WASHINGTON-The Federal Communications Commission may have violated a key telecom provision of the 1997 budget act by making idle frequencies available to a paging company instead of to a Southern California public-safety agency that had sought them two-and-a-half years ago.
Less than two months after the balanced budget bill became law last August, the FCC’s Wireless Telecommunications Bureau granted licenses for eight channels to Paging Systems Inc.
The 470-512 MHz channels, which Paging Systems had not specifically requested, were sought by South Bay Regional Public Communications Authority and a paging entrepreneur in the mid-1990s. The FCC turned down both applicants.
The budget act, in addition to allocating 24 megahertz of spectrum to public safety, authorized the FCC to assign unused frequencies to public-safety applicants.
Southern California public-safety agencies are not expected to benefit much from the 24 megahertz allocation, according to the Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials-International Inc.
“The FCC has taken actions inconsistent with the spirit and letter of the statute and which clearly appear to prejudice South Bay,” said Reps. Jane Harman (D-Calif.), James Rogan (R-Calif.), Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and Julian Dixon (D-Calif.) in a letter to FCC Chairman Bill Kennard.
While it was Harman who penned the public-safety preference provision and repeatedly pressed the FCC on behalf of South Bay, a consortium of law enforcement and emergency response agencies that serve El Segundo, Gardena, Hawthorne and Manhattan Beach. Rogan-a member of the House telecommunications subcommittee-got the provision included in the budget bill.
Former U.S. deputy attorney general Jamie Gorelick urged favorable FCC action on South Bay’s application in April 1996.
Kennard, noting the restricted nature proceeding, declined to comment in detail to concerns raised by Harman and her colleagues. But he did say the FCC “is endeavoring to implement fully the intent of Congress as expressed in the Balanced Budget Act of 1997.”
Dan Phythyon, chief of the Wireless Telecom Bureau, said the matter has high priority.
The controversy comes just as it appeared the FCC had regained the confidence of the public-safety community. Under former FCC chairman Reed Hundt, the agency came under fire from public-safety representatives and Congress for failing to properly assess future public-safety spectrum needs and to address how to accommodate those needs.
South Bay wasn’t the only group frustrated by Hundt, whose strong interest in auctioning commercial wireless spectrum overshadowed public-safety and other private wireless policy issues during his reign. An angry Judd Gregg, a Republican senator from New Hampshire, blasted Hundt in a 1996 letter for denying an application for a state-wide mobile radio system nearly three years after the state filed its application.
The Hundt commission gradually regained its standing with the public-safety lobby, owing in large part to initiatives to shift 24 megahertz of TV broadcast spectrum to police, firefighters and emergency medical service providers and to shield public-safety spectrum from auction licensing.
Meanwhile, South Bay and the state of New Hampshire, are waiting for frequencies they believe are due them.
