WASHINGTON-The paging industry may be the first wireless industry to get what all telecommunications industries seem to crave-freedom from the Federal Communications Commission.
“In the bigger scheme of themes, the major issues [for the paging industry] are not regulatory issues,” said Jim Schlichting, deputy bureau chief of the FCC’s Wireless Telecommunications Bureau.
The one issue still before the FCC-and one Schlichting believes will always remain of interest to the commission-is paging interconnection with local exchange carriers.
The FCC has received a number of complaints from paging carriers that do not believe they have been given fair interconnection arrangements with LECs. Some of the complaints date back to 1997, but have yet to be addressed by the commission.
The FCC said it plans to rule on these complaints and is hoping the rulings will include enough details to give industry guides on how it views interconnection issues.
Part of the reason the FCC has given for not ruling on the complaints has been they now fall under the purview of the newly created Enforcement Bureau, and upper management in that division needed to be educated on the matter before handing down any decision. In addition, new interconnection-related issues keep coming up that the commission feels it needs to address.
“Our position is that there are rules in place and they need to be enforced,” said Rob Hoggarth, senior vice president for government relations at the Personal Communications Industry Association.
On another front, plans are moving forward to auction spectrum set aside for narrowband personal communications services. The FCC said it will proceed with auction plans after industry comments on how to license spectrum reserved for NPCS and spectrum left over from previous auctions. For example, should the leftover spectrum be changed to better fit the reserve spectrum?
The NPCS rules also changed the eligibility for spectrum that had been set aside for incumbent operators as paging response channels. Now anyone can bid for that spectrum, but the channels still only can be used for mobile-to-base operations.
The FCC also said it will allow paging operators to partition and disaggregate some of their spectrum to others in an effort to allow smaller businesses to participate.
