The Federal Communications Commission’s revised roaming rules may have exacerbated an already divisive industry issue, with warring carriers challenging new guidelines and feuding over the possibility of their extension to wireless broadband service providers.
The FCC’s Aug. 7 decision concluded automatic roaming is a common-carrier obligation for commercial mobile radio services. Among the flashpoints that have materialized since the decision are the applicability of the rule to push-to-talk service; the exclusion of the mandate to a requesting carrier’s home market; and the prospect of furthering the reach of new rules to high-speed wireless Internet services.
Whether to regulate
Uncertainty over the high-speed wireless Internet issue is especially combustible because of the heavy investment carriers are making in wireless broadband. Moreover, the unsettled wireless broadband roaming question has effectively reopened the debate at the FCC over a decision earlier this year to classify wireless broadband as a largely unregulated information service rather than as a regulation-heavy common carrier telecom service. Democratic FCC members Michael Copps and Jonathan Adelstein concurred in the wireless broadband-information services ruling, but were troubled by what they regarded as a rush to judgment.
“Regulations requiring data roaming promote the public interest by ensuring that consumers in rural and remote areas will have access to wireless broadband services, just like their counterparts in urban areas,” regional iDEN provider SouthernLINC Wireless told the FCC. “They also ensure that consumers who typically have been underserved for whatever reason-be it geography, economics, disability, etc.-receive a comparable level of broadband access as the majority of wireless consumers.”
SouthernLINC disputed the notion that an imposition of automatic roaming on all wireless services-voice, data, broadband and non-interconnected-will undermine wireless innovation and deployment, arguing the opposite is true and that such a rule would foster greater competition through new entrants and applications in the advanced wireless services (1.7 GHz and 2.5 GHz) and 700 MHz bands.
Leap Wireless International Inc. emphasized the growing role of wireless data. “Consumers should be able to rely on the same seamless across-the-country coverage for data services that they do for voice,” Leap stated. “And wireless providers and consumers alike will benefit from the competitive opportunities created by an automatic roaming obligation.”
The Rural Cellular Association said the FCC should step in to extend wireless roaming obligations across the board, noting its members face problems obtaining roaming agreements for broadband and some business applications.
Large carriers oppose plans
Sprint Nextel Corp., AT&T Inc. and a major trade association said extending automatic roaming to wireless broadband is bad policy and likely contrary to existing law.
“Imposition of an automatic roaming obligation would, among other things, require wireless broadband providers to substantially expand their back office (billing, customer tracking, etc.) to ensure that all roamers on their networks are fully accounted for and that their service providers are properly charged for the network usage of roamers,” stated the Wireless Communications Association International. “Likewise, operators of the new networks would need to expand their bandwidth management capabilities to ensure that the limited bandwidth of their systems is allocated in a manner that allows for roaming without compromising their quality of service to their own subscribers.”
