WASHINGTON-The Federal Communications Commission is in full preparation for the paging license auction set to begin before the end of the year.
Meantime, the FCC must grapple with a host of other issues of interest to paging carriers, including interconnection, numbering and how customer information can be used.
Paging auctions
The FCC affirmed May 13 many rules regarding the paging licenses auction. While the official rules have not been released, the FCC expects to auction 16,000 paging licenses in the upper bands (929-930 MHz and 931-932 MHz) and lower bands (35-36 MHz, 43-44 MHz, 152-159 MHz, 454-460 MHz) later this year.
The signal from the FCC’s Wireless Telecommunications Bureau that it expects to auction paging licenses continues an effort started several years ago when the commission froze plans to extend license areas or grant new licenses. “Paging auction recon has been the single biggest issue” since I came to the wireless bureau, said James D. Schlichting, WTB deputy chief.
The FCC’s action does not end the debate over whether it should auction off paging licenses when so many areas are heavily encumbered. Pending federal court cases examining the issue had been on hold while the FCC reconsidered its original decision. The commission ruling allows them to go forward.
The Personal Communications Industry Association said it is concerned about the timing of the auction. PCIA expected the auctions to be held sometime after the turn of the century, not this year.
“Given informal discussions with FCC staff, we had expected them to consider a time frame of six to nine months after a decision was released … The auction process is extremely resource intensive. The industry has a lot on its plate in the next six months … We hope the FCC will take that into account in planning its auction schedule,” said Rob Hoggarth, PCIA senior vice president for paging and messaging.
PCIA was pleased licenses would be auctioned using economic areas rather than major trading areas as originally proposed.
Most of the details specific to the auctions probably will be left to the public notice and notice of proposed rule making for the auction.
PCIA specifically will be looking in these documents for responses to concerns regarding information flow during the auction process. For example, the FCC previously had said it would not give a running list of highest bidders for each license. This is a departure from the way FCC auctions have been conducted in the past, where information has been available on the Internet at the end of each round.
Interconnection
Paging carriers that had hoped the FCC soon would clarify interconnection rules in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Jan. 25 decision may have to wait a bit longer while the FCC deals with interconnection issues regarding local exchange competition, said Carol E. Mattey, chief of the policy and program planning division of the FCC’s Common Carrier Bureau.
A Supreme Court-ordered examination of what unbundled network elements must be made available is underway and occupying most of the time of the people who make policy recommendations on interconnection issues, Mattey said.
One ray of hope might be if the wireless bureau presses its issues with CCB staff. Schlichting signaled this could happen. “The FCC staff, and specifically the wireless bureau, ought to be spending some more time to move this forward,” he said.
The paging industry won an interconnection case in federal court last week when AirTouch Paging of California was granted summary judgment in an interconnection case against Pacific Bell. Pacific Bell must offer AirTouch the same agreement it arbitrated with Cook Telecom Inc., said the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.
“The court spoiled a number of favorite tricks that certain [local exchange carriers] have used to delay or defeat the rightful efforts of competing carriers to exercise their most-favored-nation rights. Just as important, this decision provides an excellent road map for the FCC as it works to preserve, protect and extend the interconnection rights of requesting carriers,” said PCIA President Jay Kitchen.
Numbering
PCIA has three goals regarding the efficient use of numbers-avoiding forced number pooling, ensuring predictable access to numbers and supporting reasonable steps to optimized number use, Hoggarth said. One way PCIA has been pressing these goals is by commenting on FCC proceedings from a variety of states seeking additional authority for number use. “It is critical to have a unified nationwide numbering system,” he said.
Because the wireless industry believes number pooling requires local number portability and the industry has been given an extension in implementing LNP, the FCC needs to recognize the wireless industry, including paging, needs to be treated differently than other common carriers.
CPNI
Several paging carrier officials recently sent a letter to the FCC urging reconsideration of two issues regarding CPNI.
CPNI is the information carriers collect about customers, including name, address, billing and when and where calls are placed.
The rules implement a portion of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, requiring the FCC to develop rules to protect the privacy of telecom customers. The FCC has been refining CPNI since 1997. The FCC expects to resolve many of the CPNI issues this summer.
The paging carriers want the FCC to reconsider letting customer premises equipment be bundled with service in the wireless context, specifically messaging devices. “A paging carrier’s ability to offer news and other information services to existing customers is greatly restricted by the artificial need to separate CPE or information services from other aspects of the customer’s service,” the carrier executives said.
Additionally, the paging carriers want the FCC to remove the so-called win-back prohibition. This rule prohibits carriers from using CPNI to offer promotions to customers who either have changed or are considering changing service providers.
