Roaming Order Circulated for July Agenda Meeting Vote
FCC Chairman Kevin Martin late Wednesday began circulating on the 8th floor rules that promote roaming agreements between small and large wireless carriers. The order does not cap prices carriers can charge but does hold that roaming must be offered at just and reasonable rates, sources said. Sources said Martin means the order to deal completely with roaming complaints before the agency.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Timely, relevant coverage of court proceedings and agency rulings involving tariffs, classification, valuation, origin and antidumping and countervailing duties. Each day, Trade Law Daily subscribers receive a daily headline email, in-depth PDF edition and access to all relevant documents via our trade law source document library and website.
“This is huge,” said an industry source active on the issue. “The recognition at the Commission that there is a wholesale-retail problem here is very, very big from an enforcement perspective.” FCC rules would improve small carriers’ position in filing complaints to the commission or federal lawsuits, the source said.
Some small carriers have complained at the FCC about the high wholesale rates they must pay when a subscriber roams on larger carriers’ systems. These can run 40 cents a minute or more, more than 10 times what big carriers’ customers pay. Some small and rural carriers want price caps, but the FCC has hesitated to go that far. Smaller carriers like SouthernLINC Wireless, Leap and MetroPCS have been active in promoting roaming rules at the FCC and on Capitol Hill.
An attorney representing small carriers said the roaming issue has major implications for broadband deployment in rural America. Small carriers are less likely to invest in 3G networks if customers cannot use their devices to roam other networks. “It’s a big issue,” the lawyer said. “As carriers move to EV-DO, as many are trying to do, they're not getting the opportunity to have roaming agreements with large carriers. It has discouraged the smaller carriers.” In particular, SouthernLINC has pressed the FCC to address data roaming in its roaming proceeding (CD July 5 p6).
The FCC is expected to stop well short of automatic roaming requirements being imposed in Europe. Commissioners committed to examining roaming in orders approving Alltel’s takeover of Western Wireless and Sprint’s of Nextel, both completed in 2005. “We are concerned… about the general difficulties that smaller, rural, wireless providers are facing in trying to negotiate automatic roaming agreements with nationwide carriers,” the FCC Sprint Nextel order said. At the March CTIA annual meeting, Martin said he is “sympathetic” to smaller carriers’ complaints about the need for automatic roaming (CD March 28 p6).