When the FCC instituted the rules last year, Verizon protested vehemently against them, arguing they were unnecessary regulation and that carriers should be free to strike up roaming contracts with whomever they pleased. The court, however, sided with the commission and carrier groups that backed it.

After the ruling Verizon issued the following statement: “Today’s ruling upheld rules that require carriers to offer data roaming on commercially reasonable terms. As we made clear throughout the case, Verizon Wireless regularly enters into such data roaming agreements on commercially reasonable terms to meet the needs of consumers, and will continue to do so.”

As you might expect, FCC chairman Julius Genachowski hailed the decision, as his was one of three Democratic votes that put the rules in place. “This unanimous decision confirms the FCC’s authority to promote broadband competition and protect broadband consumers,” Genachowski said in a statement. “Our rules have empowered consumers and expanded their ability to enjoy the benefits of seamless and nationwide access to mobile data services, including wireless Internet and e-mail.”

The rules state that rural or regional operator that wants to get access to any of the nationwide operators’ 3G and 4G networks are guaranteed access on “commercially reasonable terms,” though they’re not very specific on what constitutes reasonable. Theoretically carriers should be able to use such roaming deals to offer nationwide data service just they use such contracts for nationwide voice service. While there may be no regulatory barriers to those deals there are certainly technology ones.

Steve Berry, CEO of the Competitive Carriers Association, said the unanimous decision from the appeals court was a good sign that the FCC’s efforts to promote more mobile competition will have backing from all corners of government.

“CCA and our members have worked long and hard to successfully prosecute the Data Roaming Order since its inception to intervening in support of the Commission before the court,” Berry said in a statement. “This is a decisive victory for consumers and an extremely positive outcome for competitive carriers and competitive policies.”

In other regulatory news, Dish Network appears to have acquiesced to FCC pressure that set aside some of its satellite spectrum if it wants to get permission to use it for a terrestrial 4G network. FierceWireless reports that Dish is now willing to set aside 5 MHz of its total 40 MHz for a “guard band” against interference and nearby cellular spectrum. Only last month was Dish railing against the proposed limitations on its licenses.

Photo courtesy of Flickruser [steakpinball].

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• 2012: Data, spectrum and the race to LTE
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Genachowski on Wednesday began circulating a proposed order among commissioners that, if approved, would give AT&T a free-and-clear 20 MHz of spectrum in the 2.3 GHz Wireless Communications Services (WCS) band for a new LTE network. Here’s what FCC spokeswoman Tammy Sun had to say on the matter:

“Today’s action is part of Chairman Julius Genachowski’s continued efforts to remove regulatory barriers that limit the flexible use of spectrum, which is one way he has led the Commission towards helping address the continued ‘spectrum crunch.’ By unleashing 20 megahertz of spectrum now – and up to 30 megahertz in the future – the Chairman continues to leave no stone unturned when it comes to maximizing opportunities to refill the mobile spectrum pipeline that had begun to run dry over the last decade. In addition to removing regulatory barriers, the Commission continues to push ahead on innovative spectrum solutions in addition to traditional auctions, including incentive auctions, government-commercial sharing, technology-based opportunities like small cells, and freeing up unlicensed spectrum for innovations like Wi-Fi.”

Some of you may be wondering why AT&T is getting special dispensation from the government to rejigger its airwaves while others like LightSquared and Dish Network aren’t (at least not yet). But it’s important to remember that unlike the satellite bands, WCS was always intended for wireless broadband services. The conditions of that spectrum, however, have made it impossible for any carrier to deploy a commercial network in those frequencies.

As I’ve explained in previous posts, the big problem is that a high-powered wireless network would interfere with Sirius XM’s neighboring satellite radio signals. But AT&T and Sirius hashed out a compromise that would turn 10 MHz of that spectrum into a guard bands on either side of Sirius’s spectrum, effectively ensuring that Ozzy’s Boneyard and Howard Stern broadcast without interruption.

The catch is that in order for AT&T to pull this off it needs to own pretty much the entire WCS band coast to coast, so it has been buying up licenses anywhere it can find them in the last two months, starting with the purchase of spectrum squatter NextWave Wireless.

The newly minted Competitive Carrier Association (formerly the Rural Carrier Association) has objected to those purchases, claiming that AT&T is trying to build a spectrum empire on the sly. Rather than build it with one big acquisition as it tried with T-Mobile, AT&T is buying up bits and pieces of spectrum all over the country, CCA president and CEO Steve Berry said. In addition to a half a dozen WCS license buys, AT&T is picking up 700 MHz and Advanced Wireless Service (AWS) licenses from several other sellers.

“Allowing the largest carriers to obtain unlimited amounts of spectrum on the secondary market raises serious competitive concerns,” Barry said in a CCA statement. “The only way for the FCC to truly see the devastating consequences of further spectrum aggregation is by consolidating the proposed applications.  On their own, AT&T’s proposed license acquisitions may not seem significant, but when added together, it totals to a significant amount of spectrum.”

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• 2012: Data, spectrum and the race to LTE
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CCA President and CEO Steve Berry said the organization isn’t abandoning its rural carrier roots, rather it’s acknowledging the new reality: that big nationwide operators like Sprint and T-Mobile have more in common with their tiny regional counterparts than they do with the country’s two wireless superpowers. The sum of the subscribers supported by the RCA’s members is about 100 million, which is pretty much the size of either Ma Bell or Big Red individually.

Sprint and T-Mobile won’t be able to dominate the organization, Berry said. “We are one carrier, one vote, and we have a board that reflects our composition,” Berry said. And conflicts between the big and small contingencies should be minimal given how their interests are now closely aligned, Berry said. They share the common goals of ensuring equal access to new 4G spectrum, interoperability between the bands, and mutually beneficial roaming agreements, he said.

So why now? Verizon and AT&T have long been the dominant carriers in the industry.

Berry said the differences between AT&T and Verizon and the rest of the market became most pronounced in recent years as acquisitions swelled their size. Verizon’s 2009 purchase of Alltel eliminated the single largest regional operator in the US, but it was AT&T’s attempted purchase of T-Mobile that really rallied the remaining wireless carriers against the Big 2. In an interview last year, Sprint CEO Dan Hesse said that the merger attempt woke the industry up regarding the “gradual creep toward becoming a duopoly.”

Photo courtesy of Shutterstock user Everett Collection

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