The Communications Workers of America says Verizon’s attempts to introduce Voice Link service as a landline replacement has gone well beyond Fire Island and the Catskills.

In a fiery letter dated today, Chris Shelton, vice president of CWA District One says Verizon has been quietly installing dozens of the wireless devices in the Hudson Valley and attempted to install them in one 81-unit senior residence in the heart of New York City, until residents protested they were in danger because Voice Link does not support the medical monitoring devices they use to live independently. After rejecting the wireless service, the union alleges Verizon left the residence without any phone service at all.

Shelton says customers are not getting full disclosure of what they are signing up for when they accept Voice Link and Verizon is using the devices as a cost-saving measure as the company allows its landline facilities to deteriorate into disrepair.

“There was no ‘Superstorm’ at work in Monticello and no emergency or unforeseen circumstances – just the easily predictable, routine deterioration of facilities that Verizon could not be bothered to maintain and an influx of customers who arrive every year at exactly the same time,” Shelton said. “In other words, Verizon had ample opportunity to plan for the maintenance and repair of these customers’ needs in a timely manner, but simply chose not to schedule the necessary work.”

Shelton says Voice Link units are also turning up in the Boroughs of Queens and Brooklyn in certain circumstances.

Thus far, the Public Service Commission has not publicly responded to the allegations and the regulator has not asked Verizon for an explanation about their installation of Voice Link in areas outside of the western part of Fire Island, where the Commission has granted them interim authority to run the service as the sole landline replacement.

Stop the Cap! received word Verizon may have a statement regarding these matters shortly. We will update readers with any new developments.

Attention broadband planners: Although broadband deployment strategies differ around the world, a new report decisively concludes there is only one network technology proven to meet the demands of broadband users both today and tomorrow: a national fiber optic network.

BuddeComm’s new report, “Global Broadband – Fibre is the Infrastructure Required for the Future,” looked at every technology from variations of DSL, cable broadband, satellite, and wireless and found only fiber optics capable of handling the capacity of data and applications that will be required to run cities and countries from today onwards.

The report found that fiber optic deployment faced a range of challenges, despite its obvious technological advantages. Political obstacles are among the biggest roadblocks facing fiber networks. A combination of concerns about the cost of wiring service to procrastination has held back many national broadband improvement projects, including those in Australia and New Zealand. Incumbent commercial providers in North America have also actively attempted to block public fiber networks to protect their own commercial interests.

BuddeComm concludes America’s biggest broadband problems come as a result of incumbent providers exercising undue market power and influence over elected officials to protect their commercial interests at the price of the public good.

The report concludes that decisive political leadership is essential to overcome many of the artificial obstacles which slow down or stop fiber broadband deployments.

“One can argue endlessly about what technologies should be applied and at what cost, but we believe that all signs point to Fiber-to-the-Home (FTTH) networks as the best future-proof solution,” the report concludes. “One can debate about whether it is needed in five, ten or fifteen years – and again that depends on some of the differences between countries – but in the end FTTH is the best final solution for all urban and many regional premises.”

The 21st century digital economy is powered by robust broadband, and growing demands for faster speeds are coming from the healthcare, energy, media and retail sectors. Healthcare uses include file transfers of high-definition medical imagery and teleconferencing. Smart Grid technology is being deployed by many power companies to develop more efficient means of distributing and conserving energy. Media and mass entertainment providers are moving to high bandwidth online video, and the retail economy markets products and services over modern broadband networks.

The implications for the global economy are enormous. More than 120 countries have formal broadband policies and many consider high-speed Internet access a national priority. In the last century, North America and western Europe were considered the dominant economic players, in part because they established and maintained infrastructure to support their manufacturing and service economies. But many of these countries are falling far behind in the 21st century digital economy, where countries like Japan and Korea, parts of eastern Europe, the Baltic States, and Scandinavia are taking the lead in infrastructure deployment.

“Broadband infrastructure is perceived by all to be critical for the development of the digital economy, healthcare, education, e-government and so on,” the report notes. “From a financial and investment point of view broadband infrastructure should be treated as utility infrastructure.”

The interests of the private sector are not always aligned with the public interest, particularly when it comes to spending capital on upgrading network infrastructure. The report recommends that governments step in and build a public fiber highway system on which all providers can offer services.

