Telecom Daily
Welcome to Faulkner's Telecom Daily. We publish Monday through Friday, updating top stories as events warrant.
Monday, November 9...
T-Mobile Declares 74 Percent Revenue Growth, Expands Home Internet Pilot by
130+ Markets
T-Mobile announced a massive expansion
of its Home Internet pilot, and reported "strong" year to year revenue growth of
more than 74 percent for the 2020 third quarter. The news, it should be noted,
is no doubt made possible by this year's merger with Sprint that propelled it to
"record-high postpaid net additions" that it claims equate to "nearly as much as
the rest of the industry combined." Revenues totaled $19.3 billion, an amount
that compares to 2019 Q3 sales of $11.1 billion. Of this amount, Service revenue
alone improved 62 percent, accounting for $14.1 billion. Income, meanwhile, was
$1.3 billion, or $1 per share, a total that is up by 49 percent from 19Q3
earnings of $870 million, or $1.01 per share. Net customer additions - which the
carrier noted marked the "record-high" 23rd consecutive quarter of
"industry-leading performance" - were 2.035 million, with a total customer count
of 100.4 million. Postpaid net additions were 1.98 million, while postpaid phone
net customer additions were 689,000. T-Mobile also
announced the expansion of its Home
Internet pilot service to an additional 130 markets across nine states. This
$50/month service was created to bring "more competition to home broadband —
especially in underserved rural markets — through LTE-based coverage." 5G home
broadband services, T-Mobile claims, are also "coming soon." A list of the newly
launched coverage areas - which include portions of Michigan, Minnesota, New
York, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, West Virginia, and
Wisconsin - are
available via the T-Mobile Web site.
Android Police: "Older" Android Devices to No Longer Load Some Secure Web
Sites in 2021
According to recent reports, a number of the top SSL-secured Web sites will no
longer be able to load on "older" Android devices starting in 2021. This news
comes via Android Police, which
noted that Let's Encrypt plans to
officially stop signing new SSL certificates that contain DST Root X1.
Essentially, this decision would mean that proper certificates would not be
installed on some devices, causing those pages to either "encounter issues or
fail to load entirely." The certificate authority - which Android Police noted
has certificates used by approximately 30 percent of all web domains - has seen
all of its certificates to date cross-signed with
IdenTrust's DST Root X3 root. At issue
is that the companies' partnership expires on September 1, 2021, and, per AP,
the group "doesn't plan on entering another cross-signing agreement." This
change would mean that any browsers or operating systems without a Let's Encrypt
root certificate will no longer load with sites using IdenTrust. Although Let's
Encrypt plans to cease cross-signing activity by default on January 11, 2021,
sites can continue generating cross-signed certificates for the remaining eight
months. Devices running Android 7.1 or lower are expected to be primarily
affected. Android Police noted that the only work-around is to run the Firefox
browser, but that this "doesn't prevent applications and other functions outside
the browser from breaking."
AT&T Announces Next Chairman
AT&T appointed William Kennard as Chairman of
its Board of Directors, effective the date of Randall Stephenson's January 2021
retirement. Kennard is the former General Counsel (1993-97) and Chair
(1997-2001) for the US Federal Communications
Commission (FCC), a US Ambassador to the European Union (2009-2013); and
executive with The Carlyle Group, among other firms. Kennard joined AT&T’s Board
in 2014, and currently serves on the Corporate Governance and Nominating
Committee and the Public Policy and Corporate Reputation Committee.
....Brady Hicks, Faulkner Information Services
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