CTIA TOLD TOUGH SPECTRUM CHOICES LIE AHEAD POST-SEPT. 11

FCC Chief of Staff Marsha MacBride said timeliness would be important for Commission decisions on that and other homeland security-related issues: “We have to make tough choices. We have to keep pushing it instead of letting decisions languish because there is no right answer. In public safety especially, it’s just got to be best judgment.” MacBride, who’s heading FCC’s Homeland Security Policy Council, said “it’s going to be very hard and it’s going to be messy trying to find solutions. But we don’t have a lot of time to wait for the perfect and we don’t want the perfect to be the enemy of the good.”

FCC established rules in 2000 for carriers to follow when they provided wireless PAS, but didn’t mandate that they provide such capability. National Communications Service (NCS) is said to be nearing awarding contract to VoiceStream for first PAS system that would operate in N.Y. and Washington. FCC is expected to announce shortly decision on VoiceStream request for limited waiver of wireless PAS requirements. Several govt. officials said priority access requirements had changed since 1995, when NCS first petitioned Commission to implement rulemaking. “We are doing a whole work-up on priority access, our rules and regulations, the 911 aspect of it, the flexibility that’s built into it to see whether we should be revising or revisiting any of our priority access rules to account for these added concerns,” MacBride said. Different national needs now have emerged compared with what NCS had listed as its original concerns, she said, “so we have to go back and make sure that what we did then was right and if it wasn’t we have to take a look at it again.”

One new PAS issue that emerged at show was that of states beginning to look at implementing their own version of priority access, with legislation pending in Cal. cited as one example. State proposals are “obviously something that we are watching very closely,” MacBride said. Homeland security “by it’s very nature is a local issue” that requires significant coordination by state, local and federal agencies, she said. “It’s going to be a little bumpy until everybody figures out what the new landscape is going to look like.” Citing possibility of numerous layers of govt. queuing up for priority access, Gallagher said there was need for balance between commercial and govt. users. If there are up to 7 layers of govt. with priorities for wireless phone use during emergencies, “that’s just as bad as if one cell site is clogged from everybody reporting the same automobile accident on the freeway,” he said.

In Cal., state Sen. Sheila Kuehl introduced bill this year that would authorize commercial mobile radio service provider to enter contract with public safety agency to give “the transmissions of public safety end users of that service priority over the transmissions of other persons or entities.”

Among issues that Gallagher said faced NTIA on homeland security policy were challenges in allowing industry to share information with govt. and not have that information be subject to Freedom of Information Act request by competitor or someone else. He also said there was need to remove redundancy in case of several agencies that might solicit feedback from carriers on same types of issues. On public safety front, Gallagher said NTIA lab in Boulder was working on interoperability testing in cooperation with FCC and NIST “to help public safety get to the point where they can talk to each other more efficiently. That’s a difficult task.” As for more general issue of interference that public safety operators face at 800 MHz, Gallagher said FCC’s approval March 14 of Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to examine alternatives for mitigating interference to public safety in that band was “a great step in the right direction. We will find a path forward to eliminate that interference and minimize it and in the process of straightening that up, not unjustly enriching anyone else.” Gallagher noted that FCC earlier this year had made 50 MHz of spectrum available at 4.9 GHz for mobile data applications for public safety providers.

Separately, at Wireless Internet Caucus reception Sun., FCC Comr. Abernathy stressed importance of 3rd broadband platform to home to compete with cable and DSL offerings. “We at the Commission have a tremendous opportunity to create a regulatory environment that allows the capital markets and consumers to assess the viability and utility of various broadband offerings and not allow antiquated regulatory buckets to determine the fate of various platforms,” she said. “I am not here to say that the FCC has decided wireless shall be the 3rd pipe to the home, that’s not our role. I am here to say that we want to create rules that allow you to compete for that role with other competitive services.” Abernathy said she continued to believe that fixed wireless technology could fill in gaps “left by the technical limitations in other technologies, such as DSL.” As for mobile wireless, she said policy debate often failed to appreciate role of that technology as “an increasingly viable broadband provider.” Abernathy said she remained committed to working with Administration to free “additional government spectrum for commercial use and to take a look at the current commercial allocations to assess whether a 3G reallocation is appropriate.”

On wireless local number portability, Abernathy said she didn’t believe current deadline of Nov. 24 was “wise from either a network reliability point of view or based on the current wireless marketplace dynamics.” Verizon Wireless has asked FCC to forbear on deadline and other large carriers have sought delay by stressing challenges of meeting pooling and porting deadlines on same date. State PUCs and Leap Wireless have opposed request for additional time. “I will continue to work with my colleagues to come to a decision in that proceeding as promptly as possible,” Abernathy said. “We owe you an answer.”