WASHINGTON-In recent months, the Federal Communications Commission has focused the bulk of its attention on meeting and beating congressional telecom-reform mandates, the most recent of which involved adopting an order outlining the regulatory structure of local competition. Many commission projects-including several far-reaching wireless dockets-have been relegated to the back burner, forcing many carriers to put much-needed new business plans on hold. This will change.
Michele Farquhar, chief of the Wireless Telecommunications Bureau, expects to spend the next six months on “tricky issues,” including refarming, tower siting, hearing-aid compatibility, spectrum management and partitioning/disaggregation.
“We’re working with the 8th floor to get items voted,” she said. “Now that the crunch of telecom-bill related items is over, we will have more time to look at the industry and develop a model on how to work with wireless in the future.”
To this end, a draft of Part One of a long-awaited white paper dealing with the future of the private-radio industry, soon to be circulated among several industry representatives for feedback, will help staffers understand the whys and wherefores of private carriage. Farquhar hopes it will “flag some issues to be raised in a second part by the end of the year.”
At press time, the bureau continued to debate the fate of Part 90 commercial applicants destined to become commercial mobile radio service carriers on Aug. 10, when the commission’s three-year private mobile radio service/CMRS transition period ends. According to Rob Hoggarth, senior vice president of paging and narrowband at the Personal Communications Industry Association, current paging, specialized mobile radio and General Category actives and applicants had hoped new rules regarding their regulatory status would have been completed by this time to avoid a potential shutdown of operations due to noncompliance.
PCIA asked the commission Aug. 2 for a 180-day blanket Special Temporary Authority to continue operating until new rules have been formulated. While hopeful that meetings with David Furth of the WTB would result in some type of solution, a full 180 days probably would not be allowed.
Moving to a faster track now that initial telecom-bill goals have been met by the FCC are refarming and tower siting. “The refarming reconsideration will come up very soon,” Farquhar said, perhaps in a September timeframe. “The [commissioners] are looking at it.” In addition, Farquhar said new 800 MHz rules, which could include all or parts of the consensus agreement reached by the industry and its associations, could be on the agenda in September. “It’s complicated, but we’re in good shape,” she said.
The tower-siting issue now has an interbureau task force dedicated to it, headed by WTB’s Roz Allen. One of its first concerns is to gauge how state and local jurisdictions are heeding presidential and congressional directives not to impede the buildout of wireless systems, including antenna sites. “We are looking into when a moratorium becomes a barrier to entry,” she explained. “We want to play a facilitating role between the states and the carriers.”
The commission’s Office of Plans and Policy will be focusing on spectrum-management initiatives, particularly those in which technology plays a part. Farquhar said that because of the rise in unlicensed wireless applications and equipment, the Office of Engineering and Technology also would be doing more on that front.
A notice of proposed rulemaking adopted June 28 addresses partitioning and disaggregation along with barriers to entry; it is still in the comment stage. “This could be extremely helpful to small businesses,” she said. “Big players could sell off small pieces [of a license] to them.” So far, a few rural telcos and small businesses have taken advantage of such “doughnut” licenses in the personal communications services arena.
The WTB has the go-ahead to add 10 staffers to handle work on pending wireless issues, and Farquhar is searching for candidates with previous wireless experience. The FCC’s licensing division in Gettysburg, Pa., could be undergoing some personnel changes in the future if the decision is made to take licensing private. “There could be an initiative introduced in the fall to get comment on this,” she said, adding the commission is concerned about what will happen to current Gettysburg staffers should another company or association take over licensing procedures. One solution would be to train some personnel to take over more of the customer-service/complaint-related questions the FCC anticipates will be generated by the rise of competition in the marketplace, especially due to such new wireless entrants as PCS.
In the interim, the bureau could be moving to an autogrant system as soon as October that would give the FCC the capability of processing license applications “almost overnight,” Farquhar said. “We’re also looking at improving our mapping software so that people can download market information right off our home page.’
Last but not least, Farquhar plans to put more emphasis on public-safety concerns, and she has been working with the Public Safety Wireless Advisory Committee as that group moves closer to formulating a final report on future needs, due at the end of September. A report and order on public safety will be addressed by commissioners at the end of this year.
Intimating the possibility of creating a new bureau division, Farquhar said, “Public safety needs to be a higher priority in the bureau, and we will continue to address their issues even after PSWAC goes away.”
