Ugly spectrum: A beautiful perspective

Once upon a time, radio communications equipment dealers were in the business of helping other business owners to buy, install and use mobile and portable radios to communicate with their employees. Radio communications among employees and supervisors facilitates safety and more efficient ways to transact business. Sometimes equipment manufacturers themselves would provide communications systems directly to customers, especially to large businesses. Frequencies at VHF lowband, VHF highband and UHF sometimes were crowded, and sometimes were overcrowded, especially in urban areas. The frequencies were shared among many users, and interference among them varied from causing little problems to enormous problems, depending on location and the nature of the businesses sharing the frequencies.

The federal government provided some relief to overcrowded frequencies when it reallocated from TV broadcasting some spectrum at 800MHz and 900MHz and assigned some of it to business and industrial private radio use. Exclusive frequency assignments were made available to licensees with a sufficient number of radio units in operation on their channels. The future looked bright.

Then the federal government decided to raise money by auctioning spectrum. The very spectrum that held promise for private radio, in part because of its exclusive assignment to individual licensees, is the easiest to auction.

There’s also the notion of “frequency practicality.” These 800MHz and 900MHz frequencies use relatively small base station antennas. In an era of public sensitivity to towers, smaller is better. The range covered by these frequencies tends to be less than the range at lower frequencies, making them a little more appealing for use by cellular systems the reuse the same frequencies at various towers within a given area. Many business and industrial private radio systems are designed with tall towers that cover a large area without reusing frequencies, a method that works well for communicating within a given organization.

Enter the LEOs. LEOs are low earth-orbiting satellites that are used to provide radio communications that carry telephone calls; computer messages including text files, graphics, video and email; location information and plenty of other communications known as “wireless.” LEO carriers are seeking spectrum. VHF and UHF spectrum appeals to LEO carriers for several practical reasons having to do with exchanging radio signals between satellites and wireless phones, pagers, computers and other devices on the ground.

Interference from VHF and UHF business and industrial private radio systems would make it difficult for LEOs to share the same frequencies. The fact that most of these VHF and UHF private radio systems do not have exclusive frequency assignments makes it difficult to auction them for land-based public wireless systems, too. In short, these VHF and UHF business and industrial private radio frequencies are so damn ugly that they repel wireless and LEO carriers.

In the 1970s, when the 800MHz and 900MHz spectrum reallocations took place (and before LEOs), who would have thought that the same problems that led business and industrial private radio interests to seek more frequencies would become a passive, yet strong, defense against the destruction of private radio?

And then there’s spectrum refarming. Spectrum refarming is supposed to relieve some of the overcrowding on business and industrial private radio frequencies by changing some of the technical and operating regulations that will allow more radios to be used in the VHF and UHF bands without causing more interference. It will be one more cruel twist if the effect of refarming is to make these frequencies more suitable for wireless or LEO carriers, and then they persuade the federal government to take them away. Face it, the feds need little encouragement to take frequencies away if there is a way to auction them.

The notion of spectrum lease fees continues to pop up in published reports of spectrum matters being considered by the federal government. These fees would be paid by business and industrial private radio users for the privilege of continuing to use present frequencies and perhaps, just perhaps, the privilege of using some new ones. It’s sad to think that maybe the best way to keep these frequencies is to keep ’em ugly, and it’s reasonable to think that some lease payments may be involved.

Municipal governments continue to frustrate efforts by wireless telecommunications carriers to construct towers where the carriers say they need them and where the governments don’t seem to want them.

The FCC preempted local and state government jurisdiction over tower placement, but cities are finding ways to circumvent the feds with the aid of sympathetic judges. Scenario: the FCC preempts; the city goes to court; a judge decides in favor of the city, overruling the FCC.

Another method is being tried in Vermont. The state’s Department of Public Service wants the legislature to consider whether state and local agencies could impose RF radiation safety guidelines through private contracts that are more restrictive than the FCC’s. Contractors who build antennas on state property could be regulated through contract authority.

The Personal Communications Industry Association has issued a list of criteria that represent a barrier to entry for carriers and has asked the FCC to declare that actions by cities to the contrary are preempted: * any moratoria (including extensions) exceeding three months in duration. * any failure to issue a written opinion on a zoning decision within a three-month period. * any action to deny permitting or access on the basis of licensee characteristics (such as financial, legal or ownership qualifications). * any action that prohibits or unduly restricts the installation of antennas on existing structures. * any action that directly or indirectly discriminates against new providers of wireless services.

Just let cities try to find their way around that! (Somehow, they will, won’t they?)

Sometimes, it would help if the FCC itself were to adhere to such carefully crafted requirements when it comes to processing petitions and other requests for relief.