Verizon has taken exception to T- Mobile US CEO John Legere’s recent outburst relating to the upcoming 600-MHz spectrum auction in the U.S., essentially accusing its rival of looking for handouts from Washington.
While Legere last week accused Verizon and arch-rival AT&T of "swarming" the FCC in a bid to get their hands on as much spectrum as possible in the auction, Verizon points out that T-Mobile has been doing its best to secure an unfair advantage against the big two.
"Mr Legere and T-Mobile are actually doing whatever they can to push companies like Verizon out of the auction," Verizon said late last week in a post on its public policy blog.
"For example, T-Mobile – and Sprint and Dish – lobbied for and received from the FCC a set aside of spectrum in the upcoming auction that only they are allowed to bid on. Verizon can’t. AT&T can’t," Verizon said.
The FCC has reserved 30 MHz of spectrum for smaller carriers, but T-Mobile and its allies are lobbying for that to be increased to 40 MHz, claiming that Verizon and AT&T have an unfair structural advantage as a result of historical spectrum allocations.
Verizon takes issue with the idea that a company like T-Mobile US could be considered a smaller carrier.
"T-Mobile’s parent company is Deutsche Telekom and has a market cap of $76 billion. Sprint’s parent company is Softbank, with a similar market cap of about $70 billion," the telco said. "In other words, these aren’t ‘small’ companies."
The operator went on to point out that T-Mobile is reportedly in M&A talks with Dish Network; should a merger take place, the combined company would have more than twice the capacity per customer than Verizon, it said, referring to the sizeable spectrum holdings Dish has amassed in recent years.
It also pointed out that Dish’s actions in the recent spectrum auction are still under scrutiny by authorities. The satellite TV operator took part in the contest via three separate bidding vehicles, two of which qualified for a small business discount and thereby saved the operator around $3.3 billion.
"Yet Mr Legere was in DC, hat in hand, asking that more discounted spectrum on the taxpayer’s dime be included in the set-aside," Verizon said.
"The FCC doesn’t need to give additional handouts to global companies with the financial wherewithal to compete," it said.
