT&T and Time Warner Cable to go into low-income areas where they may not normally make a profit.”

Sprint

Sprint Chief Experience Officer Johnson to Leave Company Next Month, Will be Replaced by Former T-Mobile Exec

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Bob Johnson, Chief Experience Officer at Sprint will leave the company next month, just 14 months after being named to the position. The struggling carrier said, in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that “Johnson’s tenure will end April 29. A Sprint representative said she had no comment on the move.”

SprintIt has been confirmed that Robert Hackl, named President of National Sales, will replace Johnson. Hackl has worked as Senior Vice President of Channel Management at T-Mobile US from 2010 to 2013. Hackl will join Sprint April 1, reporting to CEO Marcelo Claure.

Claure had named Johnson to the newly created role in November 2014 as part of a flurry of front-office moves that saw Marcelo- relatively new to his position as CEO- put his stamp on the organization. Those moves included the departure of several longtime executives including CMO Jeff Hallock, who was briefly replaced by Kevin Crull in May 2015. In other front-office shakeups three months ago, Crull was placed in charge of Sprint’s central U.S. region and Roger Solé was named CMO.

Johnson was “responsible for delivering a world-class customer experience at all customer touch-points,” Claure said at the time he named Johnson to the post, expanding his role overseeing Sprint’s customer care and IT groups. A 32-year veteran of the telecom industry, Johnson joined Nextel in 1998.

Sprint’s fourth-quarter earnings have substantially exceeded Wall Street estimates, but still the company is facing serious challenges. Perhaps this is the reason that these moves are happening. The operator continues to work to cut as much as $2.5 billion from its budget. It slashed 2,500 jobs in January during a third round of layoffs and it carries more than $30 billion in debt of which $2.3 billion comes due this year.