Business Unit and Cooperative Strategies.
Consistent with the shared brand name, all business units are positioned as higher quality services for which the company is able to command a price premium over the competition. To maintain its competitive advantage, AT&T spent an average of $934 million over the last three years on research and development activities. As such, AT&T typically charges higher prices than T-mobile and Sprint for wireless services. However, the company’s pricing is generally aligned with that of Verizon.
In the wireless space, AT&T adopts technologies that are compatible with the vast majority of wireless network in the world. Accordingly, the company boasts of offering its traveling customers cellular service in over 220 countries through roaming agreements with other carriers. Additionally, technology compatibility affords users some flexibility with respect to choosing their wireless devices. Customers can even use a non-AT&T device on the company’s network as long as they subscribe to a voice or data plan. Chief competitors Verizon and Sprint, both of which use an alternative technology for their wireless service, cannot offer their users the same breadth of geographic coverage with a single device or the same degree of device flexibility.