WASHINGTON-The Great American Cowboy has become the star in the marketing/advocacy game between CTIA and rural wireline carriers.
The Coalition to Keep America Connected, the universal-service reform lobbying group formed by rural local exchange carriers, released a video last week featuring animated cowboys.
“The Sweet Sounds of the Universal-Service Fund: Phone on the Range,” is a short video that takes the folk song, “Home on the Range” and changes the words to talk about universal service as animated cowboys move across the screen.
CTIA is expected to release a full-color glossy brochure touting the benefits of wireless to rural America on Nov. 1. Featured prominently is a cowboy.
“As more rural consumers choose wireless, an equitable share of universal-service fund monies is essential for carriers to meet the increasing demands and preferences of these consumers,” according to CTIA’s brochure. “The current universal service and intercarrier-compensation systems lead to less value, fewer choices, and increased costs for consumers, which is certainly not in their long-term best interests.”
The wireless industry and RLECs have been battling over universal service for more than a decade. With passage of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, universal-service support to serve high-cost rural areas became portable. In other words, carriers were able to receive support based on the number of customers served not just the amount of wire in the ground.
The wireless industry has steadily entered rural America and customers have responded by signing up for wireless service. In many cases this meant that second-line service for the rural ILECs was lost. “Money went to incumbent LECs, even as they lost customers and consumers increasingly subscribed to mobile-wireless services,” said CTIA.
Wireless is investing in rural America, said CTIA, noting, “Cellular South, which serves customers in Mississippi, Alabama, Florida and Tennessee, invested $78 million in Mississippi alone, adding 200 new cell sites to its network across the state by the end of 2006.”
Both CTIA and Keep America Connected think the universal-service system needs to be reformed, but the two groups are on opposite ends of how to accomplish that.
“Many of the reform proposals require pain. Over the last 3- and-one-half years that I have been doing this, there has been absolute gridlock,” said James Reid, legislative assistant to Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.V.). “At some point a decision has to be made and a compromise has to be reached.”
A D.C. Bar Association panel last week also broached the issue. Reid says wireless needs to do more to improve coverage, especially in mountainous rural West Virginia.
“It has been very hard to get the carriers who won big chunks of spectrum interested in serving West Virginia,” said Reid. “I would love it if every carrier that had spectrum in West Virginia was willing to build out their services.”
CTIA acknowledges that coverage in West Virginia can be tough, but still highlights the benefits of having a mobile phone.
“On Halloween 2005, 17-year-old Alex Doty was riding his four-wheeler near the family home when a storm knocked down a tree, throwing him 30 feet down a ravine. The all-terrain-vehicle landed on Alex and his leg was badly injured. Remembering he had his wireless phone, Alex dialed 911. Clear reception was difficult in the deep ravine, but authorities were able to locate Alex through his phone’s global positioning satellite system feature,” CTIA points out in its brochure.
Complaints about spotty coverage are often expressed by the RLECs, but interestingly in the video clip one of the cowboys appears to be talking on a cell phone and another appears to be working on a laptop with wireless access.
“This video has always been about the big picture. It is a representative of all of the ways the universal-service fund benefits rural America,” Caitlin Colligan, spokeswoman for the Coalition to Keep America Connected and public affairs manager for the National Telecommunications Cooperative Association, told RCR Wireless News. “If we were to be literal, we would also have a TV because our members also offer TV service. Half of our members also have a wireless play.”
