T-Mobile has claimed it needs a cell tower in the middle of a northwest Glendale residential area in order to provide coverage for its customers. The neighbors who formed Glendale Organized Against Cell Towers haven’t found many T-Mobile subscribers living in the immediate area of the tower; they also have found that T-Mobile seems to have excellent coverage.
T-Mobile’s current business strategy is to make up for its falling basic customer base with high-end wireless internet plans, which is probably the reason they want to install the tower in northwest Glendale: to compete for market share by offering wireless internet access for laptops and mobile devices.
T-Mobile is losing market share to AT&T and Verizon, according to news reports this past week. It hopes to make up the losses with 3G smartphones providing internet access and data. According to Telephony Online,
T-Mobile USA saw both its subscriber growth slow and its churn increase in the fourth quarter, but its new 3G network made its first big impact on customer number.
…T-Mobile’s subscriber additions fell to 621,000, compared to 951,000 it added a year previous. What’s more, T-Mobile’s contract customer additions fell to 267,000 or 43% of its net additions, compared to 733,000 of overall adds year-over-year. In short, not only has T-Mobile’s growth slowed, what growth it does have is being driven more and more by lower-revenue prepaid customers.
…T-Mobile is keeping faith with its new 3G strategy though, according to Chief Executive Officer Robert Dotson, who said the new network will give T-Mobile growth in two trajectories: new subscribers lured by fancy 3G smartphones and higher revenues per customer, driven by data plans.
T-Mobile, a for-profit company, should not be allowed to set up their equipment in the middle of a residential area that is already well provided with internet access by less intrusive cable and DSL technologies.
Wireless internet service isn’t needed in this area, where most people can easily access the internet in their homes. When would they use T-Mobile? When they are driving in their car? Glendale has enough problems with traffic accidents.
Where did you get your blog layout from? I’d like to get one like it for my blog.
If there is already sufficient internet access in Glendale it doesn’t make much sense for T-Mobile to pursue placing a wireless tower in the area. So, I agree with the blog author. Having said that, areas that are good candidates for wireless are usually larger cities. In Portland, Oregon there is a company called Clear that offers a service called WiMax. They only offer it in Oregon currently but plan to expand to other areas in the near future. So, if you live in a large city this technology might be right up your alley. If you live in a place like Glendale then maybe not so much.