At the Behest of T-Mobile, the FCC Is Undoing Rules That Make it Easier for Small ISPs to Compete With Big Telecom

Authored by motherboard.vice.com and submitted by mvea

Even as President Donald Trump spends his time promising rural Americans that closing the digital divide is a top priority, his agencies are taking steps that will only make that goal harder to achieve.

The Federal Communications Commission is currently considering a rule change that would alter how it doles out licenses for wireless spectrum. These changes would make it easier and more affordable for Big Telecom to scoop up licenses, while making it almost impossible for small, local wireless ISPs to compete.

The Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) spectrum is the rather earnest name for a chunk of spectrum that the federal government licenses out to businesses. It covers 3550-3700 MHz, which is considered a “midband” spectrum. It can get complicated, but it helps to think of it how radio channels work: There are specific channels that can be used to broadcast, and companies buy the license to broadcast over that particular channel.

The FCC will be auctioning off licenses for the CBRS, and many local wireless ISPs—internet service providers that use wireless signal, rather than cables, to connect customers to the internet—have been hoping to buy licenses to make it easier to reach their most remote customers.

Read more: Rural America Is Building Its Own Internet Because Nobody Else Will

“The vast majority of wireless ISPs are using unlicensed 5Ghz spectrum to connect the customer to their tower,” said Jimmy Carr, the policy committee chair for the Wireless Internet Service Provider Association (WISPA), a trade group representing wireless ISP companies. “5Ghz spectrum is great, you can pack a lot of data on it, but the problem is that it requires a true line of sight between the customer’s home and the tower. Any trees, any hills in the way and you can’t connect the customer.”

With midband spectrum, like CBRS, however, line of sight isn’t a problem. And because it’s licensed spectrum, wireless ISPs would be able to broadcast at a higher power.

The CBRS spectrum was designed for Navy radar, and when it was opened up for auction, the traditional model favored Big Telecom cell phone service providers. That’s because the spectrum would be auctioned off in pieces that were too big for smaller companies to afford—and covered more area than they needed to serve their customers.

“Say you’re a community college and you want to set up a secure LTE network on a licensed spectrum,” Carr told me. “In the past, you couldn’t do that, because you’d have to buy a third of the state’s spectrum in a license, when you only planned to use a small portion of that.”

But in 2015, under the Obama administration, the FCC changed the rules for how the CBRS spectrum would be divvied up, allowing companies to bid on the spectrum for a much smaller area of land.

Just as these changes were being finalized this past fall, Trump’s FCC proposed going back to the old method. This would work out well for Big Telecom, which would want larger swaths of coverage anyway, and would have the added bonus of being able to price out smaller competitors (because the larger areas of coverage will inherently cost more.)

So why is the FCC even considering this? According to the agency’s proposal, because T-Mobile and CTIA, a trade group that represents all major cell phone providers, “ask[ed] the Commission to reexamine several of the […] licensing rules.” Oh, also, it seems like doing smaller sized lots would be too much work.

“Licensing on a census tract-basis—which could result in over 500,000 [licenses]—will be challenging for Administrators, the Commission, and licensees to manage, and will create unnecessary interference risks due to the large number of border areas that will need to be managed and maintained,” the proposal reads.

Motherboard reached out to the FCC for comment but have not yet received a response.

The FCC is also considering other rule changes that would make it even more difficult for small ISPs to participate in the auction, such as extending the minimum license term from three years to 10. It’s a bit like a landlord requiring a business to sign a 25-year lease, which is obviously risky and expensive for mom-and-pop shops, but standard for chain stores and restaurants.

Wireless internet is far from a panacea for the digital divide. It’s not as strong or reliable as fiber to the home, and it’s worth noting that WISPA was in favor of the FCC’s decision to repeal net neutrality. But many community internet efforts have had success using wireless technology to bridge some of the gaps, and the CBRS spectrum promised to be a great opportunity for more groups to find space to send a signal. Wireless is one tool that can be used to help bridge the digital divide.

But if these rule changes go through (they’re still open for public comment until the end of January), it will be one less path to expanding rural internet, and one more win for Big Telecom.

Motherboard is empowering people to build community-owned broadband networks . For regular updates, subscribe to this newsletter .

FatBoyStew on January 11st, 2018 at 21:14 UTC »

I find it hilarious(ly infuriating) that big ISP's fought tooth and nail to remove Net Neutrality with one of the big selling points was a "Free and Competitive Market". But now the exact same ISP's are fighting to remove the ability to have such a market. We need anti-trust laws now otherwise we will be paying $150 for a 10 Megabit connection.

prboi on January 11st, 2018 at 20:20 UTC »

Don't know why they chose T-Mobile when both Verizon and AT&T have actually proof of violating net neutrality in the past while T-Mobile is just theoretical.

Edit: here's better evidence from [Verizon](www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2017/7/21/16010766/verizon-netflix-throttling-statement-net-neutrality-title-ii) & AT&T

austex_mike on January 11st, 2018 at 16:05 UTC »

Let's be honest. Right now we have in power a political party that honestly believes that whatever is good for huge companies should be codified into American law. And let's also be honest that there are tens of millions of Americans who believe this sort of policy is what is best for them, so we are going to have to deal with this sort of policy-making until we change the narrative.

We need to start changing our approach to some of these issues. As stupid as it sounds, we need to start naming these things in terms middle America can understand. For example:

Net Neutrality is now called Freedom Internet- Tell those middle Americans that we want them to be able to watch Fox news and read Breitbart without the chance of some liberal elitist deciding to charge them more for access to those channels and websites. You could even make a commercial and show a picture of Spectrum Headquarters in Connecticut and "Here is where elites in the Northeast want to decide which websites you can visit, and which movies you can watch, and charge you more for whatever they choose, don't let them. Support Freedom Internet, and tell these people you want the power to choose your internet, not them."

Local ISP initiatives are now called American Independence Internet- In fact brand it with the year 1776, you could even call it Tea Party Internet because just like the original Boston Tea Party was a response to Government colluding with specific companies to give people less choice, Tea Party Internet aka local broadband is a response to government selling us out to the highest campaign contributors.

It is such a silly sounding idea, but at this point we need to try anything. Any objective person can look at the current FCC plans and see how negative they are for the average American, but sadly the subtleties of the issue are just lost on a huge portion of the population. They hear "less government" or "freedom" and just go with whatever is said next. Perhaps it's time we helped them by putting these issues in even simpler terms.

Edit: I would be interested in hearing other people's ideas to make this issues simpler and easier to communicate and understand. The fewer syllables the better. Ideally we need to communicate these ideas on a 4th grade level to be effective.