“A National Broadband Network (NBN) should be based upon an open network as this makes it possible to offer the basic infrastructure on a utility basis to content and service providers,” the report concludes.

The governments of Australia, New Zealand, Israel, and others are already moving in that direction, setting up broadband authorities to build fiber infrastructure dismissed as too expensive or unnecessary by commercial providers who answer first to financial markets, shareholders, and private banks.

Under most NBN plans, providers get access to the fiber network at wholesale rates and help recoup its cost.

Australia’s National Broadband Network is on the way.

Where politicians answer to the whims of the private sector before considering the public good, the report finds:

• Private cable companies, particularly in North America, will continue to support and incrementally upgrade their HFC networks, but new cable operators are more likely to deploy fiber at the outset, not coaxial copper cable. Network costs, efficiencies, and reliability are all in fiber’s favor. In Europe, cable broadband is regularly losing market share to faster fiber technology. The share of all broadband subscribers held by HFC networks across Europe fell from 26% in 2002 to about 11% by mid-2013;
• Private telephone companies that do not face robust competition will continue to rely on their existing DSL networks. In cities and larger towns, expect phone companies to eventually upgrade to VDSL fiber-to-the-neighborhood (and its variants) in the largest markets with the most competition. Rural areas will continue to receive less robust DSL service, particularly where no cable competitor provides service;
• Rural areas may receive fixed wireless or satellite broadband service, but this is not a solution for more populated areas.

Although the global economic downturn stalled many fiber network deployments and suppressed demand, the report finds broadband usage and demand for faster speeds are quickly accelerating. Some other highlights:

• Asia continues to be the leader in fiber optic deployment;
• Sufficient customer demand to make the investment in fiber worthwhile is increasingly likely once fiber service becomes widely available in countries like the Netherlands, China, France, Israel, Switzerland, Norway and Sweden;
• International connectivity in Africa remains a challenge, but fiber bandwidth is expected to more than double by 2014;
• The Middle East will see rapid growth in fiber broadband once international capacity constraints are eased.

Obtaining a copy of the full BuddeComm report is prohibitively expensive for consumers, priced at $995.

Two former interns for Bell Mobility have filed complaints with Canada’s labor department alleging the company exploited an internship program to acquire the ultimate in cheap labor.

Jainna Patel, 24, spent five weeks at the wireless phone company’s intern campus in Missassauga, Ont. She was enrolled in Bell’s Professional Management Program (PMP), intended to expose workers to the fast-paced telecommunications industry. Patel expected to work with advanced wireless telecom technology and get an introduction to the industry over the course of the three or four-month program. Instead, she and other workers allege they were exposed to 12 hour days doing unpaid entry-level work including phone surveys and basic market research that directly benefited Bell and likely violated Canadian labor laws.

“It felt like I was sitting in an office as an employee, doing regular work. It didn’t feel like a sort of training program,” Patel told CBC News. “They just squeezed out of you every hour they could get and never showed any intent of paying.”

Bell’s PMP invites nearly 300 post-secondary graduates each year to work in the special facility, segregated from regular Bell employees.

Interns are allegedly pressured to work long hours and late, sometimes until 3am, and some left afraid to ask too many questions or complain.

Patel

One intern interviewed by the CBC said he lasted two months in the program and felt taken advantage of performing tedious market research that helped the company place cell towers and advertising billboards. He added he was chastised if he arrived late or complained about overtime hours.

He noted many interns had few opportunities in the jobs market, including at Bell, and many eventually returned to living at home, unemployed.

“I didn’t learn anything,” he said. “I learned not to trust corporations. I learned how life works. Anything I learned professionally was from the other interns.”

Toronto lawyer Andrew Langille, who specializes in internships and labor law, estimates the majority of the 300,000 unpaid interns working in Canada are performing work that directly benefits their host companies in violation of Canadian labor laws.

“Employers decided to use the poor economic conditions and the poor labor market as a carte blanche to begin replacing paid employees with unpaid ones,” Langille claims, noting he hears more complaints about Bell’s internship program than any other program in Canada.

“If you are out of school and you are just providing free work for an employer, then it is typically illegal,” said Langille.

But provincial laws often differ from federal law, opening up loopholes that some companies use to flout labor laws.

Bell’s Creekbank Campus in Ontario.

