On the recordAugust 2, 2012
I rise today to introduce legislation to help expand wireless broadband to rural areas. Specifically, the Rural Spectrum Accessibility Act would direct the Federal Communications Commission, FCC, establish a program that would provide an incentive, a three year extension to a spectrum license, to wireless carriers that make available, through partitioning and disaggregation, unused spectrum to smaller carriers or carriers serving rural areas. As the FCC National Broadband Plan reports ``most areas without mobile broadband coverage are in rural or remote areas.'' This legislation would provide an additional incentive to increase wireless broadband to these areas and make more spectrum available to smaller and rural wireless carriers through secondary market mechanisms. This bill is loosely based on a wireless carrier's existing program, which creates a partnership with rural carriers to build and operate Long Term Evolution, LTE, wireless networks in rural areas. Through the cooperation the carrier provides spectrum and core network equipment and the rural carrier supplies the cell towers and backhaul. The Rural Spectrum Accessibility Act is an effort to get other large carriers to implement similar initiatives to create more opportunities for the smaller and rural carriers. It should be noted the FCC actually already has partitioning and disaggregation rules, see 47 C.F.R.…
