WASHINGTON-At a time other sectors of the telecommunications industry are urging the Federal Communications Commission to go away and leave them alone, Mark Crosby, president of the Industrial Telecommunications Association wants more attention. He wants an advocate fighting for private wireless spectrum inside of the FCC. He wants an advocate selling the mission that without private wireless, America “would be a third-world country.”
As ITA was preparing to gather here for its annual meeting, Crosby sat down with RCR to discuss the needs and desires of private wireless. The need is pretty simple: more spectrum. The desire is to not be overtaken by commercial mobile radio services and by extension have to submit to CMRS-like licensing (i.e. auctions).
RCR: ITA is based on protecting private wireless. Do you think there is a place for commercial mobile radio services where private wireless has traditionally functioned?
Crosby: They absolutely already have. I am not going to sit here and say that CMRS has not and will not provide a piece of the communications requirements for private-wireless entities. In fact, it has, starting eight to 10 years ago. In fact, if you were to ask somebody the question, will CMRS entities accommodate private wireless? The answer is sometimes yes, sometimes no. Will it ever accommodate all of it? I would be inclined to say no. In urban areas, a higher percentage of private wireless can be accommodated by CMRS. Mainly because that is where the most infrastructure is. For example, we are working with a major steel producer in a metropolitan area in Western Pennsylvania and they need to migrate their private wireless systems. You are not going to take a commercial phone or device inside a steel mill. We are having conversations with a major telephone, cellular, PCS licensee. In the old days before refarming, they used the telephone maintenance frequencies and now the telephone maintenance frequencies are gone, but the requirement to maintain their wireline, cellular and PCS infrastructure is growing. They can’t use their own networks because they don’t have the coverage. It doesn’t give them the features they want. Their requirement for private wireless applications is growing because they now have more infrastructure to maintain and to make sure it is operational and so forth.
RCR: Do you think the downsizing of the private wireless focus in the FCC’s Wireless Telecommunications Bureau has led to more or less regulation? Is that a good or bad thing?
Crosby: It has certainly led to less attention. We need an advocate. That is not to say there are not good people over there. There are good people in the public safety and private wireless division, but I don’t think it is the most powerful division in the bureau. When you are in the lower rung of the ladder, you are not going to get a lot of attention.
RCR: Do you see an end to the refarming proceeding and if so, when?
Crosby: I am sort of known in the industry as Mr. Refarming. Yeah, I think there is an end. Don’t ask me when. I think the last major obstacle is the medical telemetry devices. What concerns me somewhat is that there is a public forum on this [today, Nov. 2]. There is going to be a general discussion on this. The American Hospital Association, the Food and Drug Administration, the FCC and others are going to have some discussions on it. We need to accommodate the medical telemetry one way or the other.
Their play is not particularly the 460-470 MHz band. The medical telemetry industry has some new products going on that are revolutionary for heart patients. The medical telemetry devices are produced to operate exclusively in the 460 MHz band … It would seem to me that you could break the logjam by cutting loose the 50 low-powered coordinated pool that LMCC recommended on June 4, 1997. You could bust that loose because there is no threat to medical telemetry and the licenses are 10 megahertz away. So I am going to push that to the extent that I can with the FCC.
I look at it this way. If you have four pieces: low-powered coordinated, low-powered uncoordinated, high-power offsets coordinated, high-power offsets uncoordinated. You could cut loose the low-powered coordinated because the medical telemetry devices are not on it or adjacent to it because the equipment isn’t made to operate in 450-460 MHz. Which means that seven months later, you can cut loose the high-powered offsets. There is no reason since the other part of the LMCC’s plan was the 25 uncoordinated-but-licensed two watt pool. They are there now. What the heck, let that pool go loose. Then the only thing you further need to study is letting high-powered systems go on the former business offsets.
So you get [nearly] 75 percent of what we want and at the same time, we don’t harm medical telemetry. We are willing to work with the FCC to facilitate that.
RCR: Imagine for a moment you are speaking to someone who has never heard of private wireless and you have 25 words or less to describe private wireless, What would you say?
Crosby: Private wireless is two-way communications by over 300,000 companies across the countries to facilitate and enhance America’s way of life. Without private wireless, you would not have efficient production, delivery and maintenance of virtually every service that the American people has grown accustomed to.
RCR: Do you think private wireless could ever accept an auction format, even one that was reserved just for private wireless participants?
Crosby: No.
RCR: What about lease fees?
Crosby: I think efficiency-based lease fees are the answer. If the objective is to manage the spectrum, lease fees are a deal for private wireless because private wireless needs radios now. Remember their core businesses are not communications. Their core businesses are power, agriculture, road construction. Every private wireless licensee, without exception, that I have talked to and asked, “Are you willing to contribute for the use of your spectrum because it will contribute to spectrum efficiency and you return something for the use of radio resource?” The answer is “Yes, because I can budget for it, I can plan for it. I don’t have a problem. I pay fees for everything else in my business.”
As a Frequency Advisory Committee, I like fees because it would tend to assist in minimizing [inefficiencies]. People will tend to acquire and utilize systems and have signal strengths that accommodate their requirements.
I am always confronted with “Well, they could win it at auction and then resell the excess capacity.” And I answer, “What is the matter with you? If a concrete guy needs a new truck, he gets a new truck. He doesn’t buy the truck dealership. When you want one fish, you don’t buy an entire fishing fleet and then sell the excess fish. No, that is not what their business is in.”
The FCC has got to recognize who they are dealing with. These are not people using the spectrum to generate revenues, they use the spectrum to facilitate their production and delivery of services and goods and all of the other things that Americans like. You are trying to fit a square peg into a round hole.
If you insist on having some sort of economic-induced thing to manage the spectrum and return some value to the American public, then lease fees are ideal for private wireless because private wireless people tend to share their spectrum. The opportunities for mutual exclusivity for private wireless are remote.
If you think about the big companies and say they should be participating in auctions: their board of directors and shareholders will not permit them to play this type of game. That is not their core competency. Playing in communications and providing services is not their core competency. They are airlines. They are road-construction companies. They are in the steel business. They are in aerial-spraying business. They are not in communications
business so stop it. For the auction zealots, let’s knock it off. It doesn’t fit our
industry.
The FCC would be surprised at the willingness of the private wireless to commit to efficiency-based lease fees as the tool to manage spectrum, as a license assignment tool for private wireless.
RCR: What is being done to raise the profile by having CEOs lobby on your issues?
Crosby: It is a double-edged sword. I run into this all of the time. The big companies’ issues are with the OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration), the DOT (Department of Transportation), trade, airlines dealing with airline taxes and fuel taxes. They have a whole bunch of other issues that other agencies are dealing with. When I try to get the big dogs at the big private wireless companies, they say, “Communications is very, very important to our business but on my itinerary it is number 31.” It is hard for me to get them to do this because it is not a priority. They only have so many silver bullets: lobbying funds and times and commitments that they need to do for their companies.
It is my experience that some of the real big companies won’t even let their telecommunications [representative] go to Capitol Hill without counsel.
I can get the small people. I can get medium-sized companies but the big companies are dealing with all of these other issues. Communications isn’t their business so they are not spending their political chits on communications. They are spending it on issues that govern their business.
It just proves my point. If you call an auction, they are going to miss it because it is not their business.
