Subject: [NEXTEL-1] No Easy Answers For 800 MHz Re-Banding-More on the ITA Meeting-

From: Marcel <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 21 Nov 2002 13:07:31 -0500

No Easy Answers For 800 MHz Re-Banding -- Private wireless operators won't be overlooked
in the FederalCommunications Commission's evolving spectrum management policies, but the
process of developing those policies is no place to look for how private  and public
safety operations will fare in the FCC's 800 MHz re-banding.

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Story Filed: Wednesday, November 20, 2002 2:07 PM EST

Nov 20, 2002 (Wireless Data News/PBI Media via COMTEX) --Federal Communications
Commission's evolving spectrum management policies, but the process of developing those
policies is no place to look for how private and public safety operations will fare in the
FCC's 800 MHz re-banding.

"At the FCC, we must recognize and appreciate the significance of private wireless
operations," says FCC Commission Kathleen
Abernathy. "It's very critical to how we operate as a country, how we perform our jobs,
how industries provide products, how we
protect ourselves. Although [commercial wireless operators] provide an important service,
there's no question in my mind...that
they are not a substitute for private land mobile operators.

"In many ways private wireless is the backbone of the nation's economy and for me there
will always be a solid public policy
reason for private land mobile radio spectrum," she adds.

Abernathy spoke at the Industrial Telecommunication Association's Private Wireless Summit
in Washington, D.C. The Nov. 6-8
event also included remarks by the Association of Public Safety Communications Officials
International, Nextel Communications
[NXTL] and the Private Wireless Coalition concerning their joint proposal for reallocating
spectrum assignments in the 800 MHz
band in order to reduce interference with public safety operations.

While private wireless and public safety operations have suspected that Nextel's
integrated digital enhanced network deployed in
the 800 MHz band is causing the interference, Nextel says there are other problems.

"The fundamental problem was well-intentioned allocations that had been established
between 18 and 30 years before were
inter-mixing different types of uses of spectrum, either on an adjacent basis such as
cellular or an interleaved basis such as
Nextel," says Robert F. Foosaner, Nextel's senior vice president for regulatory affairs.
"The problem could never be fixed unless
the underlying allocations were addressed."

Reston, Va.-based Nextel prompted the FCC's notice of proposed rulemaking for the 800 MHz
re-banding with a November
2001 report to the commission. Private wireless operators balked at Nextel's first
proposal.

However, Nextel, APCO and most members of the coalition in August this year agreed on a
plan that would move public safety
operations into the 700 MHz band while allowing most private wireless operations to remain
in the 800 MHz band. The plan also
would allow private operators to voluntarily move into the 900 MHz band, where they also
would have more bandwidth. Nextel
and the two groups plan this week to file a follow-up report, with greater detail on
paying for moving private and public safety
operations out of the 800 MHz band.

"What it provides is that 100 percent of private wireless that were going to have to move
outside of 800 MHz at their own costs
with new equipment, now, with the consensus plan, over 70 percent of those licensees do
not move at all," Foosaner says.
Nextel initially proposed paying $500 million to help cover the costs for moving public
safety operations in the re-banding, but that
sum has been widely criticized as insufficient and private wireless operators also
demanded that their also costs be covered.
Nextel is likely to increase the sum in the follow- up proposal, but the company has to
set limits because, otherwise, "it breaks the
company," Foosaner says. "An open-ended contract from a publicly held company is nigh on
impossible," he adds.

APCO and the Private Wireless Coalition are adamant about Nextel paying their moving
costs, but say the joint proposal is their
best hope for FCC approval. "If they don't, I'm very worried," says Robert M. Gurss, APCO
counsel and an attorney with the
Shook, Hardy and Bacon firm in Washington, D.C. "It leaves us with interference problems
that are only getting worse."
The FCC's solution to 800 MHz interference won't satisfy everybody, but it's unlikely the
commission would force operators not
causing the interference to foot the bill for fixing it.

"I'm generally skeptical of any proposal that requires the imposition of significant costs
on any one signal group of licensees and
this is particularly true if those are licenses that have not caused nor are they harmed
by the interference," Abernathy says. "I'm
also generally reluctant to solve the 800 MHz problems by moving parties into a host of
other bands."

>> Kathleen Abernathy 202/418-2400; Leigh Horn, Nextel, Leigh. [email-masked]; Robert
Gurss, APCO,
202/662-4856
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