WASHINGTON – Rep. Rick Boucher (D-Va.) said he wants legislation this year to streamline rules governing the relocation of microwave users from the 2 GHz band to higher frequencies that new broadband personal communications services operators are financing.
“The rules that the Federal Communications Commission has put in place for this relocation are unworkable,” Boucher told a breakfast audience at the Personal Communications Industry Association’s spring government conference here last week.
The FCC, despite lobbying by wireless carriers, has refused to alter procedures that establish a two-year voluntary negotiation period between microwave incumbents and new PCS licensees and a one-year mandatory negotiation period between the two sides to agree on terms and conditions to move fixed users onto comparable facilities.
Public safety entities are entitled to a more liberal, three-year voluntary/two-year mandatory negotiation.
Last month, the FCC took several steps to curb reported abuses by a small percentage of microwave licensees. It has been alleged that some fixed users want an analog-to-digital upgrade and want their entire systems changed out even if only a limited number of microwave links in the PCS service area are affected.
In some cases, microwave licensees are said to have asked for exorbitant payments to move off the 2 GHz band in short order.
“That practice is an abuse and it is an abuse that we should end,” said Boucher, an influential minority member of the House telecommunications subcommitteed.
“We should certainly require that all negotiations take place within a one-year period and there be a good-faith negotiation obligation imposed on all the parties during that period of time,” said Barton.
Lawmakers inserted a provision along those lines in House budget reconciliation legislation last year, but it was subsequently dropped in negotiations with the Senate. The bill was later vetoed by President Clinton.
Some believe the FCC has been reluctant to change the basic parameters covering negotiations between microwave and PCS licensees because to do so could leave the agency vulnerable to lawsuits and cause the delicate compromise reached on the issue in Congress several years ago to unravel.
However, Sen. Ernest Hollings (D-S.C.) and other lawmakers who previously sympathized with microwave users have signaled they are ready to break ranks with that constituency as a result of reported problems.
In other matters, Boucher said he opposed the Clinton administration’s fiscal 1997 budget plan to raise $700 million over the next three years by auctioning 888 toll-free telephone numbers.
“I’m not sure these toll-free numbers are really the government’s property and I think it’s very presumptuous of the government to suggest it should raise revenue by auctioning the numbers,” stated Boucher.
“While $700 million is certainly not an inconsiderable amount of money,” he said, “in a budget of about $1.5 trillion it’s a relatively small amount and it is not enough money coming to the government to pay the price of the business disruption and other problems that would rise if we were to decide to auction these new toll-free numbers.”
