Increasingly, for wireless regulators, striking a policy balance on issues affecting competition,
consumer safety and law enforcement is a big challenge. Owing in part to converging technologies and changing
markets, these issues are more complex than ever. Answers are not readily apparent, and what works today could be a
bust tomorrow.
Getting coherent feedback from the industry-particularly on mobile phone issues-is getting to be just
as tough for policy makers.
Each calls itself the international association for the wireless telecom industry. If you’re
talking wireless deregulation, the Personal Communications Industry Association and the Cellular Telecommunications
Industry Association are singing from the same song sheet.
Not so on the question of a 3G spectrum allocation or on
lifting the spectrum cap. Both have become wedge issues in the wireless industry, pitting the interests of mostly mobile
phone upstarts in PCIA against mostly entrenched incumbents in CTIA.
Whoever wins the debate may be less
important than the debate’s impact on industry’s push for more deregulation via the forbearance option in the 1996
telecom act.
In the end, PCIA and CTIA could both be big losers.
Here’s why: The main argument both
associations make for deregulation is the wireless industry is competitive and, therefore, at a minimum, should not be
subject to common carrier rules better suited to monopoly Baby Bells.
But the loud-albeit unintended-message
coming out of the debate on the proposed 3G spectrum allocation and relaxation of the 45 megahertz CMRS spectrum
cap is that wireless competition is not all it’s cracked up to be.
Could it be the ‘show’ of competition by multiple
mobile phone service providers is as illusory as one-time boom markets in Asia, Russia and Latin America? Is PCIA
asking for a regulatory carve-out for startups or simply suggesting that FCC deregulation be thoughtful rather than
carefree?
PCIA, which supports a 3G spectrum infusion and opposes a spectrum cap repeal, recently supplied the
FCC with an HAI Consulting Inc. study that found personal communications services carriers making only modest
inroads into the cellular duopoly in the top 200 markets.
Add to that the fact cellular operators are among the top
holders of PCS licenses. CTIA, for its part, wants what PCIA is opposed to.
Unwittingly perhaps, CTIA and PCIA
may be undermining their ‘competition’ argument for forbearance as they fight for bragging rights for supremacy over
3G spectrum and spectrum cap policies.
For the winner, no spoils.
