Little FCC Reforms Can Have Big Benefits for Rural Broadband

In rural America, many grain legs (bucket elevators for moving grain) have small wireless radios attached to them, providing the grain leg’s owner with broadband service. But a loophole in the current Federal Communications Commission rules means that the same service provider seeking to use the same type of radio and infrastructure to provide service to the next farmer a couple of miles down the road could have to go through an onerous permitting process, or be denied access altogether. Thankfully, the FCC is looking to close that loophole, proposing an important update to its over-the-air-reception device (OTARD) rule that will have significant, positive implications for bringing broadband to unserved and underserved parts of America. Among other things, the agency is looking to allow broadband “hubs” — technology the size of a pizza box — to be placed on private property to serve small clusters of homes, modernizing its rule to accord with the advance of today‘s wireless broadband networks. Updating OTARD means both the farmer and his neighbor can get broadband quickly and cost-effectively. And that is the right thing to do. 

[Claude Aiken is president and CEO of the Wireless Internet Service Providers Association (WISPA)]