WASHINGTON-Federal Communications Commission Chairman Reed Hundt directed the wireless telecommunications industry to develop a plan by next week to address interference from European-designed digital pocket telephones to hearing aids.
Hundt, according to sources, met last Monday with representatives from the Personal Communications Industry Association, the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association, Motorola Inc., AT&T Corp., Omnipoint Corp. and an international group that promotes Global System for Mobile communications, or GSM-a technology used around the world, but under fire in the United States.
The meeting, among other things, included a demonstration by the FCC’s Office of Engineering and Technology of a digital pocket phone creating a buzzing noise in a hearing aid.
On the Friday before the meeting, Senate Minority Leader Thomas Daschle, D-S.D., considered-but declined following industry objections-adding language to the Commerce appropriations bill that would have ordered the FCC to initiate a negotiated rulemaking aimed at resolving the hearing-aid interference problem. Further attempts could be made by GSM opponents to attach that provision or a similar one to another piece of legislation.
“We’re looking into the problem and we hope the industry solves it,” said Richard Smith, chief of the Office of Engineering and Technology at the FCC.
A Hundt aide said the chairman believes there is a problem and wants industry to help him fix it, a marked shift from the position taken earlier this year in a letter to Bob Packwood, R-Ore., then-Senate communications subcommittee chairman, in which Hundt declined to halt licensing of new personal communications services licenses because “we don’t believe there is a serious risk of interference to hearing aids” from GSM pocket phones.
The FCC has yet to rule on a petition filed in June by Hear-It Now, a lobbying group representing hearing-aid users in the United States, to require wireless telephones to be hearing-aid compatible.
Congress in 1988 exempted mobile phones from that requirement.
The hearing-aid interference issue has evolved into a high-stakes battle between European and American companies for rights to a multibillion dollar equipment market made possible by the auction of more than 2,000 licenses for next-generation pocket telephone systems.
European studies document interference to hearing aids from GSM phones, but because those phones operate at a higher power level and lower frequency range than PCS phones in the United States and because hearing aids have varying sensitivity to electromagnetic sources, it is difficult to measure the scope of the problem in the states.
“I don’t want anybody three years from now to shut down my CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) system,” said James Valentine, a major investor in North American Wireless Inc. who has aligned himself with hearing-impaired advocacy groups to criticize GSM technology.
NAW is working with AT&T to build wireless networks driven by CDMA technology that Qualcomm Inc., of San Diego, has pioneered.
CDMA technology, embraced by top PCS firms like Sprint Corp. and PCS PrimeCo L.P., is considered superior to GSM and less of an interference threat to hearing aids. But CDMA development is not as far along as GSM technology, which is deployed in European digital cellular systems that use phones built by Ericsson Inc. of Sweden and Nokia Corp. of Finland.
Motorola Inc. also builds largely to GSM specifications overseas.
As a consequence, some American firms such as American Personal Communications Inc., BellSouth Corp., GO Communications Corp. and Pacific Telesis Group, have adopted GSM technology because equipment is readily available at competitive prices and speed to market is important to them.
CTIA and PCIA assert the interference problem is overstated and is being exploited by CDMA proponents for competitive purposes.
CDMA proponents and hearing-aid wearers accuse the major wireless trade associations of fronting for foreign manufacturers to the detriment of American suppliers and of trying to sweep the issue under the rug.
