WASHINGTON-The rapid growth of the wireless industry increases the importance of the Federal Communications Commission’s spectrum management responsibilities and may someday lead to service-quality regulation, the agency’s members said in releasing its fifth annual report to Congress on the state of wireless competition.
“Industrial policy that benefits one company, one standard and one technology is not the American way … Spectrum management is at its best when it is based on flexible use and when it is based on increased property rights,” said FCC Commissioner Harold Furchtgott-Roth.
FCC Commissioner Gloria Tristani said the data did not sufficiently show how many people use their wireless phones as their primary or only form of telecommunications. The Yankee Group believes the number to be about 2 percent, FCC staff told Tristani. When this number increases, she said, the FCC will need to examine service-quality issues.
“Service quality is more important than price in rural America,” Tristani told RCR.
The report goes into great detail about the decreases in the cost of mobile-phone service. “What should be going up is going up and what should be going down is,” said Thomas E. Sugrue, chief of the FCC’s Wireless Telecommunications Bureau. On a personal note, Sugrue said his family recently switched to a share-a-minute plan, thus decreasing the cost of mobile-phone service by 45 cents per minute.
While competition from personal communications service is the reason behind the growth of the nation’s mobile-phone industry, about a “dozen or so” rural counties have only one wireless provider, Sugrue said. In contrast, 88 percent of the U.S. population has access to three or more wireless providers, and 69 percent of the population has access to five or more providers.
Commissioners were excited about the prospects of more competition between wireline and wireless services, but FCC Commissioner Susan Ness said more work needed to be done.
While many claim the United States is behind Europe and Japan in mobile-phone use, the FCC’s report, culled from analyst’s statements, shows that Americans talk on the phone more and there are more subscribers in the United States than in other countries.
Salomon Smith Barney’s Michael T. Rollins said Americans talk an average of 221 minutes per month, according to a May report.
The Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association announced last month there are more than 100 million U.S. mobile-phone subscribers, with someone signing up for service every 1.3 seconds.
In other FCC action, the agency released its advanced services report. According to the report, there are 55,000 fixed-wireless advanced services lines in the United States. The FCC defines advanced services as up-and-down data streams of more than 200 kilobits per second.
