WASHINGTON-Utility and energy companies want a federal court to force the Federal Communications Commission to process 50,000 multiple address system applications pending since 1992, a delay regulators say is necessary to consider auctioning the spectrum.
UTC, a trade group representing electric, gas and water utilities and natural gas pipeline firms, filed Jan. 15 for relief with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
“The utilities, pipelines, state and local government agencies and others who applied for these channels did so in good faith, and with the reasonable expectation that the FCC would act promptly on their applications,” said Jeffrey Sheldon, general counsel of UTC.
“By no stretch of the imagination is five years a reasonable period of time for businesses and agencies to wait for the FCC to act on applications for radio licenses,” he added.
FCC officials confirmed that auctions are among the options for MAS.
Under current law, the FCC cannot sell private wireless spectrum. But that could change this year if Congress and the Clinton administration strike a balanced budget including expanded auctions.
The commission also could decide to reallocate MAS frequencies for commercial wireless services, which are subject to auctions, and invite utilities and others to bid.
The channels at issue are in the 932-935 MHz and 941-944 MHz bands, and were allocated to MAS in 1989 to provide spectrum relief for utilities, gas pipelines and others to operate point-to-multipoint microwave radio systems that remotely monitor, coordinate and control transmission and distribution systems.
The FCC accepted 900 MHz MAS applications in early 1992. Applicants seeking the same frequency in the same geographic area were to be decided by lottery. UTC contends that not all applications submitted then were mutually exclusive with each other, however.
The halt in processing MAS applications has turned into a de facto licensing freeze, a tool the FCC has used in the past to buy time to craft auction rules for specialized mobile radio and paging services.
The action appears tied to a broader policy shift by FCC Chairman Reed Hundt to transfer traditional private wireless service functions to commercial carriers by subjecting all mobile spectrum to market forces.
Hundt has raised $20 billion from selling digital paging and pocket telephone auctions since 1993, when auctions were authorized by Congress. Whether the auction model is appropriate for internal radio systems used by entities-large and small-that are not in the communications business has never been officially answered by Hundt since his arrival in late 1993.
Some industry executives have suggested spectrum fees in lieu of auction for private wireless services. The private wireless community has not fared well under Hundt, failing to secure spectrum relief in congested areas or to win recognition for being the communications backbone of America’s industrial infrastructure.
