Another Analyst Sees 2-1 BDS Vote; WISP Founder Urges Wholesale Focus

agree to some aspect it, somehow bridge the divide there ideologically," but said he's "not confident that will happen." Louthan called the previous FCC's approach to competition flawed. "They did not look at cable impact enough, and I think that there were some other artificial bright lines on what defined competition that were unnecessary," he said. "The overall cost savings to the companies that were pushing for it appeared small to me as well, once they actually disclosed it." A deregulatory-oriented draft BDS order is tentatively scheduled for an April 20 vote (see 1703300052). Incumbent telcos are the traditional providers of BDS to competitors on a wholesale basis and businesses on a retail basis, but they face new competition. Laurence Glass, founder of Lariat, a Wyoming fixed wireless ISP, said wholesale special access services (the traditional term he prefers to BDS) "are especially important to broadband deployment" and are "perhaps the only services of this type" the FCC needs to regulate. "If wholesale services are readily available and fairly priced, multiple competitors will use them to create services at the retail level," he said in a filing posted Wednesday in docket 05-25 on a phone call he had with a Pai aide. To deploy in unserved areas, WISPs need "middle mile" special access services to establish a "beach head" in a nearby town to achieve economies of scale, Glass wrote, but incumbent telco and cable providers can thwart competition through wholesale pricing above retail pricing or refusing to make the service available. "Unfortunately" he wrote, the draft order "declines to address the anti-competitive practices of pricing wholesale services above retail" and also of refusing to deal.