WASHINGTON-Manufacturers and fixed wireless users are poised to launch a campaign on Capitol Hill and at the Federal Communications Commission to advocate “spectrum-impact studies” as a prerequisite to frequency reallocations and other actions that impact the wireless landscape of today and tomorrow.
Spectrum-impact studies, a concept pushed by the Fixed Wireless Communications Coalition, would be analogous to environmental-impact studies required in advance of highway construction.
Whether wireless carriers must conduct environmental-impact studies prior to erecting towers in residential areas and in national parks is a matter of debate.
The coalition, formed in early spring, includes private and commercial wireless licensees from public safety, public utilities, railroads, mobile phone, wireless local loop, broadband local access, broadcasting and wireless cable sectors that depend on fixed communications links.
“Before superimposing additional services upon the spectrum, an impact study should be done to determine the affect upon existing services and their future growth,” said Leonard Raish, a communications lawyer and co-chairman of the fixed wireless group.
Communications attorney Thomas Keller is working alongside Raish in pitching the spectrum-impact study idea to officials in Washington.
The coalition has proposed that prior to any spectrum reallocation the FCC should certify there is no degradation of existing systems; that it allows expansion of existing systems; and that it accommodates demand for new systems.
The broad-based group would appear to command legitimacy, given its members-at one point or another-have waged spectrum fights against each other but are united on the need to prevent further erosion of terrestrial fixed wireless spectrum.
New personal communications services licensees once battled over the terms and costs of relocating 2 GHz microwave users. Today, mobile phone operators need fixed links to backhaul traffic while microwave licensees face increasing demands for fixed communications.
While they are the lobbying campaign’s main theme, spectrum-impact studies are part of larger debate on whether federal regulators are debilitating terrestrial communications by diverting too much spectrum to new satellite services.
That debate, in turn, has implications for what positions the U.S. government takes before the International Telecommunication Union meetings in Geneva.
Fixed and mobile licensees, for their part, want to retain spectrum in the 6 GHz, 11 GHz and 18 GHz bands. Fixed users lost 2 GHz to PCS and mobile satellite services, 4 GHz to satellite services and 28 GHz to local multipoint distribution services.
The spectrum-impact study campaign is being directed at, among others, Dale Hatfield, chief of the FCC’s Office of Plans and Policy. Hatfield said good spectrum policy, as a general matter, always should include an assessment of the impact of decisions on existing licensees. Hatfield cautioned that formalizing spectrum-impact studies as an official policy raises a series of issues that need to be examined carefully.
Hatfield, before returning to public service from the private sector, served at the National Telecommunications and Information Administration. As such, he is highly respected throughout the industry as a spectrum manager, and the fixed wireless coalition is hopeful he will give them a fair hearing.
