WASHINGTON-A religious war of biblical proportions has broken out in the nation’s capital between the dueling digital technologies that will occupy the wireless lane of the information superhighway.
The war is being played out in the power corridors of Congress and the Federal Communications Commission, each side fighting for the hearts and minds of policymakers and the press.
Right now, there is no sign of a cease-fire. Like many lobbying battles, scoring a political victory “inside the Beltway” is key to success in a national market whose boundaries extend far beyond the timeless Potomac River.
The feud is building steam and getting nastier by the minute. Billions upon billions of dollars are at stake for next-generation pocket telephones-called personal communications services, the successor to cellular phones-and wireless network infrastructure that could revolutionize a telecommunications industry dominated for a century by the wired world of Alexander Graham Bell.
The FCC will sell almost 2,200 PCS licenses by year’s end, with 40 million subscribers projected by 2005. Ninety-nine PCS permits have been sold already. About 500 more are set to be auctioned at the end of August.
Yet, this techno-dispute is framed by a social policy question: Which wireless technology is most friendly for the 4 million hearing-aid users in the United States? Hearing-impaired advocates are angry with the U.S. wireless telecommunications industry for not aggressively addressing potential interference to hearing aids from pocket telephones using a European-based digital technology called Global System for Mobile communications, or GSM.
“I think the tendency right now is really to hide the issue,” said James Valentine, spokesman for Hear-It-Now (Helping Equalize Access Rights in Telecommunications Now) and an investor in a competing technology-Code Division Multiple Access. Valentine also is president of the Wireless Communication Council, described as a think tank whose few members are attempting to publicize the problem.
Hear-It-Now has support from Self Help for Hard of Hearing People and the Alexander Graham Bell Association for the Deaf, and is represented by a high-powered Washington law firm with a political heavyweight-former National Republican Committee Chairman Guy Vander Jagt.
“We want to make sure that hearing-aid wearers can use the wireless telephone of the future,” said Brenda Bettat, deputy executive director of SHHH.
Bettat said consumers should not be burdened with having to buy or alter hearings aids, which she said cost between $600 and $2,300. Insurance companies do not cover hearing aids, she added.
The matter is now before the Federal Communications Commission, which is reviewing public comments on a petition from Hear-It-Now to launch an investigation and make all wireless telephones hearing-aid compatible. The Hearing Aid Compatibility Act passed by Congress in 1988 exempted wireless telephones.
The Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association earlier this month announced that results from testing on hearing-aid interference at the University of Oklahoma will be available in six months.
“Our charter is to bring together various industries for the mutual solution to compatibility challenges,” said Dr. Hank Grant, director of industrial engineering at the university, who is in charge of testing on wireless interaction with hearing aids, cardiac pacemakers, electronic medical devices and other products.
The Center for the Study of Wireless Electromagnetic Compatibility at the University of Oklahoma is said to be one of the finest of its kind in the world.
The cellular industry also is funding research to investigate whether portable phones cause or contribute to brain cancer as some have alleged in recent years.
Industry leaders see the issue as a growing pain in the transition from analog to digital technology and from monopoly markets to a competitive environment. They insist there are all kinds of sources of electromagnetic interference to hearing aids in modern society, like computers and fluorescent lights. Solutions, they believe, are available to minimize or eliminate inconvenience and danger to public health.
“We all know there is a battle for market share taking place right now insofar as the [wireless] digital standard of the future,” said Thomas Wheeler, president of CTIA. “There are solutions to the digital interaction issue.”
Hear-It-Now replies that remedies recommended by Wheeler, such as switching the phone to the other ear, plugging in a miniature speaker/microphone extension device to the phone or using a noninterfering analog phone, are simplistic and impractical, and show a lack of understanding and sensitivity toward hearing-aid wearers. There are differences of opinion among the warring factions whether shielding hearing aids and/or pocket phones are viable solutions.
“If the CTIA continues on its present course there is a danger that the wireless communications industry could become like the tobacco industry-pretending there are no problems with their products when the overwhelming evidence shows there is a serious problem,” said Valentine.
The Personal Communications Industry Association, meanwhile, has formed a task force to develop protocols for interference testing.
“As opposed to Hear-It-Now, we advocate a reasoned approach-based on fact, not sensationalism and premature conclusions-that seeks to ensure that all digital technologies at PCS frequencies are fairly tested and that the industry move forward in a responsible manner,” said Jay Kitchen, president of PCIA.
