Bloomberg Businessweek writes about T-Mobile CEO John Legere’s shake-up of traditional business models in the US wireless industry in “T-Mobile’s Wacky Plan to Trash the Wireless Business Model“. Earlier this year, Macquarie Bank predicted T-Mobile would lose 1.6 million subscribers this year and an additional 400,000 in 2014. But that was before T-Mobile started to shake things up in the marketplace. In the second quarter, T-Mobile added 685,000 postpaid customers beating US industry leaders Verizon (472,000) and AT&T (153,000).

Legere has not been overcome by a temporary spasm of crazed generosity. His is merely the first company in the U.S. market to acknowledge reality. Wireless telecommunications in the U.S. is on its way to becoming what the industry has fought against for two decades: a commodity business, where carriers and un-carriers all look the same and prices keep going down.

T-Mobile has been investing to turn around the market perception. As the number four player in the US, T-Mobile needed to convince customers that its network coverage may be smaller but it is still big enough. Its network now covers 200M people, about 60% of the population of the US.

T-Mobile’s year of un-carrier behavior has proved that in fact, above about 150 million POPs, customers are sensitive to price. And the simpler plans get, the harder it is to shade price differences with tiered plans and phone subsidies. All the other carriers are going to have to come down and fight with the smiling guy in pink.

The story hits news stands on November 1, but is available online.

While CBC may attract lots of visits to its website through articles warning of wireless radiation, it neglected coverage of an important release from a public health official. Toronto’s Medical Officer of Health has recommended that the City of Toronto eliminate its policy of Prudent Avoidance, a 5-year old policy of asking wireless carriers to keep RF emission levels 100 times below Health Canada’s public exposure guideline, Safety Code 6.

The summary from the Medical Officer of Health says:

From its review of recent health evidence, TPH [Toronto Public Health] notes that the majority scientific opinion indicates that the health risk to the public from cell towers and other telecommunications sources of RFs is low.
…
Based on a review of evidence and TPH’s experience implementing the policy, continued application of the [Prudent Avoidance] policy in the form of a stricter exposure guideline is no longer necessary as it does not confer a health benefit to the residents of Toronto.

In a more detailed report, Toronto Public Health sharply criticized the opposing viewpoints.

The most vocal opposing view has been put forward by scientists contributing to the BioInitiative Report. This report has been evaluated by a number of health scientists and public health agencies as being characterized by biased and selective interpretation of scientific data, leading to unscientific and alarming conclusions about a range of health conditions.

Among the most damning critiques of the Bio-Initiative Report, incorporated in the Toronto Public Health report by footnote, was an article in Science-Based Medicine that refers to the BioInitiative Report as “an egregiously slanted review of health and biological effects of electromagnetic fields (EMF) of the sort that are produced by power lines, cellular telephones, Wi-Fi, and other mainstays of modern life.”

Toronto Public Health addressed the question of non-specific symptoms – symptoms that some have called environmental sensitivity to RF and other electromagnetic fields.

There is, however, growing evidence that the perception of exposure is associated with experiencing symptoms and as such, that a nocebo effect with respect to cell towers is likely contributing to individuals‟ reporting of such health complaints. (This conclusion in no way diminishes the serious nature of these complaints which some individuals experience as severe and debilitating.) The nocebo effect refers to the observation that people may experience adverse symptoms because of their negative expectations or concerns about cell towers. In particular, people tend to feel more at risk from environmental health hazards when they lack control over their exposure or have little perceived benefit from exposure.

While CBC chose to give unwarranted attention to some well meaning but ill-informed junk science, Toronto Public Health noted that broadcast antennas, not cell towers, were the major contributors to RF levels in Toronto. It is unclear whether the authors of the CBC articles understood that CBC’s own radio and TV transmitters have been beaming radio frequency energy for decades before the cell phone was introduced. Indeed, Industry Canada’s evaluation of EMF Intensity in the City of Toronto found that the CBC Broadcast Centre is Toronto’s hottest location, still less than 6% of limits.

The Toronto Public Health report cites a review by the British Columbia Centre for Disease Control and National Collaborating Centre for Environmental Health for a helpful explanation for why RF levels would not increase over time:

Although intuitively, one may assume that an increase in base stations means higher ambient exposure, mobile phones do not need to use as much power (due to adaptive control) to communicate with the base stations due to shorter distances. As a good connection translates into lower output power levels, urban centres with higher base station densities often experience lower RF than rural centres.

