Rockefeller, Hutchison File Substitute Amendment for Public Safety Bill
The Senate Commerce Committee filed the bipartisan substitute amendment for the Senate spectrum bill by Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., and Ranking Member Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas. The 119-page amendment will be used as the base bill when the committee marks up S-911, a Senate aide said. The committee scheduled a June 8 markup, but no agenda has been announced, the aide said. Senate Communications Subcommittee Chairman John Kerry, D-Mass., said he supports the latest version of the bill. Committee Republicans met to discuss the bill Wednesday afternoon, a GOP aide said.
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Rockefeller and Hutchison have “laid out a thoughtful proposal for creating a national public safety broadband network -- funded through the release and auction of unused spectrum -- which deserves our full support,” Kerry said. “With this latest draft, they have addressed the hard questions of how to fund and manage a national, robust network while reducing the deficit."
"This plan would move us toward a more efficient and productive spectrum management system and unleash unused spectrum for commercial purposes,” Kerry said. “It makes public safety the top priority by putting the spectrum license in question under the public safety community’s control. By managing the spectrum’s use and the deployment of the network through a central organization accountable to the American people, this plan also ensures that a single standard and resources are dispersed throughout the country in rural and urban communities alike. And by authorizing incentive auctions and new efficiency incentives into spectrum management, we will move toward reaping the greatest national return from this national asset."
"Let’s see” what Senate Commerce “is able to get out of their committee and if they get Senate floor time,” House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore., told reporters after a spectrum hearing in his subcommittee on Wednesday. (See separate report in this issue.) “They've obviously put an awful lot of work into their product,” he said. Walden’s subcommittee will soon begin to craft its own legislation, he said.
Among revisions, the new draft applies a 15-year expiration on the license given to the Public Safety Broadband Corp. that’s established by the proposed law. After 15 years, the corporation would have to submit a renewal application to the FCC. The new draft also directs the commission to facilitate the transition of existing public safety broadband spectrum to the corporation. Fees collected by the corporation may only be used for “constructing, maintaining, or improving the network.” In a section directing the FCC to adopt public safety roaming rules, the new draft adds a requirement that priority access to commercial networks during emergencies “does not preempt or otherwise terminate or degrade all existing voice conversations or data sessions."
While the latest draft still directs the NTIA to identify 15 MHz between 1675 MHz and 1710 MHz, it excludes “the geographic exclusion zones, or any amendment thereof,” identified in an NTIA report from October. The FCC could do a paired auction combining spectrum from 2155-2175 MHz, 2175-2180 MHz and 1755-1780 MHz.
A new section prohibits state and local governments from denying, and directs them to approve, “any eligible facilities request for a modification of an existing wireless tower that does not substantially change the physical dimensions of such tower.” Eligible requests include collocation of new transmission equipment, and removal and replacement of the equipment. The section also includes language facilitating installation of wireless antennas and other equipment in federal buildings.