Martin Says Mobile Carriers Must Broadcast Alerts to Small Geographic Areas

Under the WARN Act, carriers decide next year whether to opt into a program for sending emergency alerts to subscribers on cellphones and other wireless devices. Carriers have told the FCC that their networks are not set up to target messages to small areas, warning that the mandate could drive carriers away from the warning program.

After speaking at PLI, Martin said he doesn’t believe that all carriers should need the ability to transmit messages to relatively small areas within a county. But, he said, a public safety agency should be able to request more tightly targeting of messages. “There are some communities in which the public safety entities and the counties themselves are saying that counties are just too big,” Martin said. “One of the ones that comes to mind is New York and Manhattan, where they're saying if all we can do is provide [a warning] over a whole county that’s too large of an area.”

Though the Bush administration is winding down Martin has no plans to leave the agency as early as next summer, as many FCC observers speculate, he said. Martin closed the PLI event in a session with Richard Wiley, his mentor and a previous FCC chairman. Wiley opened by asking Martin his plans for the next year. “I plan on being right were I am,” Martin said. “I'm not going anywhere.”

Martin called FCC approval of rules for January’s 700 MHz auction “probably the most significant thing” the FCC has done the past year. “We've already seen the rules we put in place facilitate new entry,” he said. “You're seeing public safety issues addressed.” Making E-911 more effective for wireless and other callers will remain a priority, as will Universal Service Fund reform, he indicated.

Martin defended his campaign against rising cable prices. Cable operators “argue they're charging more but they're providing more channels,” he said. “Those additional channels aren’t being watched. Consumers have gone from 10 years ago watching about 13 channels today watching about 15 channels… Consumers are increasingly paying more but not watching more.”

Industry Talks Broadband on Telecom Future Panel

Regulators seeking more broadband penetration aren’t seeing the whole picture, said Robert Pepper, Cisco global advanced technology policy managing director. Most discussion focuses on the supply side -- where broadband is unavailable, Pepper said on a panel about trends. “The question that you have to ask is, ‘Why is it not available?'” Broadband is “low-density, high-cost, and there is no existing business model to pay for it,” Pepper said. Applying the methods that made phone service universal is not the answer, he said. “It turns out that the mechanisms that were very effective in bringing telephone service across the United States are not necessarily the mechanisms that are going to be most effective [and] most efficient” for broadband.

The problem is that “the industry regulatory models are based on five assumptions that used to be correct that are no longer correct,” Pepper said. Policymakers assume “the product and service is voice” and “the metric by which you measure it, you bill it and you regulate it is the minute.” They believe distance, duration and location still matter, he said. Regulators instead should address “connectivity, bandwidth, throughput and capacity,” he said.

Educating people about the DTV transition is a task the TV industry will “more or less take care of itself,” with or without government programs, said Peter Fannon, Panasonic technology policy vice president. The industry has “so many reasons to make that happen the right away,” he said. “A bigger question” is what happens when analog is switched off and digital broadcasting is “just another choice of wireless broadband,” he said. The government can help broadcasters survive in the digital world by promoting new competitive “tools,” he said. For example, the government should ensure that broadcasters “have a chance to make interactivity a part of their new service,” he said.

For VoIP to make money, it must be bundled with other services, panelists said. SunRocket’s sudden demise this year proves that stand-alone VoIP doesn’t necessarily make a business, said Stifel Nicolaus’ Blair Levin. “I admire… Vonage tremendously, but I think that that is a business model that won’t work,” Levin said. In contrast, cable companies use VoIP as a “technology to build up a bunch of functionalities,” he said. “That’s very exciting.”

VoIP is “not a business, it’s an application,” said Microsoft’s Anoop Gupta. “It’s a really important application with tremendous usage,” but technology convergence will be where growth is, he said. Still, VoIP is a “tremendously significant factor to the cable industry” now that telcos are “taking share on the video side,” said Anna- Marie Kovacs, Regulatory Source Associates president.

Technological convergence is fueling advances in wireless, panelists said. “We tended to in the past look at services in stovepipes” like PCS or cellular, said FCC Office of Engineering & Technology chief Julius Knapp. “What you're starting to see across the board is things being mixed and matched in synergistic ways.” For example, “only a few years ago we were talking about licensed versus unlicensed, and now we've got both of them in the same device.” Radios will be in “all sorts of devices,” including cameras, recorders and other “nontraditional” products, Gupta said. Software will be the glue bringing the devices together, he said. Regulators can spur innovation by ensuring a mix of licensed and unlicensed spectrum is available, he added.

Don’t forget antennas, Pepper said. “Some of the greatest innovations going on are in antenna technology.” Antenna advances are “allowing both greater utilization as well as new functions and features that can make distinctions between high power and low power.”

But talking about “cool technologies” is pointless if the networks aren’t built, Levin said, noting the 700 MHz auction and ongoing build out of AWS spectrum. Also, Sprint Nextel’s handling of its 2.5 GHz spectrum is still a question because “troubled” Sprint doesn’t have a CEO and Wall Street “does not have a lot of enthusiasm for what they're doing,” he said.

The 700 MHz auction is something the investor community is “very focused on,” Kovacs said. Given anti-collusion rules restricting participants from talking about bidding, the auction’s end will be “welcomed with an unusual degree of curiosity,” she said.