The Cellular Service Provider Market

The industry I’ve selected is the cellular phone service industry. This industry’s market structure is an oligopoly, meaning that a few large firms control the market. Four main firms, T-Mobile, AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon dominate the cell phone service industry. Although the four firms compete against one another, they typically avoid price competition in order to avoid price wars that decrease profits for all. Instead, they use other tactics, such as advertising and improved customer service to gain a higher demand in the market. Price wars occur due to the interdependence of firms involved in an oligopolistic market structure. A decision made by one firm to increase or decrease prices will lead to a fluctuation of the demand curve for the

Trends in the market include the growing number of people within the 15-29 age range. Also, phones are being used for much more than just calling, other functions like texting and music playing capabilities have dominated much of a user’s data usage. As for market characteristics, the mobile industry has reached almost 50% penetration with about 130 million subscribers, and reaching its maturity. The cost structure has been very confusing for consumers, with hidden fees, overcharges, and lacks to reward users who do not use their plans to the max. And finally, channels include all service provider stores and retail consumer stores, for example, Target, Walmart, and Best Buy.

The generation of talking face-to-face is slowly fading away, and the technology era is going to keep on growing. One of the most widely used technology services known today is the cellular phone industry. According to the Pew Research Center’s website, 90% of American adults own a cell phone. Of that 90%, the smartphone ownership is at 64% (2013). Verizon Wireless, along with the other major carriers, T-Mobile, Sprint, and AT&T, have taken this data and comprised a growing industry where competition arises from all angles. These companies have battled one another on pricing, plans, and customer service for many years in order to stay on top. Unfortunately, these are major factors in whether or not a customer will choose the particular company over another.

T-Mobile is a well-known U.S enterprise with a good reputation in the wireless industry because of good practice of business ethics. Under the leading of John J. Legere, in 2012, the company was recognized as one of the world’s most ethical enterprises (T-mobile Makes Ethisphere’s Most Ethical Companies List, 2012). The firm’s core value includes “respect and integrity drive our behaviour”, “customer delight drives our action”, “I am T-mobile - count on me”, etcetera (T-mobile, 2016).

The monopolistically competitive industry advertises to differentiate their product from their competitor. They want to communicate with their consumer to inform about the product and educate them. They also influence the consumer to convince about the product.

SGMT  6050  –  Case  Write-­‐Up   McCaw   Cellular  Communications:  The  AT&T/McCaw  Merger   Negotiation     Armin  Ezatagha     Student  Number  ⏐  205  576  707   eMail  ⏐  aezatagha12@schulich.yorku.ca     Schulich  School  of  Business   Tuesday,  March  05,  2013                                 Current  Telecommunications  Ecosystem     McCaw  Cellular  Communications  (MCC),  although  positioned

Verizon is a major telecommunication provider in the United States. The company is the market leader, with $110 billion revenue and $2.4 billion in profit (MSN Moneycentral, 2012). Verizon has steady revenue streams that are largely based on a subscription model. It has several business segments, including wireless (63.3% of revenues) and wireline (36.7%) (2011 Verizon Annual Report). Most of this report will therefore focus on the wireless business, not only because this is the largest business that the company operates but because it is a rapidly growing and evolving business as well, a function of the rapid pace of smartphone adoption in America.

Using the information in the data and your own economic knowledge, evaluate the economic case for and against governments attempting to influence how mobile phones are manufactured and used. (25)

Nowadays, technological environment is an indispensable part of human life. As technology develop, people can find out their diagnosis and keep track of their illness through things like online medical records, or people could approach to many technical products such as smartphone, televisions, and laptop. By these products, people could update about economic information, science field and entertainment. Almost all products must connect with internet while people are using them, so choosing a reliable telecommunication company is essential for users. There are many the companies provide internet in the United State such as AT&T, Ting internet, Sonic.net, and spring. However, people believe that AT&T is currently the largest payer in the US

Our case study titled, The AT&T and McCaw merger negotiation, provides us with an opportunity to negotiate the terms of the merger between McCaw cellular and AT&T. McCaw was the largest competitor in the rapidly growing cellular telephone communications industry. AT&T was the dominant competitor in long-distance telephone communications in the United States, and one of the largest corporations. Prior to the negotiations, it had no position in cellular communications.

In basic terms, a market structure regarded monopolistic is deemed to have some elements or components of both competition and monopoly. In such a market structure, there exists a large number of entities offering for sale goods that in addition to being substitutes also happen to be differentiated significantly. In this text, I highlight the mobile phone market monopolistic competition. Further, I discuss how such a market would be impacted by both an increase in the price of an input regarded important and a decrease in the demand of mobile phones.

I. BACKGROUND: CelluComm and GMCT and the Industry AT&T’s Bell Laboratories cellular telephone networking innovation had enabled several cellular network operators to get licenses from the FCC to operate in separate license territories right about the same time AT&T was broken up in early 1980s. These operators were either companies like Cellular Communication Services, Inc. (CelluComm) or small entrepreneurs who had won license territories through the lottery system. CelluComm’s  president  and  founder  Ric  Jenkins  was  known  for  being  an  aggressive businessman  who  had  extended  it  to  a  200  million  dollar  enterprise  ranking  in  the  top  20  of  the industry.  Key  to

     In today’s telecommunication market there is a lot of competition by industry giants such as Sprint,

In this following report I will discuss the phone industry and analysed it in great detail. I will analysis the market structure and try and understand why the mobile industry falls to heavily oligopoly structure. I will highlight all the structures, however I will discuss in detail how, for example Vodafone can be incorporated in the porter’s five forces method to show how the mobile industry has devolved over the years and to understand if consumers are driven by the actual technology of the phone but if it driven more by style.

Oligopolistic Markets are less common, but still prevail in the modern economy. An Oligopolistic business is one with few competitors, basing its revenue off of “outsmarting” its opponents by analyzing their decisions and predicting the outcome. Having an analysis of an opponent provides the basis for Oligopoly, as income is based on providing a product that has more features than another product, released to the public around the same time. The Cellular industry provides a pristine example of the Oligopolistic Market.