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Smaller U.S. carriers still have Huawei gear in their networks
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Without more funding, these operators are forced to make hard choices
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Wyoming-based Union Wireless is closely monitoring what Congress is doing in hopes that Rip and Replace will get fully funded
Union Wireless, a small telecom company in Wyoming, owns and manages a cell site near Grand Teton National Park that probably sees less than 30 minutes of use in any given month.
That site will never make a profit, but the company will continue to maintain it for as long as it’s in business.
“Customers have told us over the years how that cell site saved their life. They were able to make 911 calls. They were able to get snowplows to come pull them out,” Union Wireless CEO Eric Woody told Fierce Network. “It is really important to make sure that people have the ability to call 911 when they need it.”
Those customers rely on Union Wireless, but the company is in a quandary. It still has Huawei gear in its network.
Through the 2019 Secure and Trusted Communications Network Act, Congress ordered smaller carriers like Union Wireless to remove Chinese equipment in the interest of national security but provided only 40% of the funds needed.
Therefore, Union and other carriers, like Colorado-based Viaero Wireless, are waiting for Congress to make up for the $3 billion shortfall so they can get on with their business and replace the Chinese equipment with gear that’s deemed secure. In the meantime, they’re trying to compete with AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon.
Efforts were made before the House passed the latest foreign aid spending package to get funds for the so-called Rip and Replace program. The Washington, D.C.-based lobbying group, Competitive Carriers Association (CCA), was diligently working on the issue about 2,000 miles away from its home base when it held its Mobile Carriers Show in Palm Desert, California, last week.
But the amendment did not make it through to the final stages and CCA continues to push for any opportunities to get the requisite funds.
As long as it remains unfunded, “the unfortunate reality is these carriers are adjusting their plans” – to either reduce their coverage or possibly be forced out of business entirely, CCA President and CEO Tim Donovan told Fierce this week.
Precarious situation
On the sidelines of the CCA show last week, Woody said the Huawei equipment in Union’s network is aging and if the company were to have an outage like, say, the kind AT&T experienced in February, it would be in a world of trouble.
In fact, Union did have a problem with a component a few weeks ago, and fortunately, they were able to get it stabilized and back online. But there’s no guarantee they’re going to get so lucky again.
“How much time we have to continue to operate it, I don’t know,” Woody said. “I’m not saying it’s on life support, but I’m saying we’re also one card failure away from being dark. It just depends on the card and the issue.”
Union Wireless is in the very early stages of getting its new, non-Huawei gear online and the first cluster will probably go live with customers in the next three weeks, he said. He declined to name the vendor, but in 2021, Nokia announced that it would swap out Union’s existing radio access network (RAN) equipment with Nokia’s AirScale 4G/5G radio portfolio.
How Union Wireless got here
Union Wireless did not have a good experience with its vendor in the 3G era. The deployment was delayed by at least a year, and Woody declined to name that vendor as well (we're presuming it was Ericsson.) So when it came time to go shopping for 4G LTE equipment, Huawei looked like a good choice. Huawei’s LTE switching and base station products met Union’s design requirements and the vendor was good about meeting deadlines and delivering what Union asked for.
That was over 10 years ago, when national security didn’t seem to be an issue. And the quality of the Huawei equipment? “The equipment has been rock solid,” he said.
According to a filing with the FCC, Union Wireless invested more than $34 million in Huawei network equipment and estimated it would cost about $110 million to replace it. The Rip and Replace order affected about 418 cellular towers, spread over 90,000 square miles – some at elevations more than 10,000 feet above sea level.
Exacerbating the situation is more than 60% of the land in Union Wireless’ coverage area is federally managed lands, whether it be the U.S. Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management (BLM) or the U.S. National Parks Service. The permitting process can take multiple years to complete.
Woody said his company can make it to September, but if Congress doesn’t allocate additional funds, it’s going to get a lot more difficult going into next year. “I can’t over-extend myself with my vendor, saying that I’m going to buy X number of radios next year when I don’t have money to do it,” he said. “There’s not a lot of head room.”
Union considered using open RAN, but it wasn’t ready for prime time.
“We’re very rural. Most of what we were seeing seemed to be designated more for urban” areas, he said. “I don’t have small areas in my network. Our network area is over 100,000 square miles, which is the size of the U.K., and we have less than a million inhabitants in that region. A lot of miles and not a lot of bodies.”
A long history
The Union Telephone Company was founded in 1914 by his great-grandfather, John D. Woody, in Mountain View, Wyoming. Ideally, Eric Woody would like to keep the family business intact. When a rural carrier is bought out by a larger rival, it usually means coverage shrinks as opposed to getting better. “This is about creating a legacy and the people of this area deserve better,” he said.
Besides serving about 30,000 wireless subscribers, the company provides landline telephone and broadband services throughout its service territory, which includes vast areas of Wyoming, northwestern Colorado and parts of Utah, Idaho and Montana.
A lot of truckers rely on Union’s network when they’re roaming through these remote areas, including on I-80. Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyoming) talked about how these areas are at risk of losing coverage and the importance of funding Rip and Replace during a Senate Commerce Committee hearing on spectrum and national security last month.
As a result, Woody and his team spend a lot of time in Washington, D.C., these days making sure their voices are heard.
“I think the networks are on borrowed time. We really need Congress to do their piece and we’ll try to do our piece. I think the consumers in these markets – they need us sometimes even more than they realize,” he said. “What happens when companies like ours cease to exist is not good.”
“I don’t care which bill it goes in as long as it gets the signature,” he concluded.