The Federal Communications Commission yesterday posted a letter from U.S. Cellular Corp. documenting a recent ex-parte meeting between the wireless carrier and staff members from the FCC’s wireless telecommunications bureau. In the letter, U.S. Cellular Corp. says that its meeting with FCC staff was geared toward urging action on interoperability rules.

Specifically, U.S. Cellular Corp. told the FCC that it believes that all its commercial band 12 devices would pass band 17 interference testing consistent with 3GPP specifications. U.S. Cellular also told the FCC that it would be moving forward with VoLTE equipment deployment in 2013 and 2014.

U.S. Cellular Corp. expects VoLTE will reduce disparities between CDMA and GSM devices and that VoLTE would bolster the argument that CDMA carriers should have AT&T devices that are interoperable with Band 12.

Gara Consulting and Capital met with the Wireless Bureau staff of the Federal Communications Commission back on 10 August 2012 to raise a few points on the broadband market. Specifically, Gara recommended to the FCC that it encourage new entrants into the broadband market. Gara would also like the FCC to mandate that incumbent carriers divest themselves of spectrum as a condition of approval for significant license transfers. Gara also highlighted the lack of device and service interoperability in the 700 MHz band due to the existence of carrier specific band classes.

Gara lost me at encouraging new entrants into the broadband market. No one denies the excitement and innovation new players can bring to any market, but should it be at the price of consumer welfare? Why should the FCC intervene in the market by mandating a transfer of an asset in order to generate false competition? Wouldn’t it be more efficient to focus on getting spectrum into the hands of companies that are ready to deliver services to the most customers quicker than an upstart company?

If the financial markets, specifically investors, see an opportunity for new entrants to compete for customers, they will provide the capital necessary to purchase spectrum either during an auction or in the secondary markets. This traditional approach will also send more accurate signals as to the value of spectrum, versus a forced divestiture of the resource from carriers who are prepared to use it, whether in current operations or as part of their long term planning horizon.

I was preparing a quick note on Cavalier Wireless’ ex-parte meeting with staff from Federal Communications Commission chairman Julius Genachowski’s office when I thought about how granular the FCC could get with the interoperability issue in the 700MHz band. The FCC has a docket opened, WT Docket 12-69, to address promotion of operability in this portion of the spectrum.

Cavalier, who met with the FCC on 8 August 2012, wants the agency to move with haste on the FCC’s notice of proposed rulemaking, which came out last March. Cavalier wants the FCC to focus on technical and competitive issues surrounding interoperability.

By interoperability Cavalier would like a ruling that says all mobile devices for the 700 MHz band should be able to operate all over the 700 MHz band. It appears that Cavalier’s customers have handsets that won’t operate in the blocks of spectrum AT&T and Verizon operate it and without roaming agreements, these customers won’t be able to speak to a larger population of AT&T and Verizon wireless consumers.

I don’t have a problem with the FCC determining the rules of the road for infrastructure, i.e. signal propagation, power requirements for antennas, rules on interference, etc., but ordering what type of car can run on the road is another story. An independent, non-governmental body came up with operating standards for the bands of spectrum. Let private parties continue to make decisions on what type of hardware to provide to carriers and determine the frequencies these handsets can operate on.

Handset providers and wireless carriers should maintain their autonomy of contracting for mobile devices.