AT&T OFFERS “Just a Glimpse into Our Wireless Future”

Kevin Fitchard over at GigaOm wrote a blog post on my Super Bowl post, in which I highlight some spectrum lessons from the big game. While he acknowledges that we need more spectrum in a tweet, I want to focus on a couple of points in his blog post with which I disagree.

• First, he concludes that it’s “strange” for AT&T to use a one-off event like the Super Bowl to make a point about the need for more spectrum, asserting that this is exactly the type of scenario where more spectrum wouldn’t help. That’s not correct. Customer usage at a big one-time event is simply a window into the average data usage profile of tomorrow.
• Fitchard suggests that the deployment of DAS systems, like that deployed in the stadium, is a relatively cheap way to meet huge capacity demands. DAS deployments are not cheap on any relative basis.