The USA

Abstract

Only one country in the world merits a chapter to itself in this book and that is the USA. Although this might appear simply to be a reflection of its size and/or economic importance, it has to be borne in mind that the USA actually contains only four national incumbents and hence does not appear superficially to be worthy of detailed analysis. In practice, the USA is particularly interesting for a variety of reasons, all of which are addressed in the chapter. In the first place, it has been at the forefront of LTE implementation—as of now, it accounts for well over half of all worldwide LTE subscribers. Secondly, it is structurally complex in the sense that there are large numbers of regional operators, although only a small number of these such as MetroPCS play any kind of significant role in the chapter. Thirdly, it has always gone its own way in assigning spectrum and it is interesting to analyse the consequences of its approach compared to that implemented by the European Union. Fourthly, the mobile sector has been subject to an unusually large amount of M&A activity in very recent times, with the outcome of much of this still pending. Again, exceptionally, the satellite sector has been heavily involved. Hence, overall, the USA presents a very complicated picture which is worthy of detailed analysis.