I wrote about that effect last year in a blog post called “We need more towers.” CBC did a disservice to Canadians in promoting purveyors of junk science while failing to cover the important report from Toronto’s Medical Officer of Health that recommends the elimination of its prudent avoidance policy. The full report is worth reading.

The closing session of The 2009 Canadian Telecom Summit featured the leaders of the 3 new entrant wireless carriers: Tony Lacavera of Wind Mobile, Dave Dobbin of Mobilicity and Alek Krstajic of Public Mobile. Some of their antics of the three trading barbs can be seen in videos captured by Mobile Syrup, and as we wrote at the time, Alek let loose with a zinger during his opening remarks:

Take a look at the three of us up here… two of us will not be here at next year’s telecom summit. Or we’ll be here but have different business cards.

With yesterday’s announced transaction and the government approval of TELUS acquiring Public Mobile’s spectrum, only one of those leaders, Tony Lacavera, still remains in place.

At the 2009 event, Alek had expressed hope to sell Public Mobile after acquiring many more customers.

Public Mobile, bidding as 6934579 Canada, bought 10 MHz of “less attractive” spectrum in the most populated parts of Ontario and Quebec for just $50M. Although the Minister’s statement says “G-block spectrum is not used for the latest data plans and smart phones in Canada and is of a significantly lesser value than other types of spectrum”, the evolution of data services on Public Mobile was more constrained by its own business strategy to simply focus on basic voice and text services with just 5+5 MHz of spectrum. Like Sprint in the US, it deployed CDMA technology on the band. However, CDMA is coming to the end of its life cycle and access to low-cost G-block capable handsets is on the horizon. While Sprint is transitioning its spectrum to LTE, Public Mobile had no other bands to use for migrating its 280,000 customers.

TELUS still operates a CDMA network and virtually overnight, Public Mobile’s customers will be able to wake up to their handsets operating on the more robust national network. This will allow TELUS to shut down the Public Mobile network in its entirety and combine the G-Block spectrum with that it acquired earlier this year from Novus, likely to be used by TELUS as part of its arsenal for LTE.

Public Mobile is said to have 280,000 customers, a little less than 1% of the Canadian mobile wireless market. In the Minister’s statement yesterday, he confirmed an emphasis on maintaining competition in the market: “This transaction does not materially change the spectrum concentration of incumbents in this country and therefore will not diminish competition in our wireless sector.”

Mobilicity has had its client base decline to significantly less than 200,000 customers as the uncertainty of its future overhangs its operations. The incumbent acquisition clause in its spectrum licenses expire in just over 3 months. With only about 0.5% of the market, would its consolidation into an incumbent be judged differently?

While some people have been focused on Industry Canada’s update of the 700 MHz auction bidders list, changing status to “Provisionally qualified”, there was another change announced, impacting the bidders’ behavioral rules.

The response to Q2.14 has changed to permit discussions between bidders and affiliates of bidders regarding their beneficial ownership:

For example, discussions by an affiliate of Bidder A with another bidder regarding a potential change in ownership or control of that affiliate are not captured under the auction rules, as long as the potential change in ownership or control of the affiliate of Bidder A does not affect the beneficial ownership of Bidder A.

This change should enable more open discussions about potential transactions involving companies such as Mobilicity or Allstream to take place.

Crown Castle International has announced a deal to buy the rights to 9700 wireless services towers owned by AT&T in a deal worth $4.85B – that works out to $500,000 per tower. Crown Castle claims to be the largest wireless infrastructure player in the US, with 40,000 towers, representing nearly half the towers in the top 50 urban markets.

Under the arrangement, AT&T will lease back space on the towers for $1900 per month for 10 years, covering about half of the original price. Under the agreement, Crown Castle will have the exclusive right to lease and operate the AT&T towers for a weighted average term of about 28 years. At the end of the leases, there is an option for Crown Castle to purchase the towers for a further $4.2 billion. Those purchases, if exercised, would be primarily between 2032 and 2048.

In Canada, the construction of a tower costs about $250K, but this does not include the land or the costs associated with permits. There are continuing costs for rent and maintenance of each site. The valuation of the AT&T deal appears to provide a break even point if Crown Castle can increase the current average occupancy of each tower by 20%, rising from 1.7 to 2 tenants per tower.

The carrier gets to unlock value in its infrastructure, allowing Crown Castle to aggressively market the real estate.