The scheduled recess for Congress is *August 8 - September 5. *Please
take this opportunity to contact your congressperson both on the House
and Senate to request a meet and greet. If they do not recess due to
the recent debt debate they will soon so your request would be on file
so they can schedule it. Here are some opportunities you may provide
for their attendance:
1) Provide a tour of your Wireless facilities concentrating on Middle
Mile interconnection and Rural footprint - Media will show up.
2) Request to meet at an existing home visit function - they may want a
donation to attend
3) Ask if they are holding a town hall or business owners meeting
in-district
3) Request time for a private meeting at their office
4)in lieu of offering a contribution, providers nearly guarantee that
the representative shows up by offering to invite / publicize their
appearance - and/or put on an old fashioned cook, out, etc. Be
creative - maybe bring along a projector and run some services over your
network to the location - a movie night, whatever it takes to bring out
people b/c you'll be doing them a service by bringing the voters to them.
5) Try to make a partnership visit with someone like the local economic
development group, schools, or local leaders.
If they won't give you time for any of those request in lieu of an
in-person ask them to make his local staff available on his direct
instructions to learn what they can about your business.
Here is a sample Letter or email you could send:
Dear Senator/Congress??? >>>,
I am (identify yourself and where you serve) one of the Fixed
Wireless*//*Broadband Internet Providers in your home district and a
locally owned business owner. Prior to this session of Congress we
worked exclusively with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on
our issues. As you are aware we now have numerous issues in front of
the two Federal Legislative bodies ranging from Justice concerns over
logging our customers to the very future of our industry in the proposed
"Incentive Auctions". Our decade long battle for more unlicensed and
licensed-lite spectrum available to small business for innovation is our
top priority. Small business is what we are, accepting local money and
spending it locally, a far cry from the National providers.
We are aware when you are in Washington your exposure is mostly limited
to lobbyists for large corporations who may paint a very different
picture of the Internet than we experience in your district. I would
like to take this opportunity to request a meeting with you while
in-district during the August recess for Congress. I pledge to be
brief, to the point and I believe you will come away with a different
viewpoint on the growth of the Internet.
I am aware how busy you must be for the time you spend getting to know
your constituents and business owners. It is important to us that what
is now debated by Congress is representative of the issues in your
district. We are active in providing Internet to your constituents and
would appreciate hearing from your office as to when we could schedule a
meeting.
Whether a brief run-down of issues or a tour of our facilities we are
willing to make sure your time is not wasted. As the actual people who
promote rural expansion, a tour of our facilities is a strong current
topic and media-worthy. Below I have summarized our industry issues for
your staff to consider prior to our meeting. Please contact me at
<<<<<. The Internet is an important part of all American's lives and
we appreciate your interest in making sure you understand our views.
Sincerely,
(your name here)
Summary of issues (some of these are supplied by our national
organization wispa.org:
Incentive Auctions - It is our belief that it is important for the
Federal Government continue to search for ways to pay down the national
debt and are sympathetic to looking everywhere for savings/revenue. It
has been felt that selling some of the most valuable spectrum
(frequencies) would help to add billions to this effort. Unfortunately
we have examined the CBO scoring of the value of these frequencies and
it doesn't add up. The anticipated revenue is based on all types of
usage including Unlicensed. It is agreed by all that most of the
innovation comes from unlicensed development but no one would bid on
those frequencies, CBO considers those as equal value licensed
spectrum. No small business could bid the minimum bid locking out
mostfuture innovations that would advance the Internet to the next level
of public use.
TV White Spaces - A tough subject with ample lobbyists promoting similar
ideas but a very different end game. Originally the white spaces were
allocated by the FCCto be used asunlicensed*//*spectrum in order to
allow continued expansion into rural areas that are mostly rough terrain
and trees that can only be penetrated by these frequencies. Now the
cell companies want to take 84MHz and with Public Safety taking most of
the rest this leaves some small non-contiguous parcels left for unlicensed.
3550 - Another problem with the incentive auctions is it would apply to
frequencies that unlicensed services have been working for such as the
100MHz in the 3550-3650 range. These areas require special equipment
because they are shared with services such as radar and subsequently
would not be usable in a national footprint for cell companies. In other
words the FCC would set a minimum bid price based on what wide open
frequencies would fetch but no one would show up to bid so the cost of
bidding and the time wasted for deployment would delay their use. Other
countries already use these frequencies so ample radio equipment is
already in production to deploy this spectrum immediately.
USF -There is no need to subsidize AT&T's or Verizon's mobile spectrum
that only a monopoly can win. Major carriers are trying to convert
using USF/Connect America funds to buying spectrum that they can hoard
and keep competition out. No longer is there a rural benefit from USF,
now it's just gaining advantage using USF as investment money to
monopolize markets and use federally subsidized funds with existing
small business Internet providers, not expand service to rural areas as
the fund was originally designed for. Before the new Super Congress bans
small business from using unlicensed frequencies for a few dollars
profit perhaps cut the USF to any company that would expand where there
is competition using that money.
BTOP - We are now discovering that the federal stimulus funds that were
awarded are not being used for middle mile or rural deployment of
service but as competition to spend millions to serve one or two
customers, pricing the wholesale out of existence for small business to
purchase, and as an end result taking only the most profitable customers
from small business all with Federal Funds that should be withdrawn and
returned to the treasury.
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