USCC is a Tier II carrier under the Order to Stay issued by the Commission in 2002. As a wireless carrier with systems serving many small and rural markets, USCC faces particular challenges in upgrading its technology and interacting with a wide variety of PSAPs across its service area. To meet these challenges, USCC has dedicated substantial financial and personnel resources to accelerate the deployment of E911 service throughout its service area. USCC personnel maintain regular communication with PSAPs that are at varying levels of readiness in the provision of E911 service. In addition, USCC closely monitors its E911 vendors to facilitate E911 deployment to all requesting PSAPs. USCC continues to make great progress toward the provision of E911 service throughout its service area, and maintains its proactive relationships with PSAPs in its service area to ensure prompt roll-outs once the PSAPs are upgraded to receive and utilize either phase I and/or phase II E911 information.
In 2004, USCC completed an ambitious, four-year, multimillion dollar CDMA overbuild in all of its TDMA markets to CDMA, an upgrade that enabled it to deploy a phase II compliant handset solution in cooperation with upgraded PSAPs that requested the service. USCC's cooperative phase II deployment effort employed during its CDMA conversion effectively became the standard utilized by the FCC in considering the phase II waiver requests filed by Tier III carriers proposing a conversion from TDMA to CDMA.