Jamilah King posted an in-depth article addressing how carriers such as AT&T and Verizon have created cyber-ghettos via their wireless service offerings. Unfortunately this admittedly in-depth article is a poorly veiled attempt to argue for net neutrality; a concept that has never considered how best to promote broadband adoption in minority communities much less increase economic activity. Net neutrality will only drive up the cost minorities pay for access to the Internet as higher compliance costs are passed through in the prices for mobile devices and wireless broadband access.

The article started off well, giving an ample description of the downside of access to the Internet via mobile versus fixed
wire connections. I was hoping that the article would focus on how the disproportionate reliance on handheld wireless
devices hinders our ability to produce content and create other ideas that could be sold for income, especially in a challenging economy such as ours. All I got was more whining about AT&T’s alleged bogey-man status.

It raises the question, however. Is the digital divide being compounded by the marketing of wireless devices toward blacks and Latinos thus giving the market the false sense that minorities are only interested in entertainment?

Just when opponents to the AT&T, T-Mobile merger are beginning to get comfortable with their argument that the merger would mean the end of competition, along comes Verizon, Comcast, and Time Warner to shake things up a bit.

According to an article in Politic365.com, Verizon is purchasing 122 wireless licenses from Spectrum Co., a partnership that includes Comcast, Time Warner, and Brighthouse Networks.

This partnership definitely offers access to more broadband capacity. The last thing consumers need is dropped calls or interrupted data flow.

It also puts pressure on the FCC to reassess its position that the deal bewteen AT&T and T-Mobile will somehow lessen competition when you have transactions like these that increase capacity, increase the number of potential wireless carriers, and keeps prices in check.

A blog post in Connected Planet Online concluding that it is a bit of a surprise that the most wireless-only households are located mostly in rural areas. I am actually surprised at the surprise.

Maybe its urban bias. Our vision of people walking around with a phone stuck to their ear usually includes the talker driving through city streets, or walking downtown. We don‘t associate cell phones with rural living.

Is it possible that we may not have seen much wireless erosion in rural areas because there probably has not been significant landline deployment in rural areas in the past?

In addition to not being yoked to their nodes, terrain in western states especially made deployment costly, and probably even with high-cost support, the consumer opted for alternative modes of communications.

This raises the question, if rural residents like the open freedom of the range; enjoy not being tied down by a wire, is the Federal Communications Commission then choosing, by switching high-cost support to broadband service from telephone service, to promote wireless broadband access? Why add more to the spectrum crunch?

Remember the first Star Trek movie? Commander Decker and the Ilya robot determined that they would have to become one with Vger, an old Earth satellite at the heart of a giant space cloud threatening the galaxy. Vger wanted to become one with the creator, so that it could complete its mission.

And what was the mission? Turned out that the mission was about evolution; creating something larger, something better.

You would expect AT&T’s president for its Tennessee operations, Gregg Morton, to support his employer’s mission to merge with T-Mobile USA. There was something that stood out from his guest column post on KnoxNews.com, and that something was evolution.

Given the increasing demand for wireless services, providers will have to evolve in order to meet demand. They will have to evolve quickly. The Federal Communications Commission and the U.S. Department of Justice don’t appear to have much of a problem with AT&T’s estimates of consumer demand. The FCC has cited these estimates a number of times while promoting broadband adoption.

It doesn’t mean, however, that carriers like AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint should have to forego combining with other carriers in order to get the spectrum necessary for meeting the mission; to turn evolution into consumer revolution.

An article in The Washington Post today being held up by opponents of the AT&T/T-Mobile transaction makes an issue of the claims that jobs will result from the combination of the aforementioned mobile communications companies.

I don’t think any reasonable person is going to expect that the number of jobs resulting from the combination will correlate precisely with any estimates the companies put out. Nor should any reasonable person expect that any and all employment resulting from the combination will be contained solely within the new company.

Some people will not be able to adapt to the new corporate culture. Others will opt for retirement. Some will see this as an opportunity to strike out on their own.

Now the last time I checked, businesses operated to make income for their shareholders. Yes, it’s a great selling point for a company to expect job growth from a combination with another firm, but it would be ludicrous to hold them to an exact number.

Antitrust is about customer choice, and the ability for innovators to enter a market. I don’t expect a court to throw out a case over whether a company meets a John Boehner talking point for job creation.