WASHINGTON-The wireless industry scored on public safety, liability protection, federal-land antenna siting and sales commissions in Congress last week, while fending off a Pentagon assault on federal spectrum management and a pro-state challenge to federal numbering policy.
Wireless gains on Capitol Hill came after a topsy-turvy week of round-the-clock lobbying and legislative horse trading, culminating with the recess of the House and Senate for the rest of August.
When the dust settled, the industry was sitting pretty.
But with a number of wild cards in play-like veto threats and a looming budget battle that could revamp spending bills with wireless provisions-total victory is not yet at hand for the industry.
On top of everything else, the industry this fall will have to devote considerable resources to countering a new Senate bill that returns full jurisdiction over antenna siting to local/state authorities and calls for $10 million in federally funded mobile-phone cancer research in fiscal 2000.
Overall, though, it was a very good week for the wireless industry.
E911
The Senate approved legislation giving wireless carriers liability protection and making 911 the universal emergency telephone number. The House is expected to vote on the Senate version of the 911 bill when it returns after Labor Day. The bill, if passed by the House, will then go to the White House for President Clinton’s signature.
“Thousands of lives could be saved each year by making 911 work like it should, which is what this bill will help do,” said Sue Hoyt, chairwoman of the ComCARE Alliance and past president of the Emergency Nurses Association.
ComCARE is partly funded the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association, which created the entity to help it lobby for a bill that couples a consumer public-safety component with a pro-business legal feature that shields wireless carriers from lawsuits.
DOD spectrum
Elsewhere, wireless lobbyists-aided by House and Senate telecom lawmakers-largely sidetracked Pentagon spectrum priority legislation.
An eleventh-hour compromise between the Senate Armed Services Committee and others allows the Department of Defense to reclaim eight megahertz in the 138-144 MHz and 1385-1390 MHz bands; requires a study by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration and the Federal Communications Commission of national spectrum planning, with special emphasis on military-intelligence communications requirements; and ensures prior consent by Pentagon top brass, NTIA, the Commerce Department and FCC before any future transfers of DOD spectrum.
NTIA reform
Up until last Wednesday night, when a deal was struck on Pentagon spectrum legislation, the House Commerce Committee was prepared to launch a pre-emptive strike against the DOD authorization bill by adding language to the NTIA authorization bill. The intent was to undercut Pentagon-friendly provisions pushed by the Senate Armed Services Committee and that were in play at the time.
By Thursday morning, the House Commerce Committee postponed a scheduled mark-up of the NTIA reform bill, in part because of the DOD spectrum agreement, but also because Republicans and Democrats had not worked out differences over the NTIA measure.
In the middle of the fracas, President Clinton appointed Gregory Rohde to succeed Larry Irving as NTIA head. Rohde, who has strong congressional and industry support, is senior legislative assistant to Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.), a member of the Commerce Committee.
Irving is expected to leave NTIA in mid-September.
BAM-Rock Creek Park
A House-Senate conference on District of Columbia appropriations retained Senate Minority Leader Thomas Daschle’s (D-S.D.) amendment to bypass local planners and permit Bell Atlantic Mobile and others to construct mobile phone towers in Rock Creek Park. In addition, the conference report directs federal agencies to act on siting applications promptly.
But a couple of wild cards are in play that could complicate matters for the industry.
First, the D.C. bill could be vetoed by Clinton. Second, owing to a time crunch as the end of fiscal 1999 nears, that bill and other appropriations measures could become subject to renegotiation between the GOP-led Congress and the White House as part of a massive omnibus spending bill.
D.C. lawmakers and city officials, including Mayor Anthony Williams, oppose the Daschle amendment. They bought more time and perhaps put off the inevitable by getting the House vote on the D.C. approprials conference report postponed last Thursday evening.
Area codes
Wireless lobbyists killed an amendment to the House Commerce appropriations bill that would have undercut federal oversight of area-code policy and helped orchestrate a colloquy among Senate Finance Committee members in support of allowing carriers to deduct marketing costs in a given tax year instead of over the lifetime of the customer, as espoused since last year by the Internal Revenue Service.
Siting
Somewhat offsetting last week’s achievements by wireless lobbyists was the re-emergence of Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and his pro-local-antenna-siting bill.
The measure, among other things, would repeal limited federal pre-emption of local antenna-siting regulation in the 1996 telecom act and flag the health issue in a big way by calling a major study by 2001 and a $10 million federally-funded cancer research program in 2000.
“Though there was a major push by the U.S. federal government to research effects of electric and magnetic fields on biological systems, as evidenced by the five-year Electric and Magnetic Fields Research and Public Information Dissemination Program, there has been no similar effort to research potential health effects of radio frequency emissions associated with wireless and wireless broadcast facilities. This omission should no longer be overlooked,” said Leahy.
Cosponsoring the bill so far are Sens. James Jeffords (R-Vt.), Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas), Russell Feingold (D-Wis.) and Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.).
While similar legislation has gone nowhere in the past, the proliferation of mobile phones in the United States and abroad has reignited the debate over whether the pocket-sized communicators pose a health risk to the nation’s 73 million subscribers.
Some recent studies on EMF and RF radiation exposure have largely dismissed a cancer link, but there remains an uneasiness in communities that have witnessed towers springing up near schools and homes across the country in recent years.
Bankruptcy
When Congress returns in September, the House-Senate conferees in charge of Commerce appropriations must decide the fate of a Senate-inspired bankruptcy provision that enables the FCC to retrieve licenses of bankrupt wireless firms. Some argue the provision tramples on the rights licensees have under U.S. bankruptcy law.
The conferees also will set fiscal 2000 budgets for the FCC and NTIA.
Other legislation either pending or in the works that Congress might address this fall include private wireless, privacy, rural cellular and FCC reform.
