Federal Communications Commission (FCC)

Public safety officials voiced concerns to top brass at NTIA and the FCC Wed. about spectrum policies under consideration, including band sharing and the “interference temperature” concept. At an NTIA public safety forum, officials grappled with balancing the rollout of new technologies against public safety considerations such as funding constraints.

Cable and telecom executives said VoIP had the potential to displace the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) as it operated today. Speaking at a Precursor Group investors conference Tues., Vonage CFO John Rego said he believed VoIP would completely replace PSTN within 20 years. No one on the panel disagreed with his assessment. Verizon Pres.-Network Services Paul Lacouture said he believed traditional circuit switches would be traded out and replaced over the next 2 decades. Consumers already are beginning to make their phone calls over VoIP, but they “just don’t know it” because the technology is invisible to them, he said.

Public safety officials have pushed for streamlining federal spectrum decision-making in talks under President Bush’s call for recommendations on promoting efficient spectrum use. But groups have warned against merging the duties of NTIA and the FCC to accomplish that. At an NTIA forum on public safety spectrum Tues., issues debated as part of the year-long process included simplifying federal frequency coordination, spelling out spectrum requirements of agencies and improving interference analysis.

Vonage CEO Jeffrey Citron warned Fri. that “premature regulations could kill the nascent VoIP industry.” Speaking at a policy lunch sponsored by the Progress & Freedom Foundation in Washington, Citron said regulations could slow broadband deployment, undermine the U.S. position as a technological leader and force service providers offshore. He urged legislators to “bring clarity to the VoIP regulatory framework to protect competition. New laws are needed to ensure Internet applications remain free from regulation.”

The FCC late Thurs. announced its VoIP proceeding would be on the agenda for its Feb. 12 open meeting, along with a petition by Pulver.com for a ruling that its VoIP offering wasn’t a telecom service. The Pulver item was surprising because the FBI had expressed concern about the FCC’s acting on VoIP classification issues before handling a related CALEA issue (CD Feb 5 p4). The more general VoIP notice of proposed rulemaking is expected to ask for comment on several questions about how VoIP should be treated, but probably won’t make any conclusions.

Ultra-wideband (UWB) developers are gearing up for tests at the NTIA lab in Boulder, Colo., that will assess whether the interference potential of a frequency-hopping (FH) flavor of that technology conforms with FCC rules. The Motorola- funded test marks the latest wrinkle in an industry dispute on whether technology backed by Intel, Nokia, Panasonic and others meets limits in the Commission’s UWB rules.

It’s not improper for states to require Bell companies to continue providing DSL service to customers that switch to competitive voice services, state regulators argued in comments filed at the FCC on a BellSouth petition. BellSouth asked the FCC to rule that state PUCs couldn’t require it to provide such services to CLEC voice customers, saying such action by the states was an intrusion into federal interstate authority over DSL. BellSouth targeted state regulators in Fla., Ga., La. and Ky. where PUCs have required BellSouth to provide DSL to CLEC voice customers. However, other PUCs in BellSouth territory also urged the FCC to deny the petition.

The FCC reached agreement with an intergovernmental tribal group Tues. on best practices for communications tower siting. The Commission called the pact the first of its kind. It also created a database for a voluntary system that Chmn. Powell said would provide an “early notification” of tower construction that might affect historic properties or tribal religious sites. When final, the best practices will provide guidance to the FCC, tribes and the industry, he said.

FCC’s Media Bureau created the Electioneering Communications Database to help users determine whether a communication sent by broadcast, cable or satellite could reach 50,000 or more people in a particular congressional district or state. If the communication can reach that number, it may qualify as an “electioneering communication,” which requires every person who spends more than $10,000 on an electioneering communication in any calender year to file a statement with the Federal Election Commission that includes certain information on the communication. The database, which goes live today (Tues.), is available at http://gullfoss2.fcc.gov/ecd or http://svartifoss2.fcc.gov/ecd. The database is current as of Nov. 2003 and will remain unchanged through the end of the 2004 election cycle. The database was required by the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act.

A program agreement that would streamline wireless and broadcast tower siting reviews ran into trouble last week when the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation (ACHP) raised concerns about how certain types of sites would be excluded, sources said. FCC and some industry officials said they remained bullish that differences could be worked out relatively quickly. But they said a key unresolved issue was one that had drawn recent Capitol Hill attention: Treatment of sites “potentially” eligible for listing on the National Register of Historic Places.