WASHINGTON-The Federal Communications Commission’s recent rules setting aside spectrum for medical telemetry came under fire by Congress last week when two top-ranking FCC staffers were caught unaware of congressional concerns about the allocation.
Dale Hatfield, chief of the FCC’s Office of Engineering and Technology, and Thomas Sugrue, chief of the FCC’s Wireless Telecommunications Bureau, were broadsided when the House telecom subcommittee sided with two congressmen who claimed on behalf of Itron Inc. that the FCC had ignored an agreement allowing wireless meter reading to use the same spectrum set aside for medical telemetry.
Reps. George R. Nethercutt, Jr. (R-Wash.) and Gil Gutknecht (R-Minn.) said Itron’s idea to use some of the band set aside for medical telemetry was ignored and that this was hurting its business. Itron manufactures wireless meter readers.
“They homesteaded this particular portion of the spectrum and now our own federal government is trying to shoot them,” said Gutknecht.
FCC adopted rules on June 8, creating the wireless medical telemetry service to be located in three bands at channel 37 on the TV dial, 608-614 MHz, 1395-1400 MHz and 1429-1432 MHz. These last two bands were recovered from the federal government.
Itron and the American Hospital Association filed a letter with the FCC just days before the agency adopted the rules creating the WMTS suggesting wireless meter reading and medical telemetry could share spectrum in the 1427-1432 MHz band. But when the rules came out, there was no mention of such an agreement.
Hatfield said he was caught unaware of the issue and did not know the details of the Itron request. This response angered Rep. Billy Tauzin (R-La.), chairman of the House telecom subcommittee, who said Hatfield was there representing the FCC, and it made the rules. Tauzin later said Hatfield and Sugrue could respond by letter within 10 days about how the decision to ignore the Itron-medical telemetry community agreement came about and why the proposal wouldn’t work.
Prior to the FCC’s June ruling, medical telemetry devices had long been secondary users in the TV and land mobile bands-using free spectrum for a variety of devices, including heart monitors used by medical personnel to monitor the progress of patients suffering from heart attacks or strokes.