Valentine earlier this month resigned as president of North American Wireless Inc., a firm working with AT&T Corp. to build personal communications services systems for the female, minority and small businesses that win licenses at next month’s auction.
Valentine said he never intended to remain in the operations side of the business, but acknowledged the hearing-aid interference controversy drew attention to North American Wireless, which will use CDMA technology. Valentine, who will keep his investment in NAW and solicit other investors, has been sharply criticized for his approach to the hearing-aid interference problem. Valentine’s successor, another investor, is expected to be named shortly.
Qualcomm Inc., a leading U.S. developer of CDMA technology, also has drawn the ire of some in the industry. So has AT&T, whose new McCaw Cellular Communications Inc. unit has supported Time Division Multiple Access technology.
CDMA is viewed as superior in terms of spectral efficiency to GSM (a form of TDMA), but development of CDMA technology and the availability of equipment puts it behind the more mature GSM market.
For that reason, such firms as American Personal Communications Inc., BellSouth Corp., GO Communications Corp. and Pacific Telesis Group have opted for GSM to get to a mobile phone market that is just more than a decade old but already has 25 million cellular subscribers.
GSM is employed by more than 100 wireless operators in at least 70 countries. A firm affiliated with the International Mobile Satellite Organization said it plans to use GSM technology to offer pocket telephone service via satellite to the world.
Still, PCS PrimeCo L.P., a partnership of Nynex Corp., Bell Atlantic Corp., U S West Inc. and AirTouch Communications Inc., which bid successfully on 11 PCS markets, will employ CDMA technology.
The AT&T-McCaw technology paradox is matched by that of PCS PrimeCo, whose President George Schmitt is said to have championed GSM digital cellular in Germany.
WirelessCo, L.P., a consortium of Sprint Corp. and three major cable TV operators that paid $2.1 billion for 29 markets covering 145 million people, has not decided which technology to employ but will make the decision soon.
Hear-It-Now conducted demonstrations for lawmakers, regulators and the press two weeks ago that showed a GS
M phone producing a buzzing sound to a hearing aid.
The advocacy group claims CDMA phones cause no such disturbance, but a Qualcomm test report of November 1993 found their own technology can produce interference under certain conditions. Valentine plays down the 1993 finding, explaining that CDMA phones can be programmed to avoid interference to hearing aids.
European studies document interference to hearing aids from GSM wireless phones, but those phones operate at a higher power level and on a lower frequency than will phones on PCS systems in the states.
Other variables, such as the type and age of hearing aids, also make it difficult to extrapolate firm conclusions regarding the potential health risk in the United States from GSM phones to users of hearing aids, cardiac pacemakers and other medical electronic equipment.
Valentine asserted CTIA and PCIA are not pressing the hearing-aid interference issue because they receive substantial membership funding from Ericsson Inc., a major international cellular phone supplier from Sweden. Finland-based Nokia Corp. is another GSM equipment manufacturer that has its sights set on the American market.
It is not known where Motorola Inc., of Schaumburg, Ill., the world’s largest mobile communications supplier, stands on the issue. But the company’s manufacturing capability is probably sophisticated enough to produce phones of nearly any technology.
How all this plays out politically is uncertain.
The issue has the attention of Congress and the FCC, but the telecommunications industry’s top regulator has given little indication of being willing to get in the way of a nascent PCS industry that has brought him so many headlines and accolades as contrasted with controversy he has experienced in dealing with other high-tech sectors.
Senate communications subcommittee Chairman Bob Packwood, R-Ore., asked FCC Chairman Reed Hundt several months ago to look into the potential for hearing-aid interference from PCS in the United States.
Hundt replied that he would not halt PCS licensing because “we don’t believe there is a serious risk of interference to hearing aids” from GSM technology.
In the text of an address intended for delivery to the 11th International Telecommunications for the Deaf conference in Cambridge, Mass., on June 28, Hundt-who specializes in telecommunications issues related to persons with disabilities-said he was “concerned about making wireless telephones hearing-aid compatible” and would act on Hear-It-Now’s petition “seriously and swiftly.” Yet, one week later, Northern Telecom Ltd. announced its GSM-based PCS phone was the first to be certified by the FCC.
A week after that, Hundt led a big media event at the commission where he personally handed out PCS licenses won by companies in the auction that ended March 13.
Senate Minority Leader Thomas Daschle, D-S.D., made reference to potential hearing-aid interference from wireless telephones in the Senate debate on telecommunications reform and called for congressional hearings.
