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I hate mobile companies as much as anyone else but that's like saying that once you're past the hard part of software development the rest is easy. The bread a
by vvanders 8y ago
I hate mobile companies as much as anyone else but that's like saying that once you're past the hard part of software development the rest is easy.
The bread and butter of mobile operators is infrastructure and spectrum licensing. FWIW I think there's a fair amount of competition, at least more than you see in the ISP space. Building towers is usually much more straightforward than trenching fiber/cable.
- zzzcpan 8y agoTowers are connected through fiber. Mobile companies in general don't compete with each other at all and just continuously raise prices until too many customers starts leaving or regulators and politicians start to notice.
- vvanders 8y agoDepends on the company/tower. Quite a few use high gain RF links. My local WISP uses AirFiber[1] for all their backhauls, mobile can be different but nothing is an absolute. [1] https://www.ui.com/products/#airfiber https://www.ui.com/products/#airfiber
- joecool1029 8y agoT-Mobile has some AirFiber deployed in west NJ and PA for connecting towers. There are remote towers that actually have satellite backhaul. You can tell when you're on UMTS/HSPA or LTE and the latency is like 700ms. The companies are trying to eliminate them as they are costly to operate.