Enterprise Wireless Insider® Volume 9, Issue 11

EWA Requests FCC to Convene Industry Meeting

EWA has requested that the leadership of the FCC’s Wireless Telecommunications Bureau and Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau convene an industry-wide meeting to address the continued availability of 800 MHz spectrum for qualified Private Land Mobile Radio Service (PLMR) users. EWA suggested that the meeting include Frequency Advisory Committees (FACs) certified by the FCC to provide Part 90 800 MHz frequency coordination services, equipment vendors whose customers seek access to the 800 MHz band to capitalize on emerging technologies, and other parties that the FCC believes would contribute to the discussion.

The goal of the meeting would be to discuss how to best ensure that access to 800 MHz Expansion/Guard Band (EB/GB) and Interstitial Mid-Band channels are available to applicants with bona fide intentions to use them for internal purposes or to offer communication services—rather than to speculative investors who have little, if any, idea what construction and future operational obligations may involve.  Waiting for a national cellular carrier to appear at your door with a check in hand is an amazingly unrealistic expectation, but 800 MHz spectrum speculators seem to have an amazing appetite to swallow such dreams. In the meantime, individual licensees who know not what they have gotten themselves into clog up the spectrum which limits access from those who will put it to productive use – private business enterprises, critical infrastructure industries and public safety entities.

EWA believes that an industry-wide meeting would be a productive way for stakeholders to determine approaches that might ensure that the spectrum is used for its intended purposes. The dreamers should attend as well. 

“The spectrum allocation window closed many, many years ago for business/industrial private land mobile entities,” stated Mark Crosby, EWA’s President. “What we have left is the opportunity to invest in and deploy new efficient technologies, and thereby make more effective use of the limited spectrum that we do have. These opportunities will be lost if the industry does not actively identify and establish approaches to confront speculation.”

New Plan for Enforcement Bureau

On June 9, 2015, leaders of the House Energy and Commerce Committee announced an agreement with Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Tom Wheeler that will keep open many of the FCC field offices that were initially targeted for closure.  Everyone involved was so pleased with the compromise, that a Congressional hearing scheduled to examine the proposed plan was cancelled.

In a Wireless Connections article, EWA raised concerns early about the FCC’s initial plan to close as many as sixteen of its field offices, anticipating that such a dramatic reduction in staff would make it difficult to respond to important cases of interference in the private land mobile bands. 

Under the revised plan, some field offices will still close.  While Chairman Wheeler has yet to reveal specific details, according to an announcement from the House Energy and Commerce Committee, the plan will:

• Keep open 15 of the FCC’s 24 field offices;
• Provide a mechanism for escalating interference complaints;
• Improve enforcement of FCC rules against pirate radio operators; and
• Limit staff reassignments to Washington, D.C.

As more details of the revised plan become available, EWA will report them to you. EWA is pleased to support your communications requirements through its advocacy work.

900 MHz Realignment Rules Open to Industry Comment

In early May, EWA and pdvWireless filed proposed rules at the FCC related to their joint Petition for Rulemaking to realign the Part 90 Business/Industrial 900 MHz band.  The realignment would create an allocation to address the broadband needs of critical infrastructure and private enterprise entities, including priority access.  Comments are due on June 29 and Reply Comments are due July 14.

NPSTC Supports LMCC 800 MHz Interstitial Plans

On June 8, the National Public Safety Telecommunications Council (NPSTC) filed a letter with the FCC in support of the recommendations and frequency coordination matrix developed by the Land Mobile Communications Council (LMCC). “NPSTC believes the LMCC recommendations will serve public safety and the overall land mobile community well to protect systems on existing channels and allow implementation of new interstitial channels that provide more spectrum opportunities.”  EWA agrees.

PSCC Calls EWA Recommendation “Procedurally Infirm”

The Public Safety Communications Council (PSCC) filed an Ex Parte communication with the FCC on June 11, responding negatively to an EWA recommendation proposed in its 800 MHz Interstitial Reply Comments that those qualified to coordinate 800 MHz applications be authorized to do so, regardless of the applicant’s eligibility. In other words, EWA should be able to coordinate applications for interstitial channels submitted from public safety entities.  The frequency selection process for 800 MHz Interstitial channels is not a subjective one that requires intense knowledge and consideration of on the ground tactical public safety operations. The channels are an asset in the mission critical effort, not the tactical solution.  After applying the FCC’s rules, a co-channel minimum distance separation analysis, and the LMCC’s frequency coordination matrix, a specific frequency is either available for certification, or it is not available for certification. And a precedent has already been established. EWA is permitted to coordinate Sprint-Vacated 800 MHz channels on behalf of public safety entities, and has been doing so for years without any reported interference issues or cataclysmic seismic shifts in the public safety spectrum landscape. EWA will respond shortly to PSCC’s concerns.

UTC and FCC Meet to Discuss 4.9 GHz

Commissioner O’Reilly Calls FCC Enforcement Bureau “Dangerously Misguided”

In remarks delivered before the Federal Communications Bar Association, FCC Commissioner Michael O’Reilly asserted that FCC enforcement has “gone astray” and is now “dangerously misguided.”

More than the exorbitant fines that he cites in the speech, O’Reilly finds troubling the “Enforcement Bureau’s new-found policymaking role. There is a clear pattern of enforcement actions being used as a means to stretch and reinterpret the Commission’s rules to expand its authority and ensnare more participants in the communications marketplace… The combination of the Bureau’s wayward approach with vast new powers should be of concern to everyone….”

He turns to privacy and Net Neutrality as examples of the Enforcement Bureau’s growing powers, questioning its “ability and expertise to make sound policy decisions for the future of the Internet.”