CTIA, CCA disagree again over FCC's report on competition

The Federal Communications Commission once again declined to say whether the US wireless industry is competitive in its annual report addressing the matter. And once again, industry associations offered very different views. The Commission’s Nineteenth Mobile Wireless Competition Report weighed data from the second half of 2015 in an effort to analyze competition among carriers “as well as examining competition across the entire mobile wireless ecosystem.”

The Wireless Telecommunications Bureau (WTB) for the fifth consecutive time stopped short of concluding the market “was effectively competitive,” saying the space is too complex to be summed up in such a simple way. The FCC estimated Verizon claimed 38.1 percent of overall industry service revenues in 2015, down slightly from 38.7 percent in 2014, while AT&T’s 32.4 percent share of revenues was essentially flat from the previous year. Sprint pocketed 14 percent of all service revenues last year, down from 14.9 percent the previous year, while T-Mobile’s share grew to 13.5 percent last year, up from 11.9 percent in 2014.

The Competitive Carriers Association (CCA) praised the Commission’s unwillingness to deem the mobile market competitive and encouraged the agency to develop reforms that would spur competition. “It’s true that the mobile market continues to evolve as consumers demand more wireless services. Nevertheless the Report affirms CCA’s analysis that the mobile marketplace cannot be considered effectively competitive as a result of concentrated market share, and a duopoly that continues to dominate service revenue and the number of connections and devices,” CCA CEO Steven Berry said.