Stop the Big Wireless Giveaway

Big Wireless companies have been neglecting rural America for decades1, leaving small towns and farms with spotty or no cellular service2. Despite that, politicians in Washington keep giving companies like Verizon and T-Mobile the rights to our airwaves3 —a precious national resource. Those licenses should come with a responsibility to serve Americans no matter where they live.

Now, these corporations want to gobble even more of our airwaves4. Verizon brags to Wall Street that it has “unlimited” spectrum5, but they tell politicians in D.C. they have “nothing to deploy on.”6 Who is being lied to? Wall Street? Or our representatives? No matter, at the end of the day it is rural Americans who pay the price.

The real motivation for these wireless companies is to block smaller companies from competing. They want to rig the rules for the airwaves7, like power levels and license terms, so that only Big Wireless can use them8.

It's not right, and Washington must finally stop their double-talk. Rural Americans have been waiting for years for good, reliable service, and Americans everywhere have been waiting for lower prices and more competition.

DON’T LET THE WIRELESS OLIGOPOLY HAVE ITS WAY!

Join the Fight

1. “If you plot a 2 or 3-mile circle around the existing cell towers in many counties, it becomes quickly obvious that cell coverage is non-existent in many places. The real cellular coverage in rural areas is drastically different than the national coverage maps that cellular carriers have been advertising for years.” Dawson, Doug, “Rural Cellular Coverage,” POTs and PANs, (May 8, 2023), https://potsandpansbyccg.com/2023/05/08/rural-cellular-coverage-3/ 
2. “Opensignal analysis reveals that smartphone users in rural areas spend more than twice as much time with no signal (1.3%) than those in the cities (0.6%).” Wyrzykowski, Robert, “The U.S. rural-urban gap has narrowed for 5G speeds but widened for 5G Availability” Opensignal, (Sept. 14, 2023), https://www.opensignal.com/2023/09/14/the-us-rural-urban-gap-has-narrowed-for-5g-speeds-but-widened-for-5g-availability 
3.  “Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile walked away with the vast majority of the C-band licenses up for grabs in the FCC's blockbuster midband spectrum auction.” Dano, Mike, “Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile: Here are the C-band auction results,” LightReading, (Feb. 24, 2021), https://www.lightreading.com/5g/verizon-at-t-t-mobile-here-are-the-c-band-auction-results 
4.  “CTIA – which represents big 5G providers like T-Mobile, Verizon and others – has generally opposed spectrum sharing. Instead, the trade group is working to obtain exclusive spectrum for its members that they won't have to share with anyone else. … CTIA has been very clear in its desire to push regulators to reallocate some or all of the 3.1GHz-3.45GHz band exclusively for 5G.” Dano, Mike, “NTIA delivers ammunition to spectrum sharing advocates,” LightReading, (May 2, 2023), https://www.lightreading.com/5g/ntia-delivers-ammunition-to-spectrum-sharing-advocates 
5.  “With a low band, mid-band and 1,700 megahertz of millimeter wave spectrum, we have almost unlimited spectrum.” Sampath, Sowmyanarayan, “Edited Transcript: VZ.N – Verizon Communications Inc at MoffettNathanson Technology Media and Telecom Conference,” (May 14, 2024), https://www.verizon.com/about/sites/default/files/2024-05/MN_Conference_Transcript_051424.pdf 
6.  “I think the important thing is that to have a pipeline constantly of spectrum … if there’s no spectrum I have no certainty of investment I have nothing to deploy on.” Vestberg, Hans, “Pop-up Conversation with Sen. John Thune,” Punchbowl News, (May 22, 2024), https://youtu.be/60zYQLh_TZE?t=1874
7. “Recent proposals from the nation’s largest mobile cellular carriers would result in only a handful of companies gaining access to limited spectrum. Without access to additional usable spectrum, like that in the lower 3 GHz band, small and medium-sized businesses like ours may be precluded from expanding our offerings to the millions of truly unserved Americans desperately in need of connectivity.” See: “WISPs champion CBRS model amid CTIA attempts to quash it,” cenerva, (n.d.), https://cenerva.com/5G-news/wisps-champion-cbrs-model-amid-ctia-attempts-to-quash-it/
8. ‘”The CTIA game plan to engineer a mobile industry monopoly over spectrum access through exclusive-use auctions is a very real threat to consumers and US competitiveness when it comes to affordable connectivity solutions,” Calabrese argued in a statement.’ Dano, Mike, “CTIA report on CBRS ignites firestorm of criticism,” LightReading, (Nov. 15, 2022), https://www.lightreading.com/regulatory-politics/ctia-report-on-cbrs-ignites-firestorm-of-criticism