WASHINGTON-The regulatory environment for personal communications services is still evolving as policymakers try to determine how next-generation pocket telephone systems fit into a telecommunications industry undergoing historic change and evaluate what that means to society.
The issues are complex, with advocacy groups on all sides trying to gain an advantage because the economic stakes are high in a business that promises to put a digital pocket telephone in most everyone’s hand one day soon.
Everyone’s? Even the nation’s 4 million hearing aid wearers? PCS policy is being shaped by the Federal Communications Commission, Congress, the courts and, of course, lobbyists. The different venues overlap in some cases; politics are heavily in play at nearly every turn: resale, antenna siting, microwave relocation and wireless telephone hearing-aid compatibility.
A federal court recently affirmed PCS entrepreneur block auction rules that the FCC made race- and gender-neutral after the Supreme Court reined in affirmative action in June.
Believe it! The C-block auction is Dec. 11. PCS service rules largely are set. No problem there. AT&T Corp., Sprint Corp. and the Baby Bells that dominated the PCS auction that ended in March can begin commercial operations whenever they’re ready. Or can they? Do the firms have their antenna sites secured or are they embroiled in disputes with local zoning authorities about aesthetics?
As conferees meet to reconcile House and Senate telecommunications reform bills, they’ll consider a provision crafted by Reps. Scott Klug, R-Wis., and Thomas Manton, D-N.Y., that would bring local officials and PCS firms to the table to develop antenna site guidelines that respect local government rights and promote federal wireless policy.
House and Senate conferees working on the mammoth budget reconciliation bill are considering another gripe of PCS firms as they seek to raise $14 billion from expanded spectrum auctions en route to erasing the deficit during the next seven years.
The controversy: relocating fixed microwave users from the 2 GHz band PCS will occupy to higher frequencies. PCS companies assert microwave licensees are asking for the sky in early negotiations. It’s extortion, the PCS industry decries. Hyperbole, the microwave folks reply.
Rep. Ralph Hall, D-Texas, wants to shorten the two-year voluntary/one-year mandatory negotiating periods by a year. The FCC doesn’t wish to alter bargaining rules, but believes all microwave relocation should be done by 2005. The agency also wants PCS operators to share the monetary burden of moving microwave licensees.
The wireless market is gearing up for PCS. The two cellular carriers in each market aren’t waiting; they’ve already begun to position themselves by lowering rates. But will prices drop enough to ward off calls for switched resale by Rep. Joe Barton, chairman of the House Commerce subcommittee on oversight and investigations?
Resellers claim switched resale is the competitive answer to the cellular duopoly. Wireless carriers reply such a policy would do the opposite: chill investment on new infrastructure that is supposed to be the foundation of facilities-based competition in the future.
The FCC is not fond of switched resale, which entails unbundling PCS networks and installation of switches by resellers, but otherwise remains divided over what the resale policy should be in light of competitive market conditions that differ from one commercial wireless sector to another.
Also at issue is the extent to which PCS and other wireless services providers should interconnect with each other, a policy which could help define roaming.
Policymakers also want to know whether next-generation digital pocket telephones can be used by, or even around, hearing-impaired individuals without causing an annoying buzzing sound to their hearing aids.
