About a year ago, Verizon Wireless was running an ad that showed the coverage map for its network, blocking people from seeing the football game on TV. In the commercial everyone was complaining, but no one complained when the AT&T (News - Alert) customer’s network coverage map was displayed.  

Those ads seem to be accurate based on the AT&T documentation supporting its acquisition of T-Mobile. Location after location, AT&T shows T-Mobile (News - Alert) expanding the reach beyond the major metropolitan areas and providing full coverage.

In the M2M world many companies have shared that T-Mobile has been a great partner in delivering services nationally.

It may be that the way to become a merger partner is to aim at your competitor in your ads. Alltel’s (News - Alert) Chad found himself out of a job with the Verizon merger. Now the T-Mobile Ann Hathaway look-a -like may be going away as well as the guys depicting AT&T and Apple (News - Alert).

However, the merger of the two companies may very well bring a better strategy for M2M solutions.

The one word of caution is not for the US regulators but the EU. Rules about a single roaming choice in the US should bring some requirements on the merged entity. Other than that, I think the expansion of coverage and the upgrade of the AT&T network will be welcomed.

I don’t buy the “stifling of innovation” argument particularly given the fact that it was AT&T that led the way with Apple and T-Mobile was the first to adopt Android (News - Alert). 

Having seen the benefit of the genie leaving the bottle, it’s hard for me to think that the merged leadership will get caught in the “not invented here” [NIH] mentality.

I think that one place where regulators will demand a pound of flesh is in spectrum givebacks. I say this because they are hungry to see spectrum again. The spectrum auctions under Clinton were a major contributor to the deficit reduction, and politicians are looking to reclaim spectrum. Join us on April 12^, at Regulatory 2.0 for a more in-depth discussion.

The reality is the innovation on the edge can never be balanced in the network from a sheer numbers story. Millions of edge developers versus thousands of network developers cannot be an equal fight. The best that a carrier can do is enable a network API.

However, almost every network API function I can think of has been solved by a corresponding edge solution. The device may be a better place to invoke some controls of GPS, H.264, etc. But even here, the more likely scenario is not one of exclusion, but one of incentives.

And incentives are a Win–Win for consumers.