MULETA EYES NEXT CHALLENGES FOR FCC WIRELESS BUREAU

Muleta, who joined bureau earlier this month, is former deputy bureau chief of what was then Common Carrier Bureau and most recently was pres.-CEO of privately held systems integration firm Source 1 Technologies. Of international leadership role for U.S. in wireless services, Muleta said he viewed that as being broader than just cellular services, encompassing broadband offerings as well. While Commission isn’t in business of deciding what business plans can work, “we want to encourage people to participate and find out if their ideas can actually fly,” Muleta said. That could mean making spectrum available or providing more flexibility to allow markets to make spectrum available, he said. He said another initial goal was to “increase the consumer good” and economic stimulus that sector could provide to general economy. That means not just adding to gross domestic product but doing so in way that had public benefits such as lower prices, more services or more consumer functionality, he said.

As part of that framework of goals, Muleta said he would like to see increased emphasis on public safety and homeland security and overlap between those issues. In that policy area, he said he sees interoperability issues as being of particular importance. Inability of different public safety agencies’ equipment to talk to each other in emergencies because of varying equipment or frequencies has been long- standing issue to which Sept. 11 attacks brought renewed attention. In addition to his history in Common Carrier Bureau, Muleta also had previously worked at Office of Plans & Policy and held positions at GTE and PSINet.

More broadly, Muleta said he would like to focus on interactions between different public safety and homeland security agencies or groups. Another area of interest is to find mechanism to promote availability of spectrum, on both ad hoc and permanent bases for public safety agencies, he said. Availability of spectrum for public safety entities is among policy areas teed up in Spectrum Policy Task Force report delivered to FCC last fall. Ideas included providing opportunities for public safety agencies to lease spectrum that was underutilized and have it available in emergencies. “The thing that we need to quantify is what’s needed, when it is needed, how do we get to it,” he said. Those are among “the questions that we need to ask and we are willing to explore those. It’s an area where it’s not the FCC simply acting on its own but it will require a lot of coordination.”

Other policy areas in Spectrum Task Force report include rights of incumbent users and potential interplay of new “overlay” or “underlay” technologies with existing allocations. Among questions related to such incumbent rights issues are what is technically feasible, which is purview of Office of Engineering & Technology, Muleta said. Another question is “what is a mechanism for distributing the sort of equities that are involved? The way I think about it is if you can address the technical issue, is it not possible that we can have a market mechanism that allows for ‘an underlay use’ in situations where that underlay user compensates the incumbent operator?”

“There might be opportunities to build a record, both on the technical basis and build a record in terms of how we should address the equities between the potential and existing users,” Muleta said. “I don’t think the answers are very clear. It’s a very interesting notion. There’s a debate about sort of the level of property rights that is going on and I think this is really groundbreaking.” He said “traditional notions” of property were as physical and tangible. “This is a little bit on a more intangible basis,” he said. “So it requires a new way of thinking, but that’s what makes it exciting.”

Among initial challenges that Muleta said he faced as bureau chief was that industry was beyond its “nascent, emerging technology stage.” Bureau itself has been around for decade and parts of it were pulled from different parts of FCC. “A major thing that we need to tackle in light of all the major issues that are upcoming is to say that now that the bureau has been around for 10 years, now that we are beyond the emerging technology stage and we have very big players and very small players, what kind of infrastructure do we need to put in place as a bureau, as a commission, to deal with issues that are coming?”

Asked how FCC could adjust rules to meet new requirements of new technologies, Muleta cited proposal by Multipoint Distribution Service and ITFS licensees as example of how policy was being re-examined to adjust to new uses. Last year, Wireless Communications Assn., National ITFS Assn. and Catholic TV Network gave FCC White Paper that proposed agency move away from “broadcast-style” approach to regulating that spectrum and implement changes appropriate for next-generation wireless broadband systems. “The industry is actually coming to us and saying let’s do something about this and the Commission has to sort of sit back and say okay, how do we organize ourselves to deal with this for the long-term?” he said.