In Ontario, provincial regulated employers, which do not include Bell, must provide training that benefits the intern without reaping any benefit from the work the intern does. Bell, which is federally regulated, is covered by Canada’s looser Labour Code, which avoids spelling out specific rules governing internships. Case law and past precedent have provided some general guidance that employers should follow, including the fact almost all work should be compensated, but it remains less clear-cut.

Patel’s complaint asks Bell to compensate her almost $2,500 in unpaid wages for her work.

Patel also explained she felt intense pressure from Bell managers to stay quiet and not file any complaints against the program, which at least one manager suggested could be at risk if the government intervened. Patel was told that could result in hundreds of interns being sent home.

Langille was unmoved.

“Is it permissible that a company that makes billions of dollars each year in profits is not paying the minimum wage? It’s ridiculous. A lot of the companies that are using unpaid labor have the ability to pay but choose not to — to save money,” Langille said.

Patel is now back at home worried she will get blacklisted by the industry for being a troublemaker.

[flv width=”480″ height=”290″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/CBC BC Bell accused of breaking labour law with unpaid interns 6-24-13.flv[/flv]

Jainna Patel talks with the CBC about her experience as an unpaid intern for Bell Mobility, Bell Canada’s wireless division. (3 minutes)

Last week, Verizon’s Tom Maguire responded to some of our earlier coverage about Verizon’s decision to abandon landline service on portions of Fire Island devastated by last fall’s Hurricane Sandy. We have received several complaints from readers about our decision to grant space to Verizon to present their views without reciprocation. While we understand those concerns, Stop the Cap! believes readers deserve both sides of a discussion that AT&T and Verizon will soon seek to have with customers across many of their rural service areas. For that reason, we invited Verizon’s participation. This is our response:

Phillip Dampier

Raise your hand if you want Verizon’s Voice Link to replace your traditional telephone service and lose your only wired broadband connection.

Almost no one has. Despite the arguments from Verizon Communications and AT&T that wireless is the answer to troublesome copper wiring and maintaining rural telephone service, dozens of Fire Island, N.Y. customers have been sufficiently provoked to file comments with state regulators, making it clear they want no part of the loss of their landline and its accompanying, affordable broadband service. In more than 135 public comments with the Public Service Commission at press time, Stop the Cap! could only find one comment from a Fire Island resident who had no issues with Verizon’s wireless landline replacement. He was upset Verizon had not wired a nearby yacht club for broadband service.

Both AT&T and Verizon have publicly advocated that rural customers would be better served moving from traditional wired landline service to their respective wireless 4G LTE networks. AT&T characterizes it as “an upgrade” that switches customers to an “all IP” 21st century network. Verizon has been less bold in its public policy statements, framing its position mostly in economic terms  — does it make sense to invest large sums to upgrade or repair damaged infrastructure that serves a relatively small number of customers?

Until recently, customers have been free to make the choice between a landline and wireless service themselves. Now, the residents of Fire Island and some barrier islands off the coast of New Jersey have a very different choice: They can accept Verizon’s Voice Link landline replacement, sign up for cell service that has proved troublesome in both areas, or give up phone service altogether. Verizon has made it clear it is not prepared to replace the destroyed infrastructure on portions of the islands, it will not invest in major upkeep and repairs to network facilities that may have been compromised but are still functioning for now, and will likely never offer its fiber FiOS network in the affected areas.

Stop the Cap! has expressed repeated concern that the decision to abandon wired infrastructure in favor of wireless is based primarily on profit motives, is short-sighted, and represents a downgrade in the quality of an important, regulated utility service, particularly in rural and out-of-the-way places that have few, if any alternatives. Fire Island is shaping up to argue our case, based on the testimony of those actually living and working on the island.

Customers Don’t Want the ‘Solution’ Verizon is Offering

Voice Link is not proving a welcome permanent resident on Fire Island for many customers.

The reasons are clear: inadequate wireless service is common on the island, Voice Link does not perform or sound as good as the landline it replaces, and Verizon’s wireless broadband alternative will cost many residents their unlimited-use DSL service in favor of a wireless capped option that could cost more than $100 a month.

Letter to affected Verizon customers on Fire Island.

Verizon’s strongest argument is that landline service has fallen out of favor in the United States, with customers increasingly disconnecting home phones in favor of cell phones. If Verizon’s statistics are correct, 80 percent of the voice traffic on the island is already handled by Verizon Wireless. (Verizon does not specify if that traffic comes from permanent residents or temporary visitors, a point of contention with residents.)

