Today in a filing with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC or Commission), RCA (Rural Cellular Association) petitioned the FCC to deny the applications that would grant AT&T a massive new acquisition of Qualcomm’s 700 MHz licenses. Due to an unprecedented wave of consolidation and spectrum aggregation in recent years, AT&T and Verizon now dominate the wireless industry. This duopoly harms competitions in the marketplace and decreases consumer choice.
To promote competition and benefit consumers, RCA urges the Commission to not approve the spectrum transaction. However, if the Commission does grant the applications, it should require AT&T to provide reasonable data roaming agreements to any requesting carrier, ensure interoperability of devices across all 700 MHz band licenses, and harmonize the technical specifications of the assigned spectrum to be consistent with the technical standards in the Lower A & B blocks.
