Guymon co-op in battle for subsidized wireless service

Workers are dodging bobcats and feral hogs as they crisscross Oklahoma’s westernmost sliver in trucks outfitted with electronic gear that tests wireless signal strength.

At stake are $4.5 billion in federal subsidies that small carriers across the country, including their employer, Panhandle Telephone Cooperative Inc., stand to lose if they can’t convince the U.S. Federal Communications Commission that their rural areas are inadequately served by telecom giants.

If their electronic survey can prove that Verizon Communications’ signal isn’t adequate, then the tiny, Guymon, Okahoma-based Panhandle will remain eligible for subsidies to bring wireless phone and internet service to underserved areas.

“We have no desire to bash Verizon, but we have to protect our interests,” said Shawn Hanson, CEO of Panhandle.

Similar surveys are going on in rural areas nationwide as small carriers look to protect their subsidies as the FCC rewrites the way the program is administered to focus on areas of true need.

Wireless companies used to win funding simply for operating where subsidies were paid to a wired network operator. But that resulted in some areas having multiple carriers getting subsidies, the agency says. The FCC is now trying to trim some $300 million annually in unnecessary funding from a program that will distribute $4.5 billion over the next decade.

“Ongoing support is inappropriately and unfairly providing subsidies to multiple providers in the same area,” Mark Wigfield, an FCC

man, said in an email. The FCC wants to make sure that funds “are effectively and accurately targeted.”

Fast mobile broadband is either missing or is provided only by subsidized carriers in about one-fifth of the U.S. outside Alaska, according to the FCC.

To identify where there are gaps and where there is overlapping service, the FCC decided to map service areas. It ordered a confidential one-time submission of specified data from wireless providers to guide its mapmaking and then asked for comments from carriers such as Panhandle.

That resulted in accusations

that some of the big carriers are exaggerating their service reach to keep small competitors out of the area — and testing vehicles roaming the countryside to prove territories were still in need of subsidized service.

“It feels like a dominant carrier is using the regulatory process in an anticompetitive manner to try to run us out of business,” Panhandle’s Hanson said.

Verizon says critics are incorrectly measuring its signal, and that its maps were drawn to meet FCC guidelines.

Challengers get until late November to dispute the maps — or face the prospect of being shut out of subsides for a decade.

That’s why workers for the Panhandle cooperative, at times using fourwheel-drive

vehicles, have trundled over dirt paths and range land, past signs that say trespassers “will be shot” and that warn away archaeologists, conservationists and “rabid environmentalists.”

The workers carry mobile handsets that periodically feed reception data to laptop computers. On highways they need to roll below the speed limit, earning what the Panhandle cooperative in a filing politely termed “unfriendly hand gestures.”

Crews began driving in April, have driven more than 37,000 miles, and will keep it up through the fall, said Hanson.

“We just wanted the process to get it right, so that these very rural areas

could continue to receive the support they need,” Hanson said. “We have to protect our oil and gas customers, our ranchers and farmers. Because without this support, these are very low traffic sites, where the volume of traffic would probably not even cover the electric bill.”

Panhandle is not alone in objecting to the FCC’s cartography. Farm bureaus in four states are lined up to challenge the new maps. Regulators in Illinois said it appears the maps leave almost no areas in that state would be eligible for funding.

By the end of July, 38 mobile providers had gained access to the mapping data held at the FCC, and the agency had taken in almost 1.7 million readings

as challengers file their objections.

In Oklahoma, Hanson’s cooperative says, it has 38 communications towers in the Panhandle compared with Verizon’s nine. Verizon provides a good broadband signal in about half the area it claims in the three-county Panhandle, according to Hanson.

Verizon says it’s following rules for mapping its coverage that were laid down by the FCC. In a filing it said Panhandle and its engineers ignore recent technological upgrades, and mistakenly ignore service from facilities in neighboring Kansas, Texas and New Mexico.

Consultants for the Panhandle cooperative in reply said they’re aware

of the neighboring towers and criticized Verizon’s methods for drawing coverage.

The FCC’s effort has become a hot topic in Washington, where lawmakers fear rural areas are being left to languish as urban America profits from a communications boom.

“The maps stink,” Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., said at an Aug. 16 hearing.

Providers “created this problem” by claiming widespread coverage, even in areas with dodgy reception such as his Montana ranch, Tester said.

The FCC’s map “dramatically overstates” existing coverage and is “known to be flawed,” said Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kansas.