Some of the nation’s most powerful industries said they have been “too quiet, too long” about the U.S. government’s auction hunger, and have formed an alliance to make sure businesses can keep their private radio channels and are included in radio plans for the future.
“To us, this spectrum is an important resource we need to conduct our business,” said Ron Chatmon, vice president of McDonnell Douglas Radio Services Corp.
The group calls itself American Licensees for Ensuring Responsible Transition of Spectrum, ALERTS. The alliance includes petroleum companies, railroad companies, trucking firms, auto manufacturers and overnight courier services.
ALERTS wants to make two critical points to Congress and the Federal Communications Commission: U.S. industry should keep the licensed private spectrum it already has, and the future spectrum needs of U.S. businesses should be included in policy debates.
“We are using this spectrum to produce income to go to the bottom line of the U.S. economy, and produce our products more efficiently, in order to compete,” Chatmon said.
McDonnell Douglas Aerospace in St. Louis has a $1 million radio system that probably can’t be efficiently outsourced at this time, he said.
The plant consists of 92 buildings, totaling 13 million square feet. It has an 800 MHz trunked system with five licensed channels and 500 radios in service.
“As they expand cellular telephones, they’re knocking at my back door,” Chatmon said. When McDonnell approached a St. Louis company about providing service, Chatmon found they weren’t interested in the capital outlay and upgrading that McDonnell required.
“We have a small city here. And a beautiful tower 90 feet above a seven-story building, 295 watts, in a very appropriate location with tremendous coverage,” Chatmon said. Why pay someone else to provide the service?
Rick Smith of Texaco in Bakersfield, Calif., said commercial services do a great job of getting radio technology in the hands of the masses, but commercial service shouldn’t be offered to the exclusion of private systems.
“We’d like to see new spectrum allocated with fees charged according to usage. It’s more manageable from an industry standpoint,” Smith said.
Texaco’s oil fields in Bakersfield use an 800 MHz trunked system with nine channels. The system is built out in areas where Texaco needs it.
Commercial providers make decisions based on their own best interest, not necessarily on the strongest need of a customer, he said.
“Their decisions are based on where the customers are and the loading, not where we have wells,” Smith said.
And commercial systems aren’t as responsive to critical needs as would be a private system operator, Smith said. For instance, if there is a pipeline break, the cellular network quickly becomes congested with media, emergency crews and government officials.
“Commercial systems can fall apart when abnormal things happen, and those are the times we need our systems to work. And if a system is down, it gets fixed when they fix it. But our needs are immediate. We need more control than that,” Smith said.
The government must be more astute about future spectrum needs, he said. Companies are taking risks with spread spectrum and other devices using the unlicensed bands because that is where the new developments are happening, like remote monitoring devices, Smith said.
“There’s a whole plethora of equipment available for use in these bands. The government needs to see that.”
ALERTS activity is coordinated by the Industrial Telecommunications Association Inc. of Washington, D.C., which has emphasized that federal reimbursement for the use of private radio spectrum is best achieved through efficiency-based spectrum lease fees.
