WASHINGTON-The Federal Communications Commission late Friday adopted proposed rules to
implement the Balanced Budget Act of 1997.
The long-awaited notice of proposed rule making does not
“even render tentative conclusions” about the use of auctions in private wireless licensing, said Thomas
Sugrue, chief of the FCC’s Wireless Telecommunications Bureau.
Sugrue announced the release of the NPRM at a
luncheon of the Land Mobile Communications Council. LMCC members have been concerned for some time the
NPRM would require the licensing of private wireless spectrum through auctions. While acknowledging that some
believe Congress specifically said this, Sugrue told the audience various questions were raised and “your views
need to be heard loudly and clearly.”
The NPRM will ask the following types of questions, Sugrue said:
How should the FCC balance the statutory mandate to assign licenses through auctions with the mandate
to use licensing mechanisms that avoid mutual exclusivity? and
What steps should the FCC take to avoid mutual
exclusivity? Should government’s approach vary depending on the type of service or the present uses of the bands in
question?
The NPRM will address the public-safety carve-out and whether that includes some private wireless
entities. Part of this might be a proposal to have critical infrastructures have their own separate pool.
An alliance
known as the Critical Infrastructure Industries filed a petition Aug. 14 urging the FCC to establish a new radio service
pool in the private land mobile bands below 800 MHz. Members of the alliance include UTC-The Telecommunications
Association, the American Petroleum Institute and the Association of American Railroads.
The speech was
welcomed by two of LMCC’s largest members, the Personal Communications Industry Association and the Industrial
Telecommunications Association. Representatives of both groups were pleased with the way Sugrue presented the
controversial item to what could be considered a hostile audience.
“I was really pleased that they really want
to understand this issue and the extent that they really want to understand the private wireless industry,” said
Mary McDermott, PCIA senior vice president and chief of staff for government relations.
“I don’t like the
questions they are asking, but I feel more comfortable submitting the answers to this bureau than the last one,”
said ITA President Mark Crosby. Along these lines, Sugrue told the LMCC audience it should not be concerned that
Deputy Chief Kathleen O’Brien Ham once headed the auctions division. Ham is overseeing the public-safety and
private wireless division for Sugrue.
