Connecting With Others In The Industry
This has been a busy week with a lot of key interactions. After having the chance to meet with the AT&T folks on Monday in Atlanta, we had the team from NetAmerica fly up to Arlington today to meet with a number of us and walk through their thoughts and business plan for bringing a 4G play for rural telcos. NTCA would like to see an opportunity in the road ahead for those telcos with spectrum–and those without–to find some mobility services to add to their mix. The one piece that is clear to me is that the independent industry will have to really be willing to find ways to work together and partner together in this effort. I also had the opportunity to head out to Dulles, Virginia yesterday to meet with the board of directors for RTFC, along with Scott Lively and Tammie Logan from our legislative team. The RTFC board has always been so supportive of our efforts and I was thrilled when they surprised me with another generous contribution to the Save Rural Broadband Campaign. They are trying to figure out what their telco lending will look like given the regulatory uncertainty facing the RLEC industry. I also met with some of Verizon’s leadership late yesterday and will be meeting with Frontier tomorrow. This certainly has been a week for touching base with others in the telecom industry and comparing notes on next steps.
