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Wireless Business and Technology
Article
Sitting in the
Ivory Tower
written by Allan
Tilles
I was
struck recently by an item regarding the Commission's claims as
to the number of small businesses that have "won" licenses in
the various auctions. I could write an article on the
FCC's definition of "small business" in its rules vs. mine, but
I was more interested in how the Commission's staff view the
small business.
With the exception of some Commissioners, most of the people who
work for the FCC have never been in business for themselves. Perhaps they have a
spouse who is a small business owner, but most of the FCC attorneys and engineers never
have been in the position of having to make a living from operating a small communications
company.
For my own part, I paid my way through school working in my dad's
auto repair shops, where in my later years as summer manager I received a taste of being a
small businessman. Later, I was part owner of a small AM radio station and sweated
out those same issues that you deal with on a daily basis.
When I began practicing before the FCC, it was common for
Commission attorneys and engineers to listen to the problems of small communications
businesses and try to find a fair resolution to their legitimate concerns. There
seemed to be a genuine attempt to ensure a level playing field. This was
particularly the case in the FCC's division in Gettysburg, PA. The small business
community didn't always win, but was always heard.
In recent years, things have changed. Auction authority,
the change of Commission staff faster than a Picabo Street downhill run, and the
"glamour" of PCS has resulted in less time for the small business community to
be heard.
One example of how this change has manifested itself is the
Universal Service proceeding. I want to give one piece of concrete evidence.
Take a look at your FCC Form 457, the Universal Service Form. In the upper
right-hand corner is the estimate (required by law) of how much a time the government
believes it will take you to fill out the form. It says "Estimated Average
Burden Hours Per Response: 5 hours".
I'd love to know which government employee came up with this
calculation. It took the industry more than five hours just to figure out which
companies had to file the form, much less fill it out. It took more than five hours
to decipher the instructions and more than five hours to get simple questions answered by
the FCC about the form.
Now, the FCC has another chance to listen to small business in
the wireless industry. The Commission is currently undertaking a proceeding to
allocate the spectrum recovered from the broadcast industry for other wireless uses.
Of course, a large portion of this spectrum will be auctioned, and hence presents
few possibilities for small businesses. That is, unless the Commission gives serious
attention to a proposal set forth by the Personal Communications Industry Association
(PCIA) in its Comments with regard to the public safety portion of the new allocation.
PCIA's request was based upon the experience of companies like
RACOM Corp., a large 800 MHz specialized mobile radio (SMR) operator in the Midwest, which
has entered into "shared spectrum" arrangements with numerous public safety
agencies.
Through the years, the technological capabilities of wireless
equipment have developed at a rate surpassed only by the ideas of how to utilize spectrum.
At the same time, users have found mobile communications to be an ever-important
part of their lives. This is particularly true for the public safety community.
Unfortunately, the increasing requirements of public safety users has been blunted
by the reality of limited municipal budgets.
Many public safety users have sought to satisfy their
high-technology wireless needs through partnerships with other users as well as commercial
providers. Because RACOM is building the system to a high degree of reliability and
with state-of-the-art features, numerous public safety users have begun operating on the
system. Of more than 2,500 EDACS users, more than 1,800 of the units are operated by
public safety users.
By utilizing the RACOM system, these public safety agencies have
saved their communities millions of dollars. Polk County, IA, was able to forego the
implementation of a $3.5 million communication system. Further, Polk County was able
to save two-thirds of its annual operations and maintenance budget by using the RACOM
system instead of constructing its own system (in addition to the interest savings as Polk
County would have had to obtain a loan to build a system). Similarly, Black Hawk
County was able to save $2.6 million and Sioux City $1.3 million.
There also are many examples of public safety users cooperatively
working with commercial providers and other users. RACOM has reached a cooperative
agreement with the County of Dubuque, IA, the licensee of its own nine-channel 800 MHz
trunked system, to construct the system for Dubuque. Dubuque will take two of its
nine channels and integrate the channels into RACOM's SMR system. RACOM will
partition the system so that Dubuque will have access to its two channels and all of
RACOM's capacity, but other users will not be able to access Dubuque's two channels.
The ultimate impact of the Dubuque/RACOM partnership is a savings of $6.1 million
for the Dubuque County taxpayers, plus access to additional capacity for Dubuque public
safety users.
Similar partnerships are currently being undertaken in various
non-profit cooperative arrangements nationwide. PCIA suggested that one means to
accomplish this result is for the FCC to craft a rule which allows a public safety
licensee in this band to share its system with other users, provided that the public
safety user is the licensee and is otherwise eligible for the number of channels
requested.
For the wireless industry, the benefit of this proposal is that
it will create a dispatch market for the commercial portion of the UHF allocation, and
thus give small businesses an added incentive to participate in the eventual auction.
In the opinion of the State of California, replacing every public
safety system with a new system operating in the 746 MHz to 806 MHz band would cost
". . . tens, if not hundreds, of billions of dollars, which in today's environment of
reduced public spending, is a non-starter," since public safety users would need to
carry two radios.
If the FCC encourages what the American Association of State
Highway and Transportation Officials calls "shared resource" systems, the
monetary requirements for public safety agencies will be reduced, while at the same time
systems can be implemented on an accelerated schedule. Most importantly, it creates
the interoperability between public safety users, and between public safety users and
utilities or similar industries which are so critical during times of emergency.
It is a proposal that makes sense for large system users, public
safety users and small communications carriers. Let's hope that the FCC listens.
Alan Tilles is a partner in the Washington,
DC, law firm of Meyer, Faller, Weisman and Rosenberg
Reprinted with permission from the March, 1998 issue of Wireless Business
& Technology,
©1998, by Phillips Business Information Inc., a subsidiary of
Phillips Publishing International, Inc.
All Rights Reserved.
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