T-Mobile Calls Verizon Wireless Roaming Concessions Too Little
The FCC adopted the home-market exclusion as part of its automatic roaming rules approved two years ago “based on a thin record,” and concessions offered recently by Verizon Wireless don’t go far enough to deal with industry concerns (CD July 24 p2), T-Mobile said in a letter Tuesday to House Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif. The Rural Telecommunications Group also sent Waxman a letter objecting to the proposal. More industry letters are likely, a small- carrier official said Tuesday.
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T-Mobile is among carriers that invested heavily in AWS-1 spectrum, which has been slow to come online because of problems moving out government incumbents. Under the home- market exception, a carrier doesn’t have to honor a request from another that has spectrum in the market, even if the frequencies haven’t been cleared to allow network build-out. “Like Verizon Wireless, T-Mobile has invested billions of dollars in purchasing spectrum licenses and is aggressively building out its network as the fourth largest national wireless carrier,” T-Mobile said. “In our vast country, however, there are areas that because of sparse population density or difficult topography are economically challenging for multiple carrier deployment. In these areas roaming remains an important tool to ensure all customers receive ubiquitous service and competitive alternatives.”
T-Mobile said Verizon Wireless’s offer to put off application of the exception two years “does not go far enough” to solve the problem. “In some areas, it is simply infeasible for every carrier holding a license to build its own network simultaneously,” T-Mobile said. “The economics may not support such construction and the residents may not tolerate the siting of multiple towers or placement of additional antennas in their communities. This can be especially problematic for licensees like T-Mobile in the upper-band spectrum, the propagation characteristics of which require much denser tower siting than the 700 MHz or 800 MHz spectrum held by some other carriers.”
The Rural Telecommunications Group called the offer “so intentionally poorly drafted” that it’s difficult to figure out what concessions Verizon is offering. “Aside from being as clear as mud, Verizon’s vagueness appears to leave more questions than answers in its wake,” the group said. “The proposal does not appear to include data roaming, a critical and necessary element if America is to succeed in the age of broadband. The proposal does not apply to entities acquiring companies who hold new licenses, entities who win licenses at a Federal Communications Commission auction or re-auction, or entities who buy disaggregated licenses that have already met a build-out requirement.” - Howard Buskirk