WRC RESOLUTIONS SET POSSIBLE PATTERNS FOR HANDLING NEW SERVICES

Among the new services cleared at this WRC was a global secondary allocation to extend the mobile satellite service (MSS) on a secondary basis at 14-14.5 GHz for aeronautical MSS. The action was sought by Boeing, which plans commercial launch of its in-flight broadband service Connexion early next year. Despite early allocation decisions in the conference, final approval came on the last day of the WRC and entailed additional interference protections attached to the secondary allocation to protect incumbent services. Nebbia said that was among the potential new precedents set at the conference, because for the first time limits were set on a secondary service other than just having to protect primary users from interference, “where they had to establish more or less how they were going to function without interfering.”

Other trends cited by Nebbia in the 4-week conference included: (1) A growing number of country footnotes, where administrations could opt out of particular decisions “which on an international basis could potentially make it more difficult for some of these services to go forward.” He said such footnotes, however, often were part of an ultimate compromise on an agenda item to “make the final deal roll along.” (2) The continuing evolution of regional approaches, which delegates at this WRC said would provide significant benefits in the conference preparatory process. Nebbia said the flip side of a broad regional position was that it also could hem in groups when it came to compromise, an issue that didn’t confront the U.S. at this WRC. “Many of the regions now, because they have agreed internally among a whole bunch of countries, they now find their spokespeople are locked in to representing that position and it becomes difficult for them to negotiate,” he said.

One challenge faced by the aeronautical MSS item was that it involved a secondary system using a primary space station in the form of an FSS transponder, said Audrey Allison, Connexion dir.-international regulatory affairs for the Americas. “The regulatory status was a little bit new and different,” she said. At the start of the conference, the proposal had received broad support among administrations interested in the service, but ultimately it became bogged down in details such as which committee at the conference should have purview over which part of it. Allison said the dynamic was similar to legislation on Capitol Hill that won wide support but then became hampered by riders attached by special interests. “It seemed that there were some individuals on other country delegations that saw this as an opportunity to frustrate U.S. progress and perhaps force U.S. negotiations on other issues,” she said. John Giusti, deputy div. chief of the FCC International Bureau’s Strategic Analysis & Negotiations Div., said that some of these differences may have been more political or philosophical. “Some of it really was questions of how are you going to correspond with the FSS transponder,” he said.

Brian Fontes, Cingular Wireless vp-federal relations, asked what the FCC’s “post-WRC game plan” was, particularly because there have been conference resolutions in the past in which FCC action has lagged. Fontes was WRC ambassador in 1995 and was co-chmn. of the WRC Advisory Committee. Jennifer Manner, senior legal adviser to FCC Comr. Abernathy, said the Commission had opened a rulemaking on the 5 GHz Wi- Fi agenda item in May before the conference started, signaling the Commission’s interest in moving expeditiously in that and other areas. “We want to see what is in the U.S.’s national interest be implemented as soon as possible,” she said. “We want to move forward as quickly as possible.” Jennifer Warren, Lockheed Martin senior dir.-trade & regulatory affairs, urged a “comprehensive” implementation approach, rather than one that singled out a few items for initial FCC action. “It’s really important that the implementation plan not be done piecemeal [by] seeking out issues to implement sooner than others,” Warren said. “There are issues since 1992 that haven’t been a priority for an obvious FCC constituency that are still nonetheless important.” Connexion’s Allison said that in some cases, some WRC resolutions might lend themselves to earlier follow- up action than others. “Some things develop at their own speed,” she said. “Some are narrower than others.”

In the case of pending policies for earth stations on vessels, Allison said a rulemaking was to be proposed at the FCC before the conference started. “It would be a shame to hold that up to await some other interests that may not be so narrowly focused,” she said.

Another possible WRC trend of interest is safeguards built into a hotly contested item on coordinating nongeosynchronous earth orbit satellites, which ultimately bridged differences between backers of Europe’s Galileo and U.S. interests that rely on GPS, several participants said. The final outcome doesn’t apply formal Article 9 coordination procedures to radionavigation satellite systems until after Jan. 1, 2005, allowing an informal consultation process for GPS upgrade, Galileo and other systems that meet that deadline. The item contained criteria similar to milestones that covered launch and system financing plans. “It’s an interesting concept because it gives you leverage not to have to negotiate with systems that would be deemed paper satellites,” Warren said.

The conference managed to trim the agenda for the next conference to 21, although at one point it had threatened to balloon to close to 60 items, NTIA’s Nebbia said. A major initiative was to keep off the agenda items that were simply reviews of study results, which in the past left unclear whether it was up to the WRC to make an allocation decision or move in another direction, he said. Anything that entailed a review of study results rather than an action item will be covered in a director’s report to the next conference, he said. Future agenda items also faced scrutiny based on timing, Nebbia said. If work on an item couldn’t be completed by 2007, it wasn’t placed on the next WRC agenda, eliminating the problem of “place-holder” items, he said. As an example, he said proposals were pending from many parts of the world on allocation above 275 GHz. The U.S. position, which prevailed, was to allow countries to register devices in that range, but the agenda item itself was pushed back to 2010, he said.

Several panelists stressed the challenges that harmonized approaches to spectrum management might encounter at future WRCs. James Vorhies, international spectrum plans program manager for NTIA and vice chmn. of the U.S. delegation, cited the likely difficulty of getting a worldwide consensus for a band or group of bands for 3G systems and systems beyond 3G. A harmonized band approach was agreed to at the WRC in 2000 to accommodate a range of different spectrum approaches sought by different administrations at that time. “Right now there is no such consensus,” Vorhies said. “What people are actually doing is very divergent.” Some participants had noted that on the 5 GHz wireless LAN item, there was a last-min. push by companies such as Cisco in educating eastern European and African administrations on the benefits of the technology. Longer range advocacy will be needed in the 3G spectrum area, Vorhies cautioned. The FCC’s Guisti noted there is likely to be a “strong push” at the next WRC to identify bands for 3G and future systems, a position the U.S. supported in 2000. “But we are going to have to balance that with the whole picture,” he said.