Federal Communications Commission (FCC)

There’s a lot of money being recruited for presidential campaigns from mass media executives, but no consensus on where that money should flow, according to an examination by our affiliated publication Washington Internet Daily of about 69,000 campaign donations to 2004 presidential candidates. The data are current through June 30 and were filed by the campaigns at the Federal Election Commission (FEC).

Satellite operators rushed the FCC in the wee hours of Wed. morning in seeking to be the first new applicants following publication of the space station licensing rules in the Federal Register. The new rules, adopted in April, established a queue for geostationary satellite orbit (GSO) and non-GSO (NGSO) applications (CD April 24 p6). The application freeze that was in effect could be lifted only by publication of the rules in the Federal Register. While the Commission hadn’t revealed when publication would be, FCC International Bureau (IB) Asst. Chief Thomas Sullivan said early applicants knew to look at the Federal Register preview on the Website or the IB Electronic Filing System (IBFS) site.

Defenders of state line-sharing mandates to promote competition in DSL wholesaling took heart Tues. in what they saw as the failure of the FCC’s Triennial Review order to bar state mandates explicitly. The Commission adopted a procedure that would hold off any federal court ruling ending the state rules, and meantime there were plausible scenarios that could reconcile the 5 FCC commissioners with one another and the states on the issue, they said.

Cingular Wireless opposed an application for review by Anne Arundel County, Md., of an FCC Wireless Bureau decision that found federal law preempted parts of a county zoning ordinance that covered radio frequency interference (RFI). Last month, the bureau concluded federal law preempted parts of the local rules, which require that before receiving a county zoning ordinance certificate, wireless tower owners must demonstrate a tower didn’t interfere with a county’s public safety operation. If interference were demonstrated, the county could revoke a zoning certificate. Cingular challenged the ordinance and the county sought dismissal of the petition, saying the courts, rather than the FCC, had exclusive purview over local govt. zoning actions involving wireless facilities. The bureau disagreed with the county’s arguments, granting Cingular’s petition for a declaratory ruling. In its latest filing, Cingular opposed the county’s request that the Commission review that decision. Citing the Communications Act, Cingular said: (1) The FCC has “exclusive jurisdiction” to regulate radio frequency interference. (2) The adoption of zoning amendments designed to authorize the county to regulate radio frequency interference is precluded by a field preemption in the Constitution’s supremacy clause. Cingular contended that the county’s petition was “premised on the incorrect notion that the FCC is powerless to remedy RFI.”

State regulators plan to spend the next 2 weeks poring over the text of the FCC’s newly released Triennial Review order on network unbundling, preparing detailed summaries of what the order does and what the FCC expects from the states with regard to unbundled network element platforms (UNE-P) and other complex network unbundling issues being referred to state commissions, officials said. With release of the full order Thurs., the state commissions put into motion their plans for implementing the communication and information- sharing channels they have been setting up on a national and regional basis for the past 6 months.

Acknowledging the huge public outcry over the FCC’s new media ownership rules, Chmn. Powell said Wed. he would form a new task force to study localism in TV and radio broadcasting and hold a series of public hearings. His announcement set off a firestorm among critics, who said he should have done that long before the FCC voted 3-2 June 2 to loosen media ownership rules. Powell and his supporters insisted localism and structural ownership were 2 separate issues, and he refused to grant a stay of the new rules, due to take effect Sept. 4. Several public interest groups and 2 FCC commissioners asked for a stay.

Public safety groups petitioned the FCC for reconsideration of a decision that set dates for moving to narrowband equipment in spectrum below 512 MHz. The Federal Law Enforcement Wireless Users Group (FLEWUG) raised concerns with some of the interim deadlines for public safety users transitioning to more efficient 12.5 kHz-capable equipment: (1) The decision to bar certification of equipment capable of operating at one voice path per 25 kHz of spectrum, including 12.5 kHz-capable equipment that also provided for a 25 kHz mode, starting Jan. 1, 2005. (2) The decision to bar the manufacture and import of 150-174 MHz and 421-512 MHz band equipment that could operate on a 25 kHz bandwidth starting Jan. 1, 2008. Those dates will “preclude a graceful migration to the next generation of technology, reduce competition among manufacturers and inhibit interoperability among federal, state and local public safety agencies,” FLEWUG said: “In so doing, the Commission runs the risk of compromising critical homeland security initiatives.” The group suggested extending the Jan. 2005 certification deadline to Jan. 1, 2008. It said that “by enabling backward compatibility plus manufacture and importation of multimode equipment through 2013 public safety agencies across the nation would be able to complete the transition to narrowband operations in a more timely fashion.” A separate challenge was filed by the Assn. of Public Safety Communications Officials (APCO), the International Assn. of Fire Chiefs, the International Municipal Signal Assn. and others. The goal of the rules is to move licensees to narrower channels and increase the number of channels available in the same spectrum, APCO said. “Prior efforts to ‘refarm’ land mobile spectrum have been ineffective, due in part to the absence of a requirement that licensees convert to more efficient narrowband radio equipment by a specific date,” the filing said. “Instead, the Commission had merely used its equipment authorization process to force manufacturers to offer narrowband equipment, without any concurrent requirement that users purchase or deploy narrowband capabilities.” APCO told the FCC it didn’t object to an end date for public safety operators to convert to narrowband equipment, and suggested it be moved up to 2013 from 2018. But the public safety groups took issue with interim deadlines for the transition. If not changed, APCO said the near-term dates would “prevent public safety licensees from adding critical capacity and coverage for existing systems, locking them into current channels and equipment supplies, or forcing them to expend scarce resources to replace prematurely their entire radio systems.” Separately, paging carriers challenged the order, including the American Assn. of Paging Carriers, Allied National Paging Assn., Arch Wireless and Metrocall. They said that to the extent the rules compelled them to convert their Part 90 paging frequencies to 12.5 kHz, they would “be forced to replace their existing systems and equipment at significant and unnecessary cost and with substantial disruption of services provided to their customers.” The carriers took issue with a previous FCC decision to exempt all Part 90 paging-only frequencies below 800 MHz from any narrowbanding requirement. They told the Commission that they believed that the inclusion of paging-only frequencies in the narrowbanding mandates was inadvertent. They said it wasn’t technically possible to intermix 25 kHz base stations with 12.5 kHz base stations in the same paging system. That would mean carriers would have to “flash cut” their existing 25 kHz systems to 12.5 kHz equipment or overlay “complex and costly” networks to accommodate 12.5 kHz modes.

