WASHINGTON-Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John McCain (R-Ariz.), increasingly distressed about Federal Communications Commission wireless policy management, plans legislation next year that would overhaul the Wireless Telecommunications Bureau and mandate more deregulation.
McCain, according to congressional staff and industry officials, plans to address the matter in the FCC reauthorization bill early next year.
McCain’s staff has been meeting with wireless lobbyists whose steady drum beat of criticism of the bureau have hit on the huge backlog of 64,000 pending license applications and rule makings; failure to deregulate paging, mobile phone and dispatch radio services through congressionally approved forbearance; lack of relief for small businesses; and inadequate attention to public safety and private wireless issues.
“The wireless bureau has been ineffective in protecting the interests of terrestrial microwave services,” said Bob Raish, an attorney for a coalition of railroad, pipeline, electric utility firms and state and local governments that use fixed wireless links.
Raish said the FCC is deferring spectrum choices to commercial satellites over the U.S. industrial infrastructure.
“We’ve given up on the wireless bureau. They say they’re either working on something else or their hands are tied by Congress,” said Alan Shark, president of the American Mobile Telecommunications Association.
McCain lambasted the FCC’s handling of wireless issues in a June 24 letter to FCC Chairman Bill Kennard. Kennard acknowledged that a problem exists and vowed to correct it. At the same time, the FCC head pointed to the high volume of wireless actions the bureau has processed in recent years and to increased agency automation.
The Arizona maverick, a possible GOP candidate for president in 2000, particularly is irked about the FCC’s recent rejection of the regulatory forbearance petition filed by the Personal Communications Industry Association.
“What PCIA was asking for was unprecedented,” said Ari Fitzgerald, wireless adviser to Kennard.
Fitzgerald said PCIA wanted to do away with consumer safeguards, something no other common carriers are entitled to and something even the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association opposed.
Both associations backed the repeal of mandatory resale, which the FCC has decided to keep in place for another five years.
Fitzgerald, noting the level of wireless competition is not uniform across the country, suggested forbearance might be possible market by market. He added Kennard is sensitive to the needs of small business and will pursue options to ease their regulatory burdens.
McCain’s stepped-up interest in the FCC’s wireless policy making comes amid speculation wireless bureau chief Dan Phythyon may be considering leaving the agency this fall. Bureau spokeswoman Maribeth McCarrick says Phythyon has no plans to step down.
“Looking at it objectively, with attention to what is undone and to what we have done, I think we stack up pretty damn well,” said Phythyon.
For example, Phythyon said 50,000 of the 64,000 backlogged wireless items are tied to multiple address system applications that will be addressed in a rule making next year. He added the bureau is under heavy pressure to prioritize the many issues that come before it, some of which have been complicated by changing statutes in recent years.
Since 1996, the FCC has had to meet a long series of deadlines in implementing the telecom act and to respond to endless criticism from Capitol Hill along the way. As such, some say Congress is partly to blame because it is trying to micro-manage the FCC.
Mark Crosby, president of the Industrial Telecommunications Association, said he is concerned the wireless bureau backlog is even bigger than what McCain and other lawmakers realize. He recommended industry should tell Congress which matters are most important to them.
