Mandated tower sharing and roaming consultation elicits interesting arguments

The usual suspects of Canada's wireless industry have drawn their lines in the sand regarding an Industry Canada provision to mandate antenna tower sharing and roaming, but some parties appear to be extending the guidelines of the consultation as far as possible. The comments come as the department prepares for its May 2008 auction of crucial wireless bandwidth. Yak Communications Inc., which has already signaled its intent to participate in the upcoming spectrum auction, wants the department to consider telecom facilities as an extension of mandated tower site sharing. "Please confirm, for the sake of greater clarity, that site sharing includes access to co-location and interconnection facilities at commercially reasonable terms, as well as to the phone room and backhaul facilities incidental to the sites themselves," reads the company's comments. The dial-around provider also wants new mandated roaming provisions to extend to wireless local area networks (WLANs). "Please confirm that mandated roaming arrangements will support public WLAN/GSM roaming for parties that have a cellular, PCS or AWS roaming arrangement with existing licensees, and that wherever existing licensees operate a WLAN network for public use, such existing licensees will provide and support roaming to and from the WLAN network to the cellular network with authentication being provided via SIM card or username and password."Look Communications Inc. also suggests that mandatory roaming be extended beyond what is being contemplated in the consultation. "As the AWS spectrum set-aside only covers 14% of all available wireless spectrum, Look proposes that the modifications to the cellular and PCS licences of incumbents should not be limited to mandating roaming only amongst PCS, cellular and AWS licensees," reads the company's comments. "These PCS and cellular licence modifications should also apply to any current or future licences in mobile wireless spectrum bands." The struggling wireless cableco goes further, arguing that new roaming agreements between incumbent wireless providers should be prohibited for a certain period of time. This, says Look, would prevent Rogers Wireless from leasing its excess capacity to Telus Mobility if it chose to switch to the GSM platform while leaving none for new entrants. "Look proposes that new entrants be given priority over incumbents and that there should be a period commencing immediately and lasting for the five year build-out period in the licence areas and a ten year period outside of the licence areas following the issuance of AWS licences during which time incumbents may not enter into new roaming agreements with each other," writes Look. "In order to assist the planning and negotiating process, incumbents should be required to make public, prior to May 27, 2008, all technical limitations and capacity constraints existing on their networks in specific licence areas."Report on Wireless will provide further detail on comments to the consultation on mandated tower sharing and roaming in the coming days.

Mandated tower sharing and roaming consultation elicits interesting arguments

News | 02/01/2008 7:29 pm EST

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