Competitive Carriers Must Prepare for Broad Change in Washington, Berry Says
Change is coming to Washington, D.C., and to the regulatory landscape after the November auction, said Steve Berry, Competitive Carriers Association president, in a speech Wednesday live-streamed from CCA’s annual meeting in Seattle. Competitive carriers need to be prepared because "lots of changes" are coming, Berry said. FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler told CCA in a Tuesday keynote he would press for a new mobility fund to pay for wireless buildout in rural areas and for changes to data roaming rules (see 1609200058).
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“We’re focusing on the next stage of critical challenges to the carriers,” Berry said. “We’re committed to remaining the advocate for the competitive carriers in Washington, D.C., voicing your opinion on the most pressing issues.” Rural America “should not be left behind in that dust of policy changes in Washington, D.C.,” he said.
Berry said a new mobility fund and data roaming are critical to CCA members. “We cannot leave the outcome to chance,” he said. The amount of USF support for wireless “has been drastically reduced in the FCC’s so-called reform program,” Berry said. So far, competitive carriers have been successful in delaying the reduction of wireless support. “We hope that our position … will actually be taken to heart at the FCC and we’ll have a mobility fund,” he said. “Congress has made it very clear that this is a priority and vital to bringing next-generation broadband to rural America.”
Data roaming is especially critical “in the post-net neutrality world,” Berry said. “All good news from the FCC,” Berry said of Wheeler’s speech. Berry was top lieutenant to Wheeler when he was president of CTIA.
Hu Meena, CEO of C Spire, disputed arguments Wheeler made that the USF program mustn't support more than one provider in any market, speaking on a later CEO panel. Wheeler stressed the need for the FCC to eliminate duplicative services. “I don’t know what’s wrong with having multiple choices out in the rural areas,” Meena said. “It’s very, very important that we do. … We need multiple carriers in rural areas offering at a minimum LTE services.” Rural areas need next-generation services just like the rest of the U.S., he said. Precision agriculture and rural healthcare depend on USF, he said.
All small carriers want is a chance to compete, Meena said. “We need a level playing field to be able to deliver the services that we need to deliver, not just want to deliver, but we need to deliver to rural America,” he said. “We remain steadfast for competition.”
Smaller carriers have been able to compete by offering more personalized service, said Patrick Riordan, CEO of Cellcom. “When the customer calls in, we actually have live people that answer the phone,” he said. “That’s a way of showing respect for your customers.”
Rural carriers need to be able to deploy networks that are as sophisticated as those of their larger competitors, said Slayton Stewart, CEO of Carolina West Wireless. “If we don’t have that, those are the table stakes, it doesn’t matter if we are local and we provide a local touch.” Stewart welcomed Wheeler’s comments on a new mobility fund. “The devil is always in the details and we’ll see what happens,” Stewart said: Wheeler “seems very aggressive about getting something done by the end of this year.”
One large carrier is getting both Connect America Fund and high-cost support under the USF, Meena said. “If you took $150 million away [from it], there would plenty to go around” to pay for buildout in rural areas, he said. Meena welcomed Wheeler's comments that the FCC would revisit the data roaming rules. Wireless roaming is the only place in the economy where people pay more for wholesale than for retail, he said.
The “most notable” development of the year is the start of the TV incentive auction, Berry said in his keynote. The auction “hopefully will be a payoff for many years of hard work by all of us,” he said. “We wait with great anticipation to see the results.” Berry said CCA also supports rules on business data services, which the group sees as critical to backhaul as carriers deploy 5G.