Rural Cellular Extends Its Reach

[ComicalMoodyDan]

Rural Cellular Extends Its Reach
By Sue Marek
June 26, 2003
news@2 direct


Following in the footsteps of Midwest Wireless and Triton PCS (SunCom), which earlier this week announced plans to acquire more spectrum, Rural Cellular Corporation today said its subsidiary, RCC Minnesota, will acquire 1900 MHz spectrum from AT&T Wireless and one of its affiliates. The licenses cover 1.9 million POPs in RCC's Northeast region and 200,000 POPs in RCC's Northwest region.

Rural Cellular is in the midst of a complicated technology conversion and in conjunction with this spectrum purchase plans to overlay a substantial number of cell sites with GSM/GPRS technology as well as overlay its Midwest region with CDMA technology. The company says it is evaluating overlay options in its remaining TDMA markets and may deploy both CDMA and GSM, depending on market conditions. The company is currently picking vendors for the conversion, which it plans to begin in the third quarter and finish by 2005.

Of course, one of the primary drivers for Rural Cellular's choice of either GSM or CDMA for its TDMA migration path is the company's potential roaming revenue from other carriers' subscribers. To that end, the company inked a roaming deal with Cingular Wireless in which Rural Cellular will provide GSM service to Cingular customers in four states in the northeastern United States. The agreement is effective from June 2003 through December 2007. Likewise, the company has a similar deal with AT&T Wireless that is effective June 2003 through June 2006. Both agreements provide certain rate step-downs at defined intervals.

Rural Cellular Extends Its Reach

[Buickman]

Thank God! I was hoping RCC would put up CDMA here in northern MN. The analog $ucks, and now that Verizon offers there area as "extended network" I figured maybe there were some upgrades planned for the area.