WASHINGTON-Changes sought by wireless firms to a U.S. document being prepared for an upcoming International Telecommunication Union meeting are insufficient, a major industry group said last week, keeping alive a controversy the Bush administration must resolve in the next two weeks.
Industry’s criticism remains the same: The revised U.S. paper does not make clear that a 2002 Federal Communications Commission spectrum report is a staff product whose controversial recommendations dealing with promising, but unproven, technologies and novel regulatory concepts have not been adopted by the FCC or any other government agency.
“While I’m glad they made some effort to respond to our concerns, I do not think it (the Spectrum Policy Task Force document) goes far enough,” said Bill Belt, director of wireless and satellite divisions at the Telecommunications Industry Association.
TIA, which represents wireless and other telecom manufacturers, is one of three trade groups that wrote the Bush administration Sept. 30 to complain about the inclusion of SPTF recommendations in a previous version of the U.S. document. Time is running short. The United States must submit its spectrum paper to the ITU no later than a week before the Oct. 30 start of a meeting on spectrum management methodologies in Geneva. The conference ends Nov. 5.
The FCC, National Telecommunications and Information Administration and State Department collaborate on international spectrum policy. The clearinghouse for the drafting process is a national committee-comprised of government and industry representatives-that advises the State Department. The chairman of the panel is Cecily Holiday of the State Department’s Office of Multilateral Affairs. Holiday is a former FCC official.
In a new Oct. 1 draft, the paper’s authors-William Luther of the FCC’s International Bureau and Norbert Schroeder of NTIA-removed references to SPTF recommendations and stripped out an attachment that included all 39 recommendations.
Missing, however, is any disclaimer on the SPTF report of the sort desired by industry.
“Anybody who reads the document wouldn’t know that it’s a staff report,” said Belt.
Joining TIA on the Sept. 30 letter to Robin Haines, an NTIA spectrum manager who chairs the U.S. working group on the ITU spectrum issue, were the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association and the Satellite Industry Association.
CTIA and SIA officials could not be reached for comment.
An FCC official said the agency has not received any comments on the revised paper. Comments are due by Oct. 17.
The FCC official said the agency will work with NTIA to address all comments that are received.
Clyde Ensslin, an NTIA spokesman, reiterated acting agency head Michael Gallagher’s view that industry concerns are understandable and predictable, and U.S. input is part of a long-term process.
Indeed, the U.S. document at issue is part of an ITU effort launched at the 2003 World Radiocommunication Conference to review spectrum policies in view of emerging technologies and other factors. The U.S. contribution and those of Japan and Europe will be included in a report to the WRC in 2007.
On a separate track, the Bush administration is working on an initiative to improve management of airwaves used by the federal government and private sector. Two reports should be issued in June.
The FCC’s SPTF report frightens the wireless establishment because it introduces concepts and makes recommendations based on technological advances and free-market principles and thus threatens incumbent carriers and vendors that live under the current regulatory regime. Worse yet, some in industry suspect the FCC is trying to export spectrum reform, a matter of considerable consequence for top wireless companies that have a global reach.
While the SPTF report does not have official backing from the five-member FCC, the report is far from being a run-of-the-mill think piece. The report has become a springboard for various wireless rulemakings at the FCC; it is the unofficial roadmap for spectrum policy. From all indications, FCC Chairman Michael Powell is on board.
While industry publicly supports spectrum reform, it harbors serious reservations about the push-the-envelope direction pursued by FCC Chief Engineer Edmond Thomas and others at the commission. This apprehension is not universally shared in the wireless sector.
Mobile-phone firms, scrambling under competitive and financial pressures to settle on a business strategy for third-generation wireless systems, are scared most. The FCC later his week is expected to approve 3G service rules.
In contrast, Wi-Fi and other fixed-wireless proponents have found much to like about an FCC unafraid of creative disruption-at least in the wireless space.
