DOSSIER:

Talk about hats. As CEO of Nsight Telservices, Pat Riordan oversees operations of the Northeast Telephone Co.; Cellcom, the wireless business founded in 1987 that now accounts for 80% of the company's revenue; St. Paul Tower, the company he bought to call the shots on tower construction; as well as Net Cable, NetNet Broadband and Nsight Long Distance. He's 32 years into a career at the 97-year-old Wisconsin company his grandfather took over in 1922. This week he'll be wearing his other hat as chairman of the Rural Cellular Association at its annual convention in Las Vegas. He spoke with Telephony's Tim McElligott about the challenges and opportunity in rural wireless.

On today's big challenges for rural wireless operators: Rural carriers must have the ability to roam nationally, no matter what. I don't care if we are 3G, 4G or 10G, that is still our biggest challenge as an industry. That is something RCA is working on as an organization. We also need the ability to acquire enough spectrum. When we go to Rev. C for CDMA, we have to have a lot more spectrum. That constant need for spectrum makes it important to be able to acquire.

There's also the problem of getting not just phones but devices of all kinds. It concerns me that national carriers put an exclusive on a product and hold on to it for six months or a year. I am not sure that is free market. It doesn't serve the public well. If there is a product out there the public wants, and you can only get it from one company, something is wrong. We have to work with our national carriers, but some of these products are key to our operations. So we will debate that and talk about how to make it a more level playing field and bring these products to markets that the big players don't always serve as well. There is a lot RCA will be doing there. Lobbying is a possibility.

On the efforts of the RCA to address these issues: As president of the organization now, they are stuck with me for a year and a half. I am confident you will see some changes in RCA that will make it more of a national player. We were sad to see Tim Raven leave. However, when a key person leaves, it does present opportunity — and it has stimulated us to start thinking outside the box. I have set up a blue-ribbon committee that will meet at CTIA and hopefully we'll have some good plans in place by June 1.

On the need for more spectrum: We will certainly encourage rural providers to think seriously about getting in on the next auction. Unfortunately, it looks like the FCC will be moving that date up. Moving that date gives heartburn to a number of rural carriers because we have limited dollars, and some of us went into the AWS auction thinking we would have money available in the 2008 budget to go after the 700 MHz spectrum. It puts a shock into rural carriers, although I am sure they will participate — and they should. 700 MHz is a great place to be.

On what's up with WiMAX and convergence: A lot of rural carriers will do WiMAX; it's just going to take longer than we realized. As for convergence, Wall Street has trouble understanding convergence, but we think it is important to get to a true converged product eventually.