WASHINGTON-Imagine for a moment that you own a local package delivery business. Wouldn’t it be great to be able to pinpoint the exact location of all of your vehicles?
Under a service license expected to be auctioned by the Federal Communications Commission, this could become possible. Successful bidders can establish a system for the package delivery business that will use the Multilateration Location and Monitoring Service (LMS) to locate or monitor mobile radio units primarily located in vehicles.
LMS is expected to be part of the emerging smart highways program being developed by the Department of Transportation. LMS is limited to specific geographic areas. Another service, known as non-multilatertion LMS, which is not as limited, is not expected to be offered at auction, said John Logan, a Washington attorney involved with LMS. Logan was speaking to attendees at the FCC’s Auctions ’98 Conference held last week.
The auction of the LMS spectrum will occur on an economic area basis. There are 172 EAs in the continental United States. The FCC has designated five additional licensing regions for Guam and the Northern Marianas Islands, Puerto Rico and U.S. Virgin Islands, American Samoa, the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska. One exclusive EA license will be issued for each of three sub-bands.
LMS is conceived to “get above the noise level” created by Part 15 devices, Logan said. LMS is designed as an overlay technology since the LMS channels are assigned to portions of the 902-928 MHz band, which also are assigned to Part 15 devices, industrial, scientific and medical equipment, and government radiolocation.
To avoid interference with grandfathered Part 15 devices, however, LMS licensees will be required to conduct testing.
LMS is not two-way communication. FCC rules permit real-time voice interconnection over the public switched telephone network only for emergencies. Instead of real-time, LMS users may use store-and-forward interconnection, Logan said.
Once the auction occurs, (it has not been officially scheduled yet) LMS is on a fast track for development. Licensees will have only one year to construct and begin operating their systems or risk automatic cancellation and license return to the FCC, Logan said.
