WASHINGTON-The Federal Communications Commission is expected to complete 800 MHz specialized mobile radio auction-licensing rules within weeks, following bipartisan pressure from Congress to adopt an industry plan that has divided the FCC.
With backing from a group of 23 House Commerce Committee members and Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.), the 800 MHz SMR industry plan-a long, hard-fought compromise representing a delicate balance of wireless interests-is likely to win out at the FCC over objections from auction hawks.
Lawmakers weighed in shortly before adjourning the 104th Congress. Michele Farquhar, chief of the Wireless Telecommunications Bureau at the FCC, said the agency is taking the Capitol Hill correspondences seriously.
FCC Chairman Reed Hundt is the strongest and most powerful advocate of auctions in government, having raised $20 billion from selling wireless licenses during the last two years. Others, like Commissioner James Quello, believe auctions are not necessary in all circumstances.
Separately, key House and Senate lawmakers with FCC oversight are growing increasingly angry with congressional budgeteers and the Clinton administration for funding domestic programs with anticipated auction revenues.
The SMR plan, hammered out over the past two years by different SMR factions ranging from small- and medium-sized analog operators to large digital carriers, like Nextel Communications Inc., would allow existing operators to get geographic licenses on lower 230 800 MHz channels through settlements, joint ventures and frequency swaps and would protect non-SMR licenses in the 800 MHz general category pool of 150 channels that now are available exclusively to the SMR industry.
The upper 200 800 MHz SMR channels are set for auction next year.
“We urge the commission to adopt the principles outlined in the `Industry Consensus,’ while also continuing to license private, non-SMR users in the manner contemplated by the 1993 Budget Act,” stated House members in a Sept. 27 letter to Hundt.
“We believe the industry proposal would promote the introduction of new competitive wireless services, while simplifying the SMR licensing process and reducing the commission’s administrative licensing burden,” said lawmakers.
Besides making clear their policy preference on future 800 MHz SMR licensing, the House letter represents the strongest warning to date against auctioning private wireless spectrum.
“We think it’s very positive that the congressional leadership recognized the existence and credibility of the 3,400 non-SMR private wireless licensees in that [general category] band,” said Mark Crosby, president of the Industrial Telecommunications Association. But “we don’t know how the FCC will respond, if at all,” he added.
Jill Lyon, regulatory director of the American Mobile Telecommunications Association, said the consensus plan will protect small businesses, result in service getting to the public swiftly and “keep the SMR industry a competitive part of the wireless industry as a whole and end a long period of stagnation.”
The FCC froze SMR licensing in August 1994 as a prelude to developing geographic licensing and auction rules. Despite that, the industry still grew 13 percent last year.
“We’re happy to be coming to the end of a process and to the beginning of a new era,” said Lyon.
AMTA worked with SMR WON, a coalition of small SMRs, the Personal Communications Industry Association and Nextel.