Maguire was very careful to limit Verizon’s advocacy of Voice Link in terms of its capacity to handle voice calls. That is because Voice Link is currently incompatible with a whole range of important services that have worked fine with traditional landlines for years.

Maguire’s words are important: “Verizon’s commitment is to provide our customers with voice service,” — the kind you had in the late 70s. Voice Link fails faxing, home medical monitoring, home alarm systems, dial-up service, credit card transactions, and home satellite equipment that connects to the telephone network.

Voice Link is no upgrade for Fire Island. It represents turning back the clock, especially for broadband customers.

Maguire claimed in his editorial the company was only considering Voice Link for the universe of customers where the copper network was not supporting their requirements, with the exception of Sandy-impacted Fire Island and some New Jersey barrier islands. But that does not tell the whole story. In a filing with the New York State Public Service Commission, Verizon makes it clear it intends to introduce the same solution in other parts of New York:

It also seeks to deploy Voice Link in other parts of the State, both as an optional service in areas where the company also offers tariffed wireline local exchange service, and (subject to the Commission’s approval) as a sole service offering in particular locations and circumstances.

While Verizon has sought to appease regulators by volunteering to offer an equal level of service for the same or less money, there are questions about whether a regulator has any oversight authority over Voice Link.

“It is a remarkable concept in utility regulation that a regulated utility may determine that costs are unreasonable and as a result choose to provide alternative, and potentially unregulated service to affected customers,” said Louis Barash of Ocean Beach. “Verizon proposes to permit the PSC to regulate that activity, but it is not clear that the Commission has such authority. And it certainly isn’t clear that the Commission would have any authority to reverse its decision, or otherwise to sanction the company, if Verizon failed to comply with its undertakings.”

Broadband & Competition Matters: Forcing Customers Off Unlimited DSL in Favor of Near-Exclusive, Usage-Capped, Verizon Wireless Broadband

Offering broadband is a vital part of any telephone company’s strategy to add and keep customers. Yet Verizon’s DSL customers on the western half of Fire Island will have their broadband service canceled unless wired service (copper or fiber) is available. Verizon’s only alternative is a usage-capped, prohibitively expensive Verizon Wireless mobile data plan that may or may not perform well on the signal-challenged island. There is literally nowhere else for customers to go.

Verizon’s own statistics confirm none of its wireless competitors handle significant traffic on and off the island.

Maguire: “A multimillion dollar investment with no guarantee that residents of the island will even subscribe to our services makes no economic sense. In fact, that’s probably why Verizon is the sole provider on the island. None of the companies we compete with in other parts of New York offer services on the island.”

Maguire’s evidence:

“The company discovered that 80 percent of the voice traffic was already wireless.  If other wireless providers were factored in, it is likely that the percentage is closer to 90 percent.”

That means Verizon’s wireless competitors collectively have a traffic share of less than 10%.

Verizon’s Plan & Public Safety

Residents advise visitors they better have Verizon Wireless and a robust phone that works well in challenging reception areas if they expect to use it while on the island. AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile customers are often out of luck. That poses an immediate and direct threat to public safety, according to public safety officials.

“The cellphone service on Fire Island progressively gets worse every year as more and more people are bringing smartphones out there,” explained Dominic Bertucci, chief of the Kismet Fire Department. “There are some days where you can barely get a signal.”

The Brookhaven Town Fire Chiefs Council, which represents the leadership of 39 fire departments and fire companies in the region is vehemently opposed to Voice Link and considers it a safety menace, especially during frequent summer power outages when the island’s population is at its peak.

“Without a copper wire phone service, a service that still functions even during a power failure, how can we insure that the residents can call for help?” asks president John Cronin. “How will they call for the lifesaving services that are provided by the fire and EMS units of Fire Island? The corporate desire for greater profit cannot be made at the expense of the safety of the residents of Fire Island.”

“Wireless service is not reliable,” adds Fair Harbor resident Meredith Davis. “Imagine being in an emergency and having ‘spotty’ reception which happens out there all the time on cell phones. That is not safe and not okay.”

Verizon disclaims legal responsibility for failed wireless 911 calls in its terms and conditions. The most Verizon owes you is a refund of a portion of your monthly service charges.