Wireless carriers, privacy advocates and public safety groups differed over details of when federal law requires a mobile operator to divulge caller location information sent to a 911 center receiving an emergency call. The FCC sought feedback on a public safety petition on how provisions on customer privacy in the Communications Act intersected with newer language in the Patriot Act and other laws. One issue raised was the privacy protections when a 911 caller was dialing on behalf of someone else.

Saying broadband over power lines (BPL) held great potential for innovation and competition, NTIA urged the FCC to expeditiously complete its BPL inquiry but cautioned that the Commission should ensure that all communications services, especially federal operations, were adequately protected from interference. Federal agencies had more than 18,000 frequency assignments in the 1.7-80 MHz spectrum in which BPL systems might radiate unintentionally, it said. NTIA said it had started modeling and analysis of interference potential of BPL that included research on technical studies and measurement efforts undertaken throughout the world as well as regulatory approaches in other countries. The NTIA’s Institute for Telecom Science (ITS) also was taking measurements of experimental BPL systems, it said, and the measurements will provide guidelines for development of compliance measurement procedures that it believes will be key in ensuring compatibility with federal systems. The model and analysis project is expected to be completed by the end of the year, NTIA said, and the findings will be submitted to the FCC: “We urge the Commission to consider those findings as it moves ahead with successive stages of the BPL proceedings.”

NTIA told the FCC it is concerned that some parts of a recent Commission decision that set out dates for moving to narrowband equipment in spectrum below 512 MHz “could inadvertently have adverse consequences, severely impacting the implementation of interoperability standards within the federal government and among state and local public safety entities.” NTIA told the FCC that Sec. 303 of the Communications Act authorizes the FCC to regulate emissions from equipment used for commercial stations, but it exempts federal govt. operations. The Assn. of Public Safety Communications Officials (APCO) said earlier this week it planned to file a petition for reconsideration at the FCC on the decision, which was published in the Federal Register July 17. APCO said it would make a filing with other groups at the Commission on Mon., recommending in exchange for certain interim dates for transitioning to narrowband equipment in this spectrum, that an end date of 2018 be moved up to 2013 (CD Aug 14 p6). Existing interim dates in the rules include a prohibition on the manufacture or import of any 25 kHz equipment as of Jan. 1, 2008. NTIA, however, said it sought clarification of the impact of the rules on federal operations in the affected bands. NTIA sought reconsideration of the equipment certification, manufacture and importation prohibitions. In part, the rules bar the certification of any equipment capable of operating one voice path per 25 kHz of spectrum at 150-174 MHz and 421-512 MHz starting Jan. 1, 2005. NTIA said its concern is that the 162-174 MHz is allocated for federal govt. use and falls within the narrowbanding order. Citing Sec. 303 of the Act, NTIA said the FCC “must clarify that these prohibitions do not apply to federal government stations and equipment operating in the 162-174 MHz band,” which is authorized for federal use. NTIA said it is also concerned that the equipment certification, important and manufacturing restrictions in the order “could negatively impact the ability of federal, state and local public safety agencies to implement interoperable telecommunications systems across all levels of government. As the Commission is well aware, achieving a more integrated communications solution for our federal, state and local first responders is an essential part of our nation’s homeland security efforts.” While the order sets prohibitions on certification of certain wideband equipment starting in Jan. 2005 and the manufacturing and importation of wideband equipment in Jan. 2008, it doesn’t actually require public safety systems to migrate to 12.5 kHz narrowband technology until Jan. 1, 2018. Adverse effects to public safety systems from the inability to obtain 25 kHz equipment during this long transition is that such operations wouldn’t have the opportunity to modify their equipment during this period. It asked the FCC to defer the effective date until the impact on public safety is further assessed.