Playing in the land of giants

The Federal Communications Commission scored one for the little guys last week, essentially saying that nationwide operators have to strike roaming agreements with smaller carriers. The commission did not dictate prices for roaming service, but noted that reasonable deals must be made and carriers cannot discriminate among roaming partners using the same technology.
The mandate includes text messaging and push-to-talk services (if they are possible, which isn’t often the case because carriers use a variety of technologies) but does not include broadband data services.
Two points here: If carriers want to drive the adoption of broadband data services across the country, roaming pacts are likely a good idea; People in rural America are just as likely to be enamored with wireless content as those who live in cities. Indeed, MediaFLO’s talking point about a customer using its TV services in rural Minnesota while ice fishing makes complete sense, if you’ve ever been ice fishing. And SMS interoperability taught the industry that allowing customers to send data across different networks grows the pie for everyone. While it’s too soon to force automatic roaming for advanced content services, one would hope nationwide carriers deploying the same advanced technologies eventually will be able to forge data roaming deals with smaller carriers. (Perhaps without a federal mandate?)
The second point is just a sigh of nostalgia for the good old days. The fact is the rural carrier market is evaporating; Dobson is becoming part of AT&T Mobility; Rural Cellular is going to become part of Verizon Wireless; and just last week Verizon Wireless announced it was expanding into Kentucky and Oregon by purchasing most of Ramcell’s operations. Now this isn’t necessarily bad news for TDMA subscribers in Kentucky, who will get access to thirdgeneration wireless services once Verizon Wireless installs EV-DO Rev. A capabilities on the network. It’s just the sound of progress.
Is the automatic roaming mandate too little too late? Or is the writing on the wall that smaller carriers will not be able to keep up with AT&T Mobility and Verizon Wireless, both of which have deep pockets, wireline connections into the home and also offer pretty good wireless service?