“If you are unfamiliar with Fire Island, there is very little medical service and the only way off the island is a scheduled ferry service or, for some people who have permits and trucks, a very long drive,” explains lifelong Fire Island resident Nora Olsen. “When someone needs to be rushed to the hospital, they are evacuated by helicopter, which makes timely emergency calls of the essence to save lives. So you can imagine how important it is to have reliable phone service. It should be up to the individual to decide if they want to switch to a wireless service. They should not be forced into it by Verizon. The people who are most likely to want to stick with the phone service they have been used to all their life — senior citizens — are the most likely to need to use the phone to call for help.”

A number of residents also claim Verizon has overblown the real extent of damage on the island and is not operating in good faith.

“In the larger communities of Ocean Beach and Seaview, I have met no one yet that has their connectivity lost,” said resident Karen Warren. “So for Verizon to assert that the infrastructure is largely destroyed and to repair it would be an enormous expense is simply not true. To add insult to injury, before coming out and finding out that our lines were in fact intact, Verizon offered to ‘replace’ our existing DSL data service with LTE Jetpak wireless broadband. The performance and reliability with only a single device connected was horrendous.”

“[Verizon is] pushing us toward a higher-cost and lower-value solution,” Warren concluded.

Getting specific information about the current state of Verizon’s network on Fire Island and repair/replacement costs are hard to come by. Verizon filed an application with the PSC declaring much of the information confidential or a trade secret, refusing to share it with the public. The company was concerned some might access the Public Service Commission website, find the case number about Fire Island, navigate to the specific Verizon filing containing information about their infrastructure… and then vandalize it.

The worst affected communities on Fire Island.

Barash suspects Verizon might be hiding something, especially considering the company requested to bypass usual waiting periods and public notification requirements:

Verizon asserts that it would cost “$4.8 million for a voice-only digital loop carrier system comparable to the networking serving the eastern part of the island.” It is by no means clear, however, that such a system is the minimum required to restore/repair the western part of the system to the service it had pre-storm. Certainly Verizon’s application makes no representation to that effect. This estimate apparently contemplates an entire new system for the western portion of Fire Island, notwithstanding that a meaningful percentage of the copper wire system is still operational.

Moreover, Verizon’s position on the required scope of repairs has been a constantly shifting target. Verizon apparently advised Commission Staff, and Staff repeated at the April 18 Commission Hearing, that the western Fire Island telephone system was “damaged beyond repair by the storm.” Verizon apparently has abandoned that claim; this application indeed is premised on the assumption that the system can be repaired. Furthermore, in its first (May 3) submission to the Commission, Verizon stated that “five of the six cables that run between Fire Island and the mainland – the five that serve the western portion of the Island – were also badly damaged by the storm.” Just a week later, it has abandoned that claim as well, and instead in its amended Certification asserts “Five of the six cables that run throughout Fire Island were badly damaged by the storm.” It is hard to accept at face value Verizon’s estimated repair costs when even at this late date it does not seem to have a handle on exactly the damage that needs repair.

A full Hearing, with notice to affected customers, is necessary to develop facts sufficient to make such determinations and to be reasonably certain the Commission is acting based on reasonably verifiable facts.

Residents deserve a full voice and full disclosure in discussions that will directly impact their vital telecommunications services for years to come. Verizon’s corporate officials will not have to live with the results. Neither will the staff at the PSC.

Stop the Cap! has chosen to directly participate in the New York State Public Service Commission regulatory process and has filed two formal comments thus far. The first outlines Verizon’s greater strategy to abandon landline service in rural areas outlined by Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam in 2012. We also provided the Commission the prices Verizon Wireless intends to charge Verizon DSL customers switching to wireless broadband service. The second objects to Verizon’s excessive request for secrecy and exposes cell coverage issues on Fire Island.

Would you be surprised to learn a company with just a basic, outdated website replete with spelling and grammar errors holds at least 760 television station construction permits and licenses and just wrote a check for $46.5 million to buy 52 more stations from nine different owners, with plans to shut every last one of them down in the future?

That is precisely the business plan of “Landover Wireless Corp.” and its series of limited liability corporate entities, which are grabbing up as much UHF television spectrum they can apply for across the country.

They are not alone.

CTB Spectrum Services, a company associated with Landover 2 LLC, has 356 UHF TV construction permits/licenses. Its website offers slightly more information about its operations, but not much.

