I have the distinction of being born and raised in Williston, N.D., which has the distinction of being won by the man with the fewest bidding options in the recent C-block auction for personal communications services.
The man who won the license, Vincent McBride, has never been to my hometown and never run a telecommunications company. I’m pleased to report the cellular phone service in the Williston area is good. So at first glance, it might look like McBride has a tough road ahead of him.
But McBride isn’t necessarily looking to compete against the cellular carriers. He is hoping to become the alternative carrier to the rural telephone cooperatives that provide wired telephone service out in the country.
Whether he proves successful or not, Vincent McBride has come up with an idea that panelists on the Federal-State joint Board on Universal Service seem to keep overlooking: using wireless technology is not only a viable means to deliver phone service to unserved and underserved areas, it actually makes sense to do so.
About 7 percent of the nation’s population does not have telephone access. Reasons vary why people don’t have phone access, but explanations include because people live in a remote area where it is too expensive to lay copper or fiber optic wire, or because even though they live in a city, they are transient and therefore have never had service connected, or have not paid their bills and have had service disconnected.
Most panelists that attended the June 5 meeting on universal service focused on having local exchange carriers provide service to unserved areas-even though the LECs have not built out the network to serve all their potential customers and even though there has been funding available to them from the government to be reimbursed for the cost of building out these systems.
Mobile satellite service may be too new and too expensive to implement as a way to fill in these unserved areas. But other wireless systems are being installed all over third-world countries because they are cheaper and faster to install than their wired counterparts.
These wireless local loop systems are proving their worth with every call connected. Even when there are network glitches, a system with a few glitches is still better than no access at all.
Installing wireless systems will save taxpayers money and give people in unserved areas access to communications more quickly.
So I ask again, why are efforts being focused on wired communications?
