WASHINGTON-The Federal Communications Commission Friday created its long anticipated Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau, which is set to take over various functions and issues from seven other entities within the commission.
“Many of the problems we saw during Hurricane Katrina were consistent across platforms,” FCC Chairman Kevin Martin told reporters following the meeting. “Those issues have to be considered in a comprehensive fashion.”
The new bureau, expected to begin operations during the next several weeks if Congress and the FCC’s labor union approves, will have a large portfolio of issues including 911, digital wiretap, priority access, emergency alert, communications-infrastructure protection, network security and reliability, and disaster management, planning, coordination and response.
In addition, the new bureau is set to handle the licensing functions for public-safety agencies. Licensing functions for critical-infrastructure and private-wireless entities are to remain under the jurisdiction of the FCC’s Wireless Telecommunications Bureau.
“The FCC is looking to make sure public-safety issues get full attention,” said Anthony Dale, acting deputy director of the FCC’s Office of the Managing Director.
The private-wireless industry is concerned that the FCC may have forgotten that many of its licenses are jumbled with public safety. Also, many of the functions performed by these licensees have a public-safety component even though they are not public-safety licensees.
“While the chairman is to be applauded for this initiative, EWA remains concerned how the FCC will conduct spectrum management regulatory and licensing policy for critical infrastructure and the hundreds of thousands of business industrial and transportation entities that support America’s economy and welfare who are not labeled as public safety. We hope the FCC has a meaningful plan to accommodate these interests in the future and EWA looks forward to discussing such strategies with the chairman and the commissioners,” said Mark Crosby, president of the Enterprise Wireless Alliance.
“I understand that 4.9 GHz and 700 MHz are isolated public-safety islands, but that is not the case in all of the bands that have been cohabitated by public safety and private-enterprise licensees for decades. The FCC needs to factor this in its planning for the future,” Crosby added.
Another example where private-wireless and public-safety have been intertwined is the 800 MHz band. The FCC is reconfiguring that band to separate the various licensees. While the reconfiguration is happening largely through private negotiation, the oversight function will move to the new bureau, said an FCC official.
Dale said that staffing numbers had not been completed, but he expected the bureau to have less than 150 employees.
With the creation of the new bureau, it becomes even less clear which policy issues the wireless bureau will handle. With the exception of auction policy, Dale could not say what, if any, policy issues would remain within WTB. Other large policy issues of interest to the wireless industry-including the protection of customer call records-are being handled by the FCC’s Wireline Competition Bureau.
This leaves the wireless industry of all stripes-mobile phone, broadband, and private-with multiple staffs to brief and multiple viewpoints to consider when developing strategy.
Wireless trade associations said they look forward to working with the new bureau.
RCR Wireless News first reported in July that Martin wanted to eliminate the wireless bureau, move its functions to other bureaus and perhaps create a new bureau. Martin announced in the wake of Hurricane Katrina that he intended to create the new Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau.
Bureau chiefs for either the new bureau or the wireless bureau have yet to be named. Catherine Seidel has been acting WTB chief since last March.
