January 2014
| Business World Magazine | 133
support was reduced. We continue discus-
sions with the FCC and Congress – it’s
one of our goals coming up in the year
ahead, to continue to seek reforms in the
USF/CAF support programs. The FCC
should aim to deploy available funding in
a more competitively and technologically
neutral way. We’d love to see consumer
choice have an impact on where the mon-
ey goes in rural America. It doesn’t make
a lot of sense for the federal government
program to support one type of technolo-
gy in an area and basically say that if you
want broadband, you can only get it from
a wireline provider, especially when con-
sumers are continuing to choose mobility.
We have a hill to climb, but this is one of
the areas that we will continue to focus
on, absolutely. We are asking the FCC to
think more innovatively about wireless
solutions in the future.
BW: There’s another aspect of the or-
ganization to discuss, the Business In-
novation Group.
BERRY: The Business Innovation Group
(BIG) drives our Industry Development
Programs and is essentially a committee
of wireless carriers who meet regularly
to develop new, innovative and scalable
programs to meet their most immediate
