AT&T, T-Mobile, & Huawei allies hire Trumpians

AT&T just hired Margaret Peterlin — who was an aide for Trump's Secretary of State Rex Tillerson — as senior vice president, global external and public affairs. T-Mobile hired Trump's tech guy, Jeff Eisenach, for analysis backing the Sprint deal. Jeff is a skilled economist who can always make an argument that reads well in a policy brief.* I don't know the actual numbers here, but the best-placed lawyers and DC advocates bill out at well over $1,000/hour. Peterlin's job presumably pays well into the $millions.

That's typical D.C. behavior, where we have the best Congress money can buy. 

Former U.S. Solicitor-General Ted Olsen declined the role of defending Donald Trump in the Mueller investigation, despite his strong ties to the Republican Party. But as a Washington lawyer-for-hire, Olsen is happily opposing the FCC de facto ban of Huawei through rules on universal service purchases.

Like most lobbyist filings, it's mostly hyperbole.

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20M FTTH in Spain, 14M+ soon in Brazil, 20M+ in France, 3M/yr at AT&T, 300M connected in China

I didn't believe it until I double-checked the figures. Telefonica Spain added 500,000 homes passed by fibre to the home in Q1 2018 to reach 19.7M. Three months later, they are almost certainly over 20M, over 75% of Spain. They are now making more money per customer (EBITDA,) seeing less churn, and reducing operating expenses on the new network. The financial results were so favorable the Brazilian subsidiary, VIVO, is also adding 7M. VIVO's total will be 14M by 2020. 

Across Europe, iDate and the Fibre to the Home Council calculate FTTB/FTTH rose by 20% in 2017. British Telecom and Deutsche have fone very little do far but have planned over 20M lines starting in 2019. Below, the iDate/FTTH charts for all of Europe. The trend is obvious.

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Dave in South China Morning Post: China is already a leader in telecom

Fifteen years ago, a brilliant French switch engineer claimed, "The Chinese can never do what we do." I looked at him and replied, "B_______. Hundreds of Asians worked in Bell Labs. Do you think their cousins back home are not as smart as they are?" His company is long gone. Two of the five leading telecom manufacturers are Chinese, one Korean, one Swedish, and one Finnish. No company in France - or the United States - can deliver a major mobile network. 

An SCMP article covered the long march still ahead to match Intel processors. That's not true in telecom. Qualcomm still probably makes the best mobile chips, but Huawei's HiSilicon is very close. Know-nothings in D.C. thought ZTE was dependent on America and made bad policy.

90% of the ZTE components could be immediately sourced today in Asia. The remaining few, mostly RF and FPGA, are actively being researched in China and could be quickly developed.

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YesandNo

Yes Donald Trump ending the boycott of ZTE. It would have failed in 6-12 months as ZTE & China prove they don't need U.S. SMIC has purchased a $120B EUV chipmaking machine and will offer the most advanced fabrication services.

Yes India's Bharatnet has connected 350,000 villages with fiber and expects the remaining 350,000 within a year. Next step: Adding Wi-Fi, often by local businessmen

No, No, No Giving ?Verizon $B's in 3.5 GHz spectrum for relatively nothing. That's the end result of the rules proposed by Intelsat and SES covering what had been satellite spectrum.

No Claiming Net Neutrality caused a major drop in investment. The data falls apart when closely examined by anyone objective.

No EU recommending 20-year spectrum terms without any evidence it will increase investment. Almost all spectrum should be shared.

Yes Xavier Niel's Salt is offering 10 gigabits to 1.3M Swiss homes for 50 Swiss francs 

Jedi Xavier Returns After Orange Empire Strikes Back

Xavi is riding to the rescue after Free lost 19,000 broadband subscribers in Q1, an almost inconceivable result after 16 years of success. He's bringing back some of the original team, including legendary engineer Rani Assaf. They have work to do: opening Italy & Ireland, transitioning from 4G to ?, and dealing with invigorated competitors. Even Bouygues seems to be coming back. 

Orange/France Telecom now has a better network and is promoting aggressively. FT offers fiber to 9.6M homes, Free only to 6.8M.  FT has 97% 4G coverage, Free only 88%. The stock price has seriously fallen while Xavi invested in 400 startups, built the school 42, and created Station F, the world's largest startup incubator.

One of the first things Niel intends to do is to rev up the fiber build. He expects to add 2M servable homes by the end of this year and enable 20M - 80% of the country - by 2022. The business strategy will be to sell hard in the fiber areas, looking to add 500,000 or more each year.

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ZTE Freedom Will Cost $5-10B. Cheap!

Update: May 13: Trump blinked. He tweeted, "Too many jobs in China lost,. Commerce Department has been instructed to get it done!" Previous: The maximum cost to keep the company going for two years would be about $10B if they didn't sell a single product. With some fast engineering work and smart management, survival would cost less than $5B. 

The money will be found and the company almost certainly saved. 80% to 90% of ZTE's requirements can be immediately sourced in Asia. DC now needs to cut the U.S. losses. Apple stock lost $60B when Trump declared war. China's response will include developing national alternatives for any product that is dependent on a U.S. supplier. They also will go for the international market.

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T-Mobile Watch: Chances Falling As Errors Reported, Missing Time Machine

May 3 John Legere took a dangerous gamble basing his campaign for T-Mobile-Sprint on a falsehood, that the deal would deliver much faster 5G, sooner, and that would produce $billions in social gains. I immediately knew his claims were bogus. 

The deal had a 50-50 chance on Monday but is plummeting as FCC & DOJ get woke. This is the summary; six articles from the last few days are linked in the text and below.

A smoking gun: From Bell Labs with LTE & 5G the same 

The New York Times may have killed the merger with “The Implausible Promises of a T-Mobile-Sprint Merger.” Maybe the lethal blow came at the BK 5G Conference last Wednesday,I found low-band “5G” is little better than 4G LTE, apples to apples. Former FCC Chair Wheeler used the 25% estimate. 

The only way the new T-Mobile could bring 5G sooner is to build it in 2017. That would be difficult.

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Goldman Sachs Puts $750M Into Brit Fiber

Goldman & Antin just bought CityFibre for $750M, a rich price. Fiber is back, bigtime. Pension funds and others want long term investments they believe will have a regular return. CityFibre has a deal with Vodafone to build fiber to 1M homes. (Below) With the new investors, CityFibre plans 5M homes. They expect costs under $1,000/home. probably well under.

Enel Open Fibre in Italy just collected $3.5B towards an $8B plan. AT&T has added $1B to raise the 2018 fiber build to 4M. Telefonica is over 15M homes passed, about 75% of Spain. Orange is not far behind in France & Spain. Iliad/Free is now up to 6M in France after a very slow start. Liberty Global is doing millions of lines. Bell Canada, Telus, and even Telefonica Brazil are doing millions more.

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