The Federal Communications Commission has extended the comment period for the merger of VoiceStream Wireless Corp., Powertel Inc. and Deutsche Telekom AG to Dec. 13 and Jan. 8. The FCC granted the extension at the request of Sen. Ernest Hollings (D-S.C.), ranking member of the Senate Commerce Committee. Hollings has been a staunch critic of the license transfer that would allow a company-Deutsche Telekom-that is more than 25-percent foreign government-owned to control the licenses of an American communications company. Original comments in the proceeding were due the week of Nov. 13.
The FCC’s Wireless Telecommunications Bureau will implement the final of three phases of the conversion of the land mobile radio services to the Universal Licensing System on Dec. 4. On that date, LMRS applicants and licensees will be able to use ULS for a variety of licensing activities. ULS is the interactive licensing database developed by the wireless bureau to consolidate and replace the 11 existing licensing systems currently used to process wireless services applications.
The FCC has created a new code-FB8-for centralized and hybrid trunked systems where the necessary consent has been reached making them no longer subject to monitoring. Applicants proposing a decentralized trunked system are subject to monitoring requirements and therefore would not use the FB8 code. Since existing entities may need to apply for a license modification to reflect the FB8 code, the FCC said it would allow these entities until Jan. 12 to modify their licenses to indicate a trunked radio station code without having to go through frequency coordination or without paying an FCC fee.
The FCC and the Mexican Comision Federal de Telecomunicaciones (COFETEL) have signed special coordination procedures for the use of certain frequencies in the 800 MHz band used in the United States by Nextel Communications Inc.
