ALEXANDRIA, Va.-“Which comes first, the chicken or the egg?” asked Alan Shark, president of the American Mobile Telecommunications Association, at the group’s annual leadership conference last week. In Shark’s reference, the chicken is specialized mobile radio and the egg is spectrum.
SMR operators believe they need more spectrum and must convince policy makers they are an important and distinct part of the telecommunications industry; important because they offer a service not available anywhere else and distinct because the SMR industry is not only SMR giant Nextel Communications Inc., attendees said.
AMTA members believe SMR is a dispatch service and there is still a market for just plain dispatch. But for this to work, SMR operators need more spectrum.
Or do they? Maybe they need to use the spectrum they have more efficiently. Is that possible with today’s equipment?
Alas, the chicken-and-egg question. Or more precisely, which comes first: Manufacturers building equipment for different bands, or better use of current bands?
One area where the issue has become glaringly clear is in the 900 MHz band. This spectrum remains under-used after nearly 10 years of allocation to the SMR industry, said AMTA counsel Liz Sachs. “If we are going to ask for additional spectrum, we need to address why the 900 MHz band is not fully built out … We have to explain why 900 MHz is not the home for this industry,” Sachs said.
The 900 MHz band has been plagued by such things as the Geotek Communications Inc. bankruptcy, Sachs acknowledged, but there are still licenses owned by SMR operators other than Geotek or Nextel that aren’t fully built out.
One AMTA goal that may bear fruit is a petition in the private wireless refarming proceeding that would give specific dates for conversion to more spectrally efficient systems. Currently, there are no specific dates that private wireless users must meet, just incentives to move to better equipment. AMTA filed a petition with the Federal Communications Commission on the issue last year, but it has not received any action.
AMTA also would like to use spectrum returned by TV broadcasters as they convert to digital technology, but it is unclear if that spectrum will be returned.
