The paging industry is undergoing a major regulatory overhaul.
The question is why?
As the most competitive sector of the wireless telecommunications industry, it is not clear whether sweeping changes are being made to accommodate the federal government and large paging companies that have paid hundreds of millions into the federal coffer, or to benefit the entire paging industry.
Federal regulators are trying to move the paging industry from a regulatory regime that licenses transmitters one at a time to a market-area licensing scheme akin to that used for cellular telephone and narrowband and broadband personal communications services.
Market-area licensing significantly streamlines the regulatory process for policymakers and applicants alike. For the Federal Communications Commission, it’s the regulatory path to auctions.
What benefits-competitive or otherwise-auctions bring to the vital paging industry are not easily discernible. But that’s where everything is headed.
“It’s on a fast track,” said David Furth, chief of the Commercial Wireless Division at the FCC referring to market-area auction licensing.
So far, the transition to market-area licensing has been a chilling experience for most of the paging industry.
The freeze the FCC imposed on all but nationwide paging carriers Feb. 8 did little to instill industry confidence in the new regulatory order. Months of complaints about the freeze’s debilitating effects on business, which in turn prompted Congress to pressure the FCC into lifting the freeze, finally resulted in a partial easing of the big chill on April 23 to the extent that paging operators with construction permits issued by Feb. 8 can expand up to 40 miles.
The entire affair has created a major schism in paging, pitting local and regional paging operators against the Personal Communications Industry Association. A broad-based paging coalition said PCIA could have been more aggressive in lobbying the FCC and Congress to get the freeze removed, but was compromised by large, dues-paying members.
PCIA said the charge is unfair, noting the FCC responded favorably to its request for relief.
But anger remains about pending paging applications that were not granted by Feb. 8. While those applicants can construct facilities, they cannot expand.
How much 900 MHz paging spectrum is available to auction is nebulous. Clearly, there was a major backlash as a result of the paging freeze as there has been when the agency has halted the processing of applications in other wireless sectors-like specialized mobile radio service.
“It’s all driven by auctions,” said Kevin O’Brien, president of O’Brien Communications Inc. in Annandale, Va., and a harsh critic of the FCC.
“The FCC has declared war on small businesses and no telecom industry is driven more by small business than paging,” O’Brien said .
Now there is speculation that the FCC might offer further relief to the paging industry within weeks.
Judith St. Ledger-Roty, a regulatory lawyer for Paging Network Inc., said the “commission went a long way to addressing industry’s concerns.”
But St. Ledger-Roty said it’s time to move on to crafting market-area licensing for the messaging industry.
Mark Golden, head of regulatory affairs, at PCIA agrees.
“It’s not so much contentious, it’s complicated,” said Golden, summing up prickly issues in the paging market-area licensing and auction proceeding.
St. Ledger-Roty said the word “paging” does not convey the state of the industry that regulatory changes are now taking account of in terms of technological advances and the relationship with the public switched telephone network in the aftermath of the telecommunications reform bill.
The FCC and lawmakers have picked up on that point, though. As a result of 1993 legislation, all paging operators-radio common carriers and private carrier paging carriers alike-are in the process of being regulated more alike within the new commercial mobile radio service paradigm.
And narrowband PCS is advanced, two-way digital paging or messaging.
St. Ledger-Roty said interconnection between commercial mobile radio service providers and local telephone companies is crucial to the paging industry.
“I’d like to see paging carriers compensated for LEC (local exchange carrier) use of the paging company switch and possibly for traffic they carry as well,” said St. Ledger-Roty.
The FCC is considering a plan whereby wireless and wireline carriers keep revenue from traffic they generate and terminate each other’s traffic for free. The regional Bell telephone companies oppose the proposal and want CMRS-LEC interconnection issues rolled into the broader interconnection proceeding mandated by the new telecommunications law.
The wireless industry argues CMRS-LEC is under the purview of the FCC, not the states.
Beyond the sand-shifting changes contemplated by market-area licensing and interconnection initiatives, policymakers are considering fundamental changes to the North American numbering plan, rules for local narrowband PCS auctions, the auction of 888 toll-free telephone numbers, allotment of channels for acknowledgment paging, coordination of paging frequencies with Canada and Mexico, paging resale and local taxation of paging facilities.
“In lots of states, we’re playing a game of brinkmanship,” said St. Ledger-Roty, referring to local telephone companies treatment of wireless carriers in implementing area-code relief plans for areas, like Chicago and elsewhere, where telephones numbers are running out.
