WASHINGTON-A top official of the Federal Communications Commission Tuesday signaled a change of heart on how the FCC will deal with public-safety interference in the 800 MHz band.
“The benefits of the rebanding bottom line happen to be separating these two different kinds of systems to be very far away. The Spectrum Policy Task Force said that a good spectrum-management function would be to separate different services away from each other so you don’t get these problems taking place, these incidents of interference or these probabilities of interference,” said John Muleta, chief of the FCC’s Wireless Telecommunications Bureau.
Muleta’s leaning toward a rebanding solution is in direct contrast to Edmund Thomas, chief of the FCC’s Office of Engineering and Technology, who has loudly signaled the commission would go with a technical solution.
The consensus proposal, proposed by Nextel Communications Inc., private-wireless entities and some public-safety advocates would split the 800 MHz band into two parts-one for cellularized systems and one for non-cellularized systems. The most controversial aspect of the plan is that Nextel would receive 10 megahertz of spectrum in the 1.9 GHz band (1910-1915/1990-1995 MHz). To sweeten the pot, Nextel has offered to pay $850 million to help facilitate the rebanding.
A best-practices solution advocated by some wireless carriers, the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association, and the United Telecom Council, which represents utility communications systems, would rely on technical fixes as individual problems appear.
Even if the FCC goes with a rebanding solution, that does not necessarily mean it will choose the consensus plan, said Muleta. “The Nextel proposal is a proposal. I don’t think it is binding on the commission,” he said.
It also appears that the timing of a decision on the 800 MHz issue may have slipped. Previously, all FCC officials had indicated a decision would come this fall, but at Tuesday’s briefing for reporters Muleta said it might be “early next year” before a decision is announced.
