Warren Buffett on Telecom stocks (2003)

Buffett shares his thoughts on investing in Telecom stocks.

The top four wireless telecommunications facilities-based service providers by subscriber count in the United States are:

1) AT&T Mobility: 176.7 million (Q3 2020)
2) Verizon Wireless: 120.32 million subscribers (Q3 2020)
3) T-Mobile US: 102.064 million (Q4 2020) (Sprint and T-Mobile merged on April 1, 2020. On August 2, 2020, the Sprint brand name was officially retired.)
4) Dish Wireless: 9.055 million (Q4 2020) (Previously Sprint-owned prepaid services, Boost Mobile and Virgin Mobile, were merged under the Boost Mobile brand and sold to Dish Network)

Each active SIM card is considered a subscriber. Wholesale customers include users of machine-to-machine networks and mobile virtual network operators that operate on the host network but are managed by wholesale partners. The counts above were taken from each provider’s quarterly reports. Starting with Q2 2020, the three top carriers no longer report wholesale subscriber count. AT&T also does not include the "connected devices" count, however, it is not known if Verizon or T-Mobile include these devices. As such, it is possible that the ranking above could be inaccurate.

The top 4 wireless providers have all standardized on 4G LTE as their wireless communication standard, which has been deployed across the entire coverage area; however, the LTE bands used by each provider remain largely incompatible. All 4 wireless providers also maintain legacy networks; of these, AT&T and T-Mobile use GSM and 3G UMTS (mostly converted to 4G HSPA+), while Verizon, Sprint (a current subsidiary of T-Mobile), and U.S. Cellular use cdmaOne/EV-DO/1xRTT. However, Verizon is in the process of shutting down its non-LTE networks. Their 1X and EV-DO networks are currently supported but will be discontinued on December 31, 2020. On December 31, 2020, Verizon will no longer allow phones that don’t support VoLTE to be activated on their network (tablets and hotspots can still be activated as long as they support LTE). While the top 3 wireless providers operate nationwide wireless networks which cover most of the population in the United States, U.S. Cellular and other smaller carriers provide native network coverage across selected regions of the United States while supplementing nationwide coverage through roaming agreements with other carriers.

As of 2016, all operators have adopted LTE. Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, and Sprint sell SIM cards through their retail channels, both in-store and online; however, the selection of devices compatible with Verizon and Sprint networks is limited. All carriers have enabled VoLTE on their networks.

AT&T shut down its 2G GSM network on December 31, 2016. T-Mobile plans to reduce the spectrum allocated for GSM and use the network mostly for nomadic and non-mobile GSM services[13] through 2020. Verizon introduced their first LTE-only phone, LG Exalt LTE, in June 2017.

Buffett Books:

#WarrenBuffett #Invest #Stockmarket

[sirus]

Been 20 years and I’ve never had a snickers or wrigleys gum…But I am trapped in either ATT or Verizon….. And there is no alternative that is good.