RTG ups ante at FCC in opposition to VZW/Alltel deal

Following up on a similar filing earlier this week, the Rural Telecommunications Group Inc. filed an individual petition with the Federal Communications Commission urging the agency to deny Verizon Wireless’ pending acquisition of Alltel Communications L.L.C.
The new filing touches on a number of issues brought forward in the earlier filing, made by RTG and other entities, but also asks the FCC to limit the merged entities to 55 megahertz of wireless spectrum below the 1 GHz band at the county level and to 110 megahertz of spectrum below the 2.3 GHz band.
“Requiring Verizon to divest spectrum in excess of 55 megahertz below 1 GHz will ensure that Verizon will not hold a virtual monopoly on ‘beachfront’ RF real estate,” the RTG noted in its filing.
The 2.3 GHz limit is expected to be hotly contested as Sprint Nextel Corp.’s pending deal to merge its WiMAX assets with Clearwire Corp. involves a deep spectrum portfolio in the 2.5 GHz band, which in some parts of the country nears 200 megahertz of spectrum capacity. A number of companies protesting the Sprint Nextel/Clearwire venture have cited the competitive concerns of a single operator controlling such a large swath of spectrum.
The FCC did away with an official spectrum cap in 2003 and in previous merger deals has used a so-called spectrum screen to gauge the impact of spectrum control on competition from such deals. The FCC has used a 95 megahertz screen for most recent deals.
The RTG filing also offers suggestions to the FCC for solving roaming concerns, including requiring Verizon to provide automatic roaming to all requesting parties regardless of the requesting party’s spectrum rights, and for Verizon to be required to provide voice and data roaming for both 3G and 4G technologies until “such time that there are at least three nationwide carriers offering compatible air interfaces for nationwide automatic roaming.”
In addition, the RTG asked that the FCC force Verizon Wireless to divest the GSM network currently operated by Alltel along with “sufficient spectrum in both the cellular and PCS bands on which to operate that GSM network,” or alternatively force Verizon Wireless to divest the GSM assets in markets where there are no other GSM roaming operators.
Alltel picked up a substantial GSM network when it acquired Western Wireless Corp. in 2005, which the carrier has used exclusively for roaming services. The spectrum assets used to power the GSM network were acquired from T-Mobile USA Inc.