Wireless Competition Waning, RCA Says in Comments on Annual FCC Report
Wireless competition has taken a turn for the worse since the Rural Cellular Association filed earlier comments on the FCC’s annual Wireless Competition Report, RCA said in a filing. T-Mobile and NTCH, which does business as Clear Talk, also told the agency the threats to wireless competition are rising, and that should be reflected in the next version of the report. In the last two reports, the FCC declined to draw any conclusions on whether the U.S. wireless industry is effectively competitive.
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Among the negative developments are that Cox joined SpectrumCo in agreeing to sell AWS licenses to Verizon Wireless, AT&T completed its buy of 700 MHz spectrum from Qualcomm, the FCC revoked LightSquared’s conditional waiver and the NTIA released its report on the 1755-1850 MHz band “with mixed prospects for the future of that spectrum,” RCA said (http://xrl.us/bm37ww). “While AT&T and Verizon continue to deploy 4G LTE in urban America, the continued lack of interoperability and inability to negotiate commercially reasonable 4G roaming agreements has further frustrated competitive carriers’ ability to enter the LTE market,” the group said. “All of these events have exacerbated the competitive challenges in the current mobile market.”
T-Mobile offered a similarly negative view of the state of wireless competition. “First and foremost, the Commission should take steps to ensure that all carriers have access to sufficient lower-band spectrum to compete on equal footing with the largest two carriers and to prevent undue spectrum concentration,” the carrier said (http://xrl.us/bm37z3). “The Commission should revise its current spectrum screen to ensure that it reflects the difference in spectrum value and utility above and below 1 GHz. In addition, in setting the rules for any future spectrum auctions, the Commission should fully utilize its longstanding authority, explicitly preserved by Congress, to ‘adopt and enforce rules of general applicability, including rules concerning spectrum aggregation that promote competition.'"
NTCH warned of the problems posed by consolidation. “The degree of consolidation in the wireless industry had already reached alarming levels at least five years ago as a series of middle-sized Tier II carriers like Dobson, Rural Cellular and ALLTel were bought out by the majors,” it said (http://xrl.us/bm376j). Smaller players also have a tough time getting handsets for their subscribers and paying for increasingly expensive roaming contracts, NTCH said: “NTCH, a small regional Tier III carrier, has not previously submitted comments in these annual surveys of competition, but the competitive situation has now gotten so dire that it feels constrained to offer its perspective on the situation.”