WASHINGTON-Future auctions conducted by the Federal Communications Commission will be run by a standard laundry list of rules instead of a new set of rules formulated auction by auction.
The FCC last Thursday adopted competitive bidding rules. The panel also adopted a plan for consolidating the 20 private wireless services into just two to promote spectral efficiency and to ensure the future frequency needs of the public-safety industry.
What the commission did not do at its monthly open meeting was vote on auction rules for multiple address systems in the fixed microwave services; geographic licensing of common carrier and 929 MHz private carrier paging along with procedures for auctioning geographic-area paging licenses; and the real old-timer, the future operation and licensing of the 220 MHz-222 MHz band, which has been under consideration since 1991.
These items were pulled from the agenda at the 11th hour to be voted on circular rather than in public. The issues had been on circular previously on the 8th Floor, which is why the decision had been made to put them on the Feb. 20 roster. According to FCC staffers, these items have been voted upon, but the results and formal text will not be released until sometime this week.
According to David Siddall, legal adviser to Commissioner Susan Ness, the commissioners needed more time to assimilate differing opinions on the topics and then to go through the actual edits; there were no 2-2 ties hampering the decisions.
With some 12 auctions under its belt, the FCC decided “the general auction rules should be streamlined or amended to make the licensing process more efficient.” Amended rules that should go into effect prior to the April 15 start of the 2.3 GHz Wireless Communications Service auction include:
instituting service-specific procedures that could allow the commission to “clarify the extent of authority delegated to the chief of the Wireless Telecommunications Bureau;” and
modification of the short Form 175 to include a statement from the applicant that he or she has not defaulted on a payment to the commission or is subject to any non-tax debt to any other government agency.
Other changes in the rules include methods to speed auction progress, including real-time bidding; extensions of payment schedules aside from front and first down payments; a push toward increased electronic filing; and pre-grant construction permission, even to those licensees that have petitions to deny filed against them.
“This creates a menu of rules that covers all services to ensure uniformity,” said Mark Bollinger of the WTB. In an attached notice of proposed rulemaking, the commission also seeks comment on how “designated entities” should be defined and treated in the future; how the application process can be improved; if all auction forms should be filed electronically beginning Jan. 1, 1998; modifications of collusion rules to allow bidders and investors to align with others if they drop out of the auction at any given time; and other ways in which the auction process can be improved.
“We’ve had enough auctions now that we know what seems to make sense,” commented Chairman Reed Hundt. “At this point, we were starting to reinvent the wheel. This is not something we should have done earlier, because we needed the experiment. Now we can design the wheel.”
The private-radio industry, which began in 1934 with just four services, has grown into 20, said WTB Chief Michele Farquhar. There currently are 1 million private-radio licensees and 3 million transmitter sites. “This second report and order will consolidate them into two pools,” she added. “Consolidation below 512 MHz will provide more spectrum and more opportunities.”
This second report and order adopted by the commission makes four promises: to distribute channels efficiently, to ensure the integrity of public-safety communications, to encourage licensees to consider technologically new and improved equipment and to contain business costs.
Ira Keltz, who presented the item for the WTB, said the two-pool plan-one that was advocated in a blueprint submitted by the Industrial Telecommunications Association last month (RCR, Feb. 3, p. 12)-splits the private industry into public-safety and industrial/business factions. “This will increase flexibility, and it will not hurt public safety in the band.”
Keltz said the consolidation also would result in lower coordination fees as frequency coordinators now will be able to coordinate all private-radio frequencies instead of a narrow range of channels. The commission is requiring that coordinators talk to each other within a day to share coordination activity and information, and that uniform coordination rules be formulated to guard against interference.
Whether or not these new rules will improve interoperability between public-safety entities that have not been able to communicate with each other due to differences in channel bands remains to be seen. “It will help somewhat,” Keltz said, “because now you can be licensed on common frequencies in an area.” The new Public Safety pool will have access to all frequencies now assigned to the six current public safety groups and the Special Emergency Radio Service. The same coordinators will be responsible for these frequencies.
The Industrial/Business pool will have access to all frequencies that have been assigned to the Industrial and to the Land Transportation sectors, and they can be handled by any coordinators certified for those categories.
One exception is that coordination of railroad, power or petroleum services will continue to be done by the same entities handling those licenses today. There could be some initial danger of “coordination shopping” that could affect quality in the short term but Keltz said minimum technical guidelines were being addressed by the Telecommunications Industry Association to help lessen this. There also could be some new coordination entrants in the field, something that will be addressed in a near-future notice of proposed rulemaking.
Consolidation will not go into effect for about six months as new protocols are developed and presented to the commission.
Commissioner Rachelle Chong praised not only the “creative and deregulatory” item but the private-radio industry for its input that led to an adopted order.
“We heard a lot from the public-safety and private wireless groups and congratulations, because they showed us what their needs were,” she said.
Everyone affected by the consolidation issue said they were pleased with the outcome.
“The Association of American Railroads is pleased that the FCC had recognized the unique requirements of railroads and has provided special protection in its new rules to ensure continued control by the railroad service coordinator over frequencies used by railroads throughout the nation,” the group commented in a written statement.
“The railroad industry awaits the text of the rules to make sure that the protection afforded by the FCC is, in fact, adequate to guarantee the safe operation of our railroads.”
