Sprint are Top, AT&T voted Bottom: [19th May 2011]

The American Customer satisfaction Index has been released this week and the results show that Sprint are now at the top of the rankings for wireless service, just in front of Verizon. However AT&T will not be impressed with their ranking. Both AT&T and T-Mobile have seen a decline in customer satisfaction since the takeover of T-Mobile was announced. In fact AT&T are at the bottom of the rankings; their lowest result since 2006. Experts suggest that this will improve when the deal has completed. AT&T has also been dogged by complaints about their U-Verse service with customers saying that they are receiving poor quality pictures which accounted for a 5.6% drop in customer ratings. Customer satisfaction with fixed line providers fell across the board as telecommunications companies devote less time and money to this technology.

It has been suggested that AT&T will launch its LTE 4G network as early as next month in NYC, with further plans to launch in LA by the end of July. This puts AT&T about one year behind Verizon in terms of LTE as they has long claimed that they could achieve faster speeds with their HSPA+ service. Verizon expect to have 175 markets for LTE by the end of the year, while AT&T say they expect to have finished their entire build by the end of 2013. AT&T have also suggested that if the T-Mobile deal is approved sooner rather than later, it will speed up their deployment.

Verizon has taken out a lawsuit against the FCC in the hopes that they may prevent new data roaming rules from being used. Verizon is arguing that the FCC has overstepped the mark in making the rules and that they are not necessary. The data roaming guidelines which were approved last month by the FCC require mobile broadband providers to offer data roaming to other carriers at a fair and reasonable cost and cannot turn smaller carriers away because of their size. Rural carriers have often argued that it is difficult to negotiate deals with the larger providers and therefore have trouble offering a decent service to their customers. Verizon say they have already entered into agreements with smaller carriers and that the government should not be intervening in commercial decisions. They say they are not a public utility. The FCC say that Verizon is trying to avoid competition.

Clearwire have announced this week that they have struck a seven year deal with Ericsson who will be managing their 4G network. Clearwire will focus on operational efficiencies while Ericsson will use their network management experience to run the network. 700 Clearwire employees will change to Ericsson employees before the middle of the year and the company expect it to be a seamless transition. Customers should see no change to their interactions with Clearwire who will remain as the primary point of contact. Ericsson also mange the Sprint network.

Research released by Sandvine has shown that Netflix is now accounting for almost 30% of all downstream Internet traffic. This makes them the largest source of Internet traffic overall. Even traditional Internet browsing is only 17%. Netflix allows customers to stream movies to their computers and televisions and holds a 65% hold over all streaming services. The company has 23 million subscribers, however only one quarter of homes in the US which has broadband are Netflix members. The expectation is that there is plenty of room for growth in this market.