Dear Government: It’s Time To Use The Battering Ram On The RLEC Drawbridges.
February 12, 2009
It is not an industry secret that the small RLECs are little cash machines, whereby local Kings and Queens have created fiefdoms off of your government dole for years. I think it would be a pleasant surprise within rural settings if these networks were opened to others. I submit that the Rural Local Exchange Carriers, or RLECs, should be required to open their networks to competitors
Technology has solved a lot of problems over the past 100 years, despite what the lobbyists are telling you and your representatives. The 700Mhz spectrum alone makes all the rural sense in the world to deploy within a RLECs footprint for all services–competitively
I favor funding rural regional fiber connectivity, but not the local last-mile RLECs. Get fiber to these rural locations. Competition will follow, especially via wireless
For a moment, however, please allow me to get back on my soapbox and suggest that before issuing funds, you, the government, need to recognize the difference between a carrier that leases circuits, and one who bought an IRU–whereby they do not own physical fiber optic network or route miles of fiber sheaths. We need to be cautious that an IRU, or asset-light wielding carrier, does not get funds to overbuild on top of an existing open access provider per my definition of open access in my initial letter to you, the government—which, by the way, I have not yet received a response–.
Written by Dave Rusin - Telecom Executive
Posted by wbrache | Filed Under American telecom, ILEC Corruption, Infrastructure and Bandwidth, Telecommunications industry
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2 Responses to “Dear Government: It’s Time To Use The Battering Ram On The RLEC Drawbridges.”
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Dave, if you were a preacher this is the sermon where I would scold you for straying from preaching to meddling.
You enjoy a world where you have thousands of customers per route mile to provide you with the money to pay for expensive infrastructure. We, on the other hand, only have a few customers per route mile.
It is obvious that you have never lived in the country…no, not a country estate, I am talking about the real sticks.
Besides, the big ILECs are buying legislation that will take away all access money and the wireless guys are eating away at our base customers. Rural phone companies have provided excellent service for years and the smart ones are still providing outstanding useful and necessary services to our customers that are neglected by companies that only concentrate on “metro” and don’t even recognize us as anything other than “flyover” areas.
God was going to explain this to you in one of the calls that you refused to take.
Dave Rusin Replies:
Dear Teddy:
Thank you for responding in kind to my blog. Sometimes I print bodacious items or references to drive a reaction. Given the traffic I have on this blog, I am amazed that more people don’t question me.
Anyhow, beyond the King and Queen analogy of envy, there are two different RLECs out there – the biggies like a Century Tel and lots of little guys. I think the bigger RLECs need to get off the government dole, they have scale and borrowing capacity. But in this day and age of Obamanomics, I highly doubt the government teat is going away anytime soon.
The small RLECs, and common sense tells us that the areas served are by small RLECs are economically small and have limited growth. An ability to support a second carrier should be something left up to an open market and technology evolution in these small markets. Why? You know as well as I, it’s the ongoing opex that makes the small RLEC model difficult and opex does not go away. This is a concern I have on the great Obama NTIA program … carriers will get capex to build but a few years down the road, the ongoing opex will drive insolvency. If the NTIA/RUS wants to focus on small Rural Carriers – they should incent investment by small carriers into wider band technologies. I think competitor #2 would be a tax payer disaster for everyone involved.
That said, I would rather be dealing with the Government on funds. We have been funded by Venture Capital — we should switch places sometime.
On my preaching straying, at one time in my life I considered becoming a Priest. That calling has had more to do with how I react to life and situations presented to me more than anything else. I have experienced the worse humanity has to offer. There are reasons things happen and usually in hindsight, you can figure out why and the guidance received.
Thanks for writing.
Dave
PS: Teddy, did you know on spell checker that RLEC comes up as relic?