Orderly IP Transition and Strong Secondary Market Will Help Minorities, AT&T’s Cicconi Says
To ensure minorities aren’t left behind as the industry transitions to IP, the secondary market for spectrum must continue working properly, AT&T’s Jim Cicconi said at the Minority Media Telecom Council conference Wednesday morning. Minorities’ disproportionate use of wireless technology also demonstrates that the IP transition is “inevitable” and “happening today,” he said.
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Every study shows minorities depend disproportionately on wireless devices for Internet access, Cicconi said. That makes the matter of capacity all the more important for minority communities, he said. To ensure no one is left behind, that minority demand “can only be met with spectrum,” he said.
The FCC is doing “tons better” on this, Cicconi said: a year and a half ago, it took more than a year for small, uncontested transfers of spectrum to get FCC approval, he said. After AT&T brought the issue to then-Chairman Julius Genachowski, he fixed it, Cicconi said: It takes a “fraction” of the time now. “They're getting better in terms of moving spectrum from a willing buyer to a willing seller."
T-Mobile and MetroPCS have been very active in franchising dealerships, benefiting people of color, said Kathleen Ham, vice president-federal regulatory affairs at T-Mobile US. T-Mobile intends to “continue the MetroPCS brand,” she said. The wireless market is “very competitive” on the retail side, she said.
Cicconi pushed for the FCC to have a “planned and managed process” to ensure the IP transition is complete by 2018. It’s happening with or without effective planning, Cicconi said: For example, as Verizon deals with the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy (CD Nov 16 p1), “nobody wants to go in and deploy antiquated technology,” he said. “Plus a lot of this equipment isn’t even made anymore that’s in these networks. If something breaks it’s really hard to fix it, and in many cases you can’t buy a new one because they stopped making them many years ago.” The storm ought to be a wake-up call, he said: “It shouldn’t take an act of God to destroy the copper infrastructure for us to focus on how we replace it with modern technology."
"We're not going to get to 2018 and have an orderly transition if it continues progressing in a chaotic way,” Cicconi said. If regulators continue to “be scared about it,” the transition will continue to be “haphazard,” he said. “It’s about whether we're going to accept the inevitability that technology is modernized or not.” What if regulators said lots of people still have cassette tapes, so car manufacturers had to keep putting in cassette players? he asked. “It’s backwards. Our country has always been accepting of modern technology, of things getting better, and that’s what’s going on here."
T-Mobile has at least one advantage over AT&T, Ham said: “We don’t have those nasty copper wires to deal with.” T-Mobile’s network is based on IP, she said, and they change out network technology regularly. Interjected Cicconi: “And they don’t have to ask permission!”