WASHINGTON-Congress, in a partial setback for the Federal Communications Commission, has limited-but not precluded-the use of auctions to license refarmed private wireless spectrum.
Auctions are one of several market-based incentives the FCC is considering introducing in private wireless bands below 512 MHz, which are being restructured to accommodate the transition during the next 10 years to narrowband and other spectrum-efficient technologies.
The FCC also is looking at imposing spectrum user fees; moving from shared to exclusive channel licensing; and allowing licensees to sell excess channel capacity.
Private wireless users generally oppose FCC Chairman Reed Hundt’s desire to auction spectrum they get for free.
Forest Industries Telecommunications, which represents the logging business, said the FCC’s proposals are “unnecessary, highly complex and impractical, and, if adopted, would bring about the transformation of the private land mobile services from private to commercial.”
Auction legislation passed in 1993 allows the FCC to sell commercial wireless spectrum ($8 billion worth of next-generation paging and pocket telephone licenses have been sold already), but forbids the agency from selling private wireless spectrum.
The Republican balanced budget bill that is headed for a presidential veto would raise $14 billion during the next seven years from expanded auctions but exempt public safety radio services, “including non-Government uses, the sole or principal purpose of which is to protect the safety of life, health, and property and which are not made commercially available to the public.”
The exemption language adopted by budget conferees is narrower than that adopted by the House, which went beyond local government public safety agencies to include nongovernmental entities such as utilities, oil companies and railroads that use private radio frequencies as an adjunct to their core businesses.
The FCC, according to one source, lobbied Congress to limit exemptions.
Yet trade groups that represent hundreds of thousands of private wireless users say they believe the House-Senate auction exemption clause still gives them cover from auctions. The FCC may not agree.
Clearly, the agency will have final say on how to consolidate the 20 private mobile radio services as a result of industry’s failure to reach consensus on a plan of its own. The FCC would like two to four broad categories of private wireless users, with public safety being at least one of them.
“Any criteria for the certification of frequency coordinators must be comprehensive and prudently selected,” stated the American Petroleum Institute.
Other issues remain as well in overhauling a regulatory structure that today supports 500,000 licensees with more than 12 million mobile units representing a $25 billion investment.
The Land Mobile Communications Council, an umbrella group of private and commercial wireless licensees, recommended key steps be taken to make refarming successful. They are developing uniform technical standards to govern the coordination of new systems; implementing measures to enable licensees of existing low-power offset operations to protect their communications systems; and establishing concrete deadlines to assist the conversion to more efficient technologies.
Rather than forcing licensees to replace existing radio systems, the FCC rules will navigate the move to advanced technologies in private wireless bands below 512 MHz by gradually approving only radio equipment that meets new standards.
By Aug. 1, 1996, for example, federal regulators will authorize only mobile radios that can operate on 12.5 kHz channels. Most two-way radios today operate on 25 megahertz channels. The FCC, however, will allow new equipment-most likely digital radios-that operate on 25 megahertz channels but with narrowband efficiency.
After Jan. 1, 2005, mobile radios must have a 6.25 kHz bandwidth spectrum efficiency.
