Subject: [NEXTEL-1] ITA-2002: The Regulatory Year In Review

From: Marcel <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 20 Dec 2002 01:00:46 -0500

By Robin Landis
Regulatory Affairs
Assistant

One more event-filled year has gone by
in the private wireless industry. Of course
when reflecting on the last year, the 800 MHz
issue immediately comes to mind. It contin-ues
to prove to be an important proceeding
with a massive industry impact. Fortunately,
we have dealt with the issue head on and
believe our proactive participation will ulti-mately
be beneficial to the private wireless
community.

The 800 MHz interference issue encom-passes
almost all types of spectrum users,
which makes it a difficult issue to tackle.
Throughout the year all affected licensees
were seeking common ground for every possi-ble
foothold of support that would benefit
their interest in the long run. The Private
Wireless Coalition, along with the public
safety community and Nextel, found a way to
meet in the middle with the least amount of
disruption to existing users in the band, while
most importantly, mitigating the public safe-ty
interference problem. Our answer is the
Consensus Plan, proposing to divide the band
into a cellularized and a non-cellularized
block. Supplemental comments addressing
the border regions and funding, as well as any
additional questions surrounding the plan,
such as timing, logistics, and rights and
responsibilities of licensees during the retun-ing
process will be filed shortly.

ITA also worked on a number of other
proceedings. A few are summarized below.
Upon requests from members, ITA filed a
Petition for Rulemaking to amend the
Commission’s rules to prohibit traditional
business communications on Family Radio
Service frequencies. ITA noted that families
and friends, the intended users of the chan-nels,
are being overrun by daily business com-munications.
A majority of comments that
were filed in response to the Public Notice
were supportive of ITA’s petition, and we
anticipate seeing a rulemaking proceeding
starting at the beginning of next year.
The opportunity to access additional
spectrum will be available in the coming year
due to the Commission’s reallocation of 27
megahertz of spectrum from government to
non-government use in the 1.4 GHz band.
The allocation for potential applicants
includes 1390-1392 MHz for use on a co-pri-mary
basis with fixed satellite services, as well
as 1392-1395 MHz paired with 1432-1435
MHz for primary land mobile use. The 1432-
1435 MHz band must be auctioned, and we
are still waiting for a Public Notice announc-ing
the start date.

After four and a half years, the end of the
low-power pool proceeding may be in sight.
A Report & Order is expected from the
Commission at anytime. The most recent
rulemaking proceeding was initiated in July
2001 in response to a plan submitted by the
Land Mobile Communications Council
(LMCC) to adopt use designators for the low-power
pool originally sought by the LMCC
in 1997. The LMCC suggested dividing
B/ILT channels into the following four
groups: slightly higher power use, non-voice
use, itinerant use and central station alarm
use. Through the proceeding ITA has been
supportive of the LMCC’s plan.
Another highly anticipated item the pri-vate
wireless industry has been waiting on is a
date-certain for the mandatory migration to
12.5 kilohertz equipment. We expect the
Commission to release a Report & Order on
this issue before the end of this year. ITA sup-ported
a five-year migration period for 12.5
kHz equipment but still believes it is prema-ture
to mandate a date certain for 6.25 kilo-hertz
equipment.
Much has happened in the private wire-less
industry in this last year and we look for-ward
to the resolution of some important
issues in the next. We should see spectrum
become available in the 1.4 GHz band, a reg-ulatory
end to the low-power pool proceeding
and a date-certain for mandatory migration
to 12.5 kilohertz equipment. The coming
year should also bring us a step closer toward
the resolution of the 800 MHz interference
issue. It has been a notable year for private
wireless and I would anticipate the next to be
just as significan

http://www.ita-relay.com/magazine/dec02_jan03/regupdate12-02.pdf

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