WASHINGTON-The Federal Communications Commission last week released rules for the auction of Location and Monitoring Service spectrum. LMS is used to locate or monitor mobile radio units primarily located in vehicles and is expected to be a part of the emerging smart highways program being developed by the Department of Transportation. The LMS auction is expected to occur before the end of the year. The rules allow for bidding credits for small businesses and partitioning and disaggregation.
LMS is limited to specific geographic areas. The auction will occur on an economic area basis. There are 172 EAs in the continental United States. The FCC has designated five additional licensing regions for Guam and the Northern Marianas Islands, Puerto Rico and U.S. Virgin Islands, American Samoa, the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska. One exclusive EA license will be issued for each of three sub-bands.
LMS is designed as an overlay since the LMS channels are assigned to portions of the 902-928 MHz band, which also is assigned to Part 15 devices, industrial, scientific and medical equipment, and government radiolocation. Government users and industrial, scientific and medial equipment are the primary users on the band. LMS is not two-way communication and, in fact, FCC rules restrict voice interconnection over the public switched telephone network.
