AT&T today delivered a present to wireless geeks, in the form of a 381-page filing with the Federal Communications Commission making the case for its acquisition of T-Mobile USA.
A big focus of the filing is on network capabilities, as AT&T explains the explosion in data growth and the need to add to T-Mobile’s current and future capacity to its own.
One excerpt, as an example …
At the end of 2010, 61 percent of AT&T’s 68.0 million contract subscribers had “integrated devices,” up from 46.8 percent a year earlier.30 And in the fourth quarter of 2010, integrated devices accounted for more than 80 percent of AT&T’s device sales in connection with contract plans. By the end of 2011, AT&T plans to introduce twenty additional devices, including two LTE tablets and additional LTE devices such as smartphones.
The result is extraordinary and accelerating usage on AT&T’s network. AT&T’s mobile data volumes increased 8000 percent from 2007 to 2010. … That growth is expected to continue. By 2015, AT&T estimates that mobile data traffic on its network will reach eight to ten times what it was in 2010. But another way, in just the first five to seven weeks of 2015, AT&T expects to carry all of the mobile traffic volume it carried during 2010.
As noted by Matt Rosoff of Business Insider, that 8000 percent growth starting in 2007 coincided with the iPhone launch.
Here’s the full filing if you’re interested in taking on all 381 pages.
If you’re not, This is My Next has a good Cliff’s Notes version.