DTV America, a mysterious Sunrise, Fla.-based venture with an official mailing address of 12717 W. Sunrise Boulevard (Suite 372) has its headquarters inside a private mailbox at a UPS Store. The company also has countless requests for television licenses on the UHF dial. DTV America manager John Kyle is also listed as chairman and president of The Pharmacy Television Network, which appears to broadcast its programming on video displays inside pharmacies. DTV America has the lowest profile of all three companies, with no apparent website.

And you thought over the air television was dead.

DTV America’s home is inside a mailbox at the UPS Store in Sunrise, Fla.

A number of low power television owners are surprised to see the sudden rush to launch more than 1,000 new television stations across the country, particularly in rural markets that have been considered a financial dead-end for low power television. Being in the LPTV business and making a living at it often depends on whether a local cable company or satellite dish provider will pick up and relay the station to the majority of Americans that do all of their television viewing on a paid platform. Without this carriage, low power television outlets have several strikes against them: challenging reception from operating with relatively low power, the lack of compelling programming — many of these outlets air paid religious, home shopping, music, or infomercial programming 24 hours a day, and the lack of familiarity by viewers who may not realize these stations are on the air.

From information Stop the Cap! has obtained, none of these ventures actually intend to stay in the over-the-air television business. Instead, they are using FCC licensing rules to get valuable UHF spectrum without having to bid for it at forthcoming spectrum auctions. At least two of the companies claim they are raising capital to build a unicast 4G wireless content delivery network. But some critics contend they are actually spectrum squatters — speculators that have no intention of building anything. Instead, critics charge they will conduct minor experiments to effectively stall the FCC, hanging onto their permits and licenses until they can sell their holdings to a wireless provider hungry for 500-700MHz spectrum and willing to pay top dollar to get it.

Meanwhile, Landover’s $46.5 million buys them dozens of low power stations airing 30-minute commercials like “Skin Solutions by Dr. Graf.” The company claims it will keep those stations on the air until their wireless network is ready, and then the infomercials (along with the rest of the television programming) will be gone for good. Landover also managed to acquire larger Class A TV stations as part of the deal, including one each in Las Vegas and Sacramento, and three in Texas. These stations might become part of the company’s 4G network, sold off or compensated to sign-off forever as part of forthcoming “spectrum packing” by the FCC — further shrinking the UHF TV dial and auctioning off the “excess” spectrum to AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, and other cell companies.

CTB’s License Map

CTB also holds multiple TV licenses in several of its markets. The company claims it will combine those stations together in something akin to a high-powered cellular network to create a bigger wireless data pipe using “patent pending multi-frequency cellular terrestrial network technology [that] increases capacity by hundreds of times through frequency re-use, while also enabling full mobility, broadband Internet, and location-based services.”

CTB’s sales pitch claims its TV licenses offer up to 228MHz of bandwidth that is “essentially identical to 700MHz spectrum, but can be acquired at a fraction of the cost.” The company also claims it has exclusive rights to TV “White Space” spectrum via first adjacent channels, which are treated like guard bands to protect against interference from nearby stations.

All of these companies are applying for channels largely in low-interest rural markets, where they face few challenges from competing applicants. CTB calls this part of their rural “corridor” strategy. One such corridor covers stations in a line from Wisconsin west to Idaho.

All three companies are betting the FCC will allow them to eventually convert their over-the-air television licenses into wireless data networks, or let them sell the spectrum to deeper pocketed players in keeping with the Commission’s plan to open up more frequencies for data-hungry users. If the FCC allows it, these three entities will end up with the rights to prime wireless spectrum covering up to 90 percent of the country without having to spend a penny at forthcoming spectrum auctions.

But there are financial risks. The type of low power station licenses held by most of these companies do not get them a seat at the spectrum packing table. LPTV outlets are considered low-priority stations, and in larger communities, many could be forced off the air without compensation to make enough room for more important, full power stations.

No license, no 4G data network for Landover, CTB and others. But the chances of that happening in rural markets, where residents are lucky to have two or three over the air stations, are slim.

The technology might offer unique broadband opportunities for rural areas where conventional low-range cell towers are too expensive, if the technology works. A higher powered transmitter serving a rural, larger geographic area might prove financially attractive in low population density areas. Only time will tell if any of these entities will be able to raise the capital needed to fulfill the FCC’s construction permit obligations, which give owners just a few years to get their stations on the air or face forfeiture of their permit and/or license.