WASHINGTON-Despite all the hoopla surrounding antenna siting legislation, wireless anti-fraud, privacy and tax-repeal bills stand a far better chance of being passed by Congress and enacted into law this year.
President Clinton is expected shortly to sign legislation that will outlaw unauthorized mobile phone cloning and stiffen penalties for offenders.
The Senate two weeks ago passed an anti-cloning bill, sponsored by Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.). The measure is identical to one previously approved by the House and backed by Reps. Sam Johnson (R-Texas), Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Bill McCollum (R-Texas).
Another bill to bolster wireless privacy has been approved by the House and awaits Senate action once Congress returns next week from its two-week recess.
“It’s about taking things out of the air that don’t belong to you,” said Thomas Wheeler, president of the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association.
Meanwhile, Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Reps. Billy Tauzin (R-La.) and Jennifer Dunn (R-Wash.) have introduced legislation to kill the outdated 3 percent federal excise tax on telephone service.
With the Republican-led Congress anxious to use the anticipated budget surplus for tax cuts and government spending before this fall’s elections, the McCain-Tauzin-Dunn measure would fit easily into the massive budget reconciliation bill Congress plans to craft this summer.
Of course, the GOP strategy runs counter to President Clinton’s desire to pay down the $11 trillion federal debt with budget surpluses estimated at between $660 billion and $1.1 trillion during the next decade.
While the wireless industry can point to progress in combating fraud, eavesdropping and taxes, those accomplishments pale in comparison to its failure to secure legislative or regulatory relief in removing obstacles to siting antennas on private property and federal lands.
The industry, however, can take comfort in the fact that the legislative picture is no brighter for House and Senate bills championed by Vermont lawmakers to outlaw existing and future federal pre-emption of local antenna siting regulation.
“We don’t expect Mr. Tauzin to be very receptive,” said Steve Crowley, an aide to Rep. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).
A bill co-sponsored by Sanders and Rep. Christopher Shays (R-Conn.) would prevent federal pre-emption of local antenna siting regulation and repeal a 1996 telecom act provision that prohibits zoning boards from blocking the construction of towers for health reasons if wireless carriers meet government guidelines for radio-frequency radiation exposure.
“I think it’s very unlikely it (the Sanders-Shays bill) will be considered this year,” said Ken Johnson, a Tauzin spokesman.
Similarly, Johnson is less than confident about congressional action this year on a bill drafted by Tauzin that would help fund improvements to emergency 911 operator centers with fees paid by wireless carriers to locate antennas on federal property.
“Even with the best laid plans, there are no guarantees this year,” Johnson said.
McCain plans to introduce a companion E911/federal property siting measure in the Senate.
But there is a wild card: Rock Creek Park in Washington, D.C. Tauzin and Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) have made antenna siting in Rock Creek Park a test case of sorts to gauge whether the National Park Service is as much a drag on the siting application process as industry claims. The Park Service said it has to balance mandated antenna-siting obligations with environmental laws.
The Park Service returned Cellular One’s application to place a site at Rock Creek Park because the application was incomplete. Another application is pending from Bell Atlantic Mobile that seeks two sites in the park.
Application questions for Cellular One “weren’t completely answered,” said Eden Crane, resource management specialist for the National Park Service.
Crane declined to identify the questions at issue.
Under a December memorandum of NPS Director Robert Stanton, siting applications deemed complete trigger a 60-day window in which the application is commented on by the public and considered for action by the National Park Service.
Concerns about funding and privacy aside, the Tauzin-McCain E911/federal property antenna siting initiative is handicapped by the same factors that make the Vermont anti-federal pre-emption legislation iffy.
Though both initiatives are important to their respective constituencies, neither has the firepower nor the vote-attracting prominence to make it on the GOP legislative agenda in a session shortened by midterm elections in November.
Indeed, the anti-federal pre-emption bill co-sponsored by Sanders and Christopher Shays (R-Conn.) has gone nowhere since being referred to the Commerce Committee last November.
Crowley said cumbersome House rules make getting the Sanders-Shays bill amended to another piece of legislation a long shot. The legislation has a better chance in the Senate. Still, Sens. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and James Jeffords (R-Vt.), who co-sponsor the companion piece, face opposition from the McCain-chaired Senate Commerce Committee.
Regardless of the outcome, the antenna siting debate has become more than a zero sum game.
Antenna-siting obstacles faced by new personal communications services licensees and existing cellular carriers throughout the country and the accompanying policy challenges are now clearly on the radar screen of federal policy makers.
Slowly but surely, hot-headed hyperbole is giving way to reasoned debate. Creative solutions are being offered to a thorny issue lacking a silver bullet answer.
Stealth antenna designs have emerged. New low-earth-orbit satellite technology could make it less necessary to erect all antennas originally envisioned by the wireless telecom industry.
The Personal Communications Industry Association recently got the green light from Justice Department antitrust lawyers to create an antenna siting collocation clearinghouse.
The passage of time alone since the ’96 telecom act has enabled wireless carriers and local officials to better understand each other’s needs and concerns regarding antenna siting.
And the industry has begun to give citizens and local officials something else to think about in the siting debate: Wireless technology saves lives and offers an alternative choice for communications.
In the meantime, the focus is on dialogue between industry and local and state officials. FCC Chairman Bill Kennard said he wants to see industry and local officials work harder at finding common ground on antenna siting before entertaining any notion of federal pre-emption.
As such, the spotlight has shifted to the Local and State Advisory Committee established by former FCC head Reed Hundt. The advisory group met with industry and FCC officials late last month.
At the March 23 meeting, according to two accounts, the FCC urged industry and state and local officials to come up with a set of principles to govern antenna siting moratoria.
Today, there are some 200 siting moratoria around the country.
The FCC is said to support an informal conflict resolution system to handle siting conflicts between local officials and wireless carriers.
The local/state advisory group said it will draft antenna siting moratoria principles and a dispute resolution proposal before the next meeting May 29.
In addition, the advisory group and the wireless industry reportedly are working on a model to monitor compliance with the FCC’s radio-frequency radiation exposure standard.
“There’s some serious, positive movement here,” Rosalind Allen, deputy chief of the FCC Wireless Telecommunications Bureau and the agency’s liaison to the advisory group.
Allen said she is impressed by the “new dynamic” of cooperation between local/state officials and the wireless industry.
