Chairman Ajit Pai met with community leaders and internet providers while taking a tour of WRDN-AM (1430). He also took some time to go on the air with agribusiness news director Brian Winnekins.
“It’s a great time for radio, especially AM radio,” Pai said, noting he grew up in rural Kansas. “WRDN is doing what it does best — connect people of the Chippewa Valley with information pertinent to them. The entire community is linked by this radio station.”
Winnekins said he is concerned he must lower his AM station’s power at night so it doesn’t interfere with a St. Louis station. That’s ridiculous, Winnekins said, because then residents in Durand and Mondovi can’t get the station after sundown to hear local athletic games or important weather alerts.
The other concern Winnekins has is the interference to AM stations from LED lights and other electrical items. He implored Pai to work to resolve that with Underwriter Laboratories to include electronics in devices to minimize it.
Broadband also is essential to rural areas because if local people can’t get his station on a radio, they turn to the webcast of it, Winnekins noted.
Pepin County Sheriff Joel Wener spoke with Pai about a potential $7 million upgrade needed in emergency radio communications over the next year or so because of narrowing bandwidth for those type of communications ordered by the FCC.
Hills in the region sometimes cause officers to lose communication with dispatchers, and paging first responders, ambulances and fire departments can be difficult, Wener said.
“Other counties have cell towers,” he said. “We don’t have cell towers in the right locations.”
The Pepin County Board is looking at proposals and options to address the need for better communications for emergency services.
Pai, a former Verizon attorney, has been a member of the FCC since 2012. President Donald Trump named him chairman. Pai is on a 1,300-mile trip that started in Milwaukee and will end in Casper, Wyo.
Gina Tomlinson, chief executive officer of Cochrane Co-op Telephone in Cochrane, said the issue is affordability of broadband in rural communities.
A major part of Pai’s trip is talk about “net neutrality.”
Pai wants to roll back Obama-era net neutrality rules that require internet companies to provide equal treatment to customers and services and prohibits internet providers from blocking or slowing websites or charging them special fees in order for their content to be displayed to consumers.
Consumer groups have said the rules are needed to ensure that internet companies don’t cut internet speeds to certain customers in favor of others.
Critics of the rules, including the FCC’s Republican majority, say the policy is stifling and prevents internet providers from finding new ways of making money in a world where many major goods and services have gone digital. Companies say the rules waste money that would be used to expand or improve service into compliance efforts.
©2017 the Leader-Telegram (Eau Claire, Wis.) Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
