WASHINGTON-Congress failed to pass relocation trust fund and wireless enhanced 911 legislation, but House and Senate members plan to try again in early December when lawmakers return for a brief extension of the lame-duck session.
The relocation bill is key to implementation of the Bush third-generation spectrum plan, while the E911 measure is critical to improving delayed rollout of location-based wireless 911 service.
The wireless industry had hoped to see the relocation and E911 measures passed as part of a massive spending bill. While the spending bill was approved, complications prevented the two major wireless bills from being included. That should have been the end of it for the year, but Congress’ inability to pass post-9/11, sweeping intelligence reform legislation-itself a possible vehicle for realigning the 700 MHz band-means lawmakers will return the second week of December to complete unfinished business.
Lawmakers came up short in efforts to push through legislation to create a grant program for wireless enhanced 911 due to an objection and continued negotiation on an unrelated matter by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), said Jennifer O’Shea, spokeswoman for Sen. Conrad Burns (R-Mont.).
Burns is the main sponsor of the bill that would create a grant program for public-safety answering points to upgrade their 911 systems to allow them to receive location information from wireless phones. McCain is the chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, and he has tied passage of the E911 bill to an unrelated piece of legislation regarding a boxing commission.
Lawmakers left town Nov. 21 after passing multi-hundreds of billions of dollars in spending in a bill that weighed more than 10 pounds. Lawmakers were furiously negotiating Nov. 19 in an attempt to include the two wireless issues and a universal service change in the Omnibus appropriations bill-a catchall for all of the spending Congress had yet to pass. But it was not to be.
Still, Congress made progress on other fronts. Congress passed a four-year extension of the Internet tax moratorium that expired more than a year ago. The compromise passed keeps in place the Internet access taxes that were in place prior to 1998 when the first moratorium was passed. It also allows Wisconsin to collect Internet access taxes for two years and Texas cities to collect franchise fees from telecommunications companies for the use of public lands, said the Information Technology Association of America.
The Senate also confirmed Jonathan Adelstein-only recently believed to be on his way out-to another term as a member of the Federal Communications Commission. His new term expires June 30, 2008.
Meantime, the omnibus appropriations bill approved by Congress included an increase in high-tech (H1-B) visas to 20,000 for graduate students and a two-year increase in funding for the Patent and Trademark Office to reduce the backlog of patent reviews.
Finally, the Senate confirmed Deborah Platt Majoras as chairman of the Federal Trade Commission. Majoras’ nomination had been tied up in wrangling regarding gas prices so President George W. Bush gave her the FTC chairmanship in August under a recess appointment. The Senate action means she can stay until 2008.
In her role, Majoras will oversee anti-spam enforcement and privacy issues affecting the wireless industry, particularly those associated with evolving radio frequency identification applications.
