Investment in wireless broadband is expected to result in creation...

services and requiring interoperability among all carriers operating in the 700 MHz spectrum band, said a study by Raul Katz, a professor with Columbia Business School. But interoperability and data roaming challenges are barriers to investing broadband in rural areas, he said during a briefing Thursday. Another barrier is that a large portion of the public funds dedicated to broadband deployment are being assigned to fiber infrastructure, he said. The opportunity cost of not allowing smaller, rural and regional carriers to roam onto the national carriers’ networks or interoperate in the 700 MHz band is significant, he said. The Rural Cellular Association is this week briefing the FCC and members of the Congress about the study which RCA funded. Everyone talks about jobs and potential creation of 117,000 should be a real wake-up call for policymakers, said RCA President Steve Berry. Immediate action is needed to make data roaming and interoperability possible throughout the 700 MHz spectrum, he said. It’s critical that interoperability across devices designed to work in any one block of paired 700 MHz spectrum be enforced, the study said. And without automatic data roaming (similar to what exists in voice services), rural carriers will potentially face onerous terms when roaming onto national carriers. Regarding speeds, studies showed there’s a dramatic impact on productivity when going from dial-up speeds to around 5 Mbps, Katz said. Berry said in an interview after the briefing that state regulators can utilize their unique knowledge of local situations and help inform federal regulators and make broadband funding more targeted and flexible. A good USF system should be success-based and revenue and technology neutral, he said.