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Operations
NEXTEL’S GRAB FOR SPECTRUM
By Laurence W. Brown, director of legal affairs at Edison Electric Institute.
The radio spectrum, its use for saving lives and property, and its allocation have been issues since the sinking of the Titanic brought about the standardization of radio frequencies for distress calls. The use of the spectrum can provide enormous public benefit, but it is a finite and extremely valuable resource. No one owns it. In the United States, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has the authority to grant licenses to use portions of it and to issue regulations stipulating the conditions of use. Allocating parts of the radio spectrum for different users has always presented difficult problems over the past decades, and the number of disputes, reports, and policy recommendations has multiplied as commercial interests have proliferated.
More than 10 years ago, utilities and other public safety organizations faced the possibility of FCC taking radio spectrum away in the microwave range. During the Clinton administration, FCC had begun auctioning spectrum as a way to balance the budget. The first few auctions were incredibly successful, and in 1997 the commission received expanded authority to conduct them. Most recognized, however, that emergency response and public safety agencies would not have the funds to compete in auctions with private telecommunications providers. Ultimately, utilities and other organizations convinced Congress that they had similar needs but financial constraints.
Now they have to fight the fight again.
In fall 2001, telecommunications provider Nextel asked FCC to approve a plan the company claimed would relieve interference on the radio spectrum experienced by public safety agencies, including electric utilities. The plan’s title was promising: “Promoting Public Safety Communications: Realigning the 800 MHz Land Mobile Radio Band to Rectify Commercial Mobile Radio—Public Safety Interference and Allocate Additional Spectrum to Meet Critical Public Safety Needs.” It beautifully summed up Nextel’s approach—claim to help critical infrastructure and promote public safety while actually doing little toward either goal and in the process gain an extremely valuable asset for less than a quarter of its value.
In Nextel’s plan, the company asserted that it desired only to address the causes of interference among commercial mobile radio service (CMRS) providers like itself and public safety radio communications systems in the 800-megahertz (MHz) band. But many observers note in fact that Nextel is the primary source of such interference. Moreover, Nextel staked its claim on the contention that the problem was national in scope, when it was not.
Indeed, Nextel recommended a national approach: It wants FCC to order that certain existing users of several different bands of spectrum move to other bands, and that additional spectrum be made available for public safety communications services—both by that move and by splitting the existing 800 MHz allocation into a unified digital CMRS allocation occupied primarily by Nextel and nondigital, restricted-format, limited-coverage “public safety” allocations. Nextel has offered to contribute $850 million for the move.
But the actual costs to those who have to move would far exceed $1 billion, and they would receive no compensation at all to remedy the increased interference they would experience in the already crowded “relocation” bands. In return, Nextel gets commercial spectrum space worth more than $4 billion.
Indeed, Nextel’s ultimate goal is the spectrum space, not the safety of the system. Carolina Power & Light’s and TXU Business Services’ initial comments to FCC read: “As engaging a read as Nextel’s ‘White Paper’ on the interference problems is, one cannot help being reminded of the story of the child who, having murdered his parents, pleads with the court for mercy because he is an orphan.”
Costly Impact
One disadvantage of Nextel’s proposal is the disruption to existing service during the move, which Nextel thinks will take, under different scenarios,
from three to eight years (not counting litigation delays). In addition, several local governments and utilities have only just recently completed costly moves (some even forced by FCC under earlier reallocation plans) into the spectrum they now occupy and upgrades to their information technology and communications systems. Nextel’s proposal would essentially throw that existing investment away.
In addition to costs not being fully covered, Nextel’s proposal would require that a company incur all these additional costs up front and receive reimbursement only long after. Many local governments could, therefore, be forced under state law to raise taxes or float bonds (themselves likely to be paid for by increased taxes) in order to pay for the move.
Another impact to many utilities and other public safety providers is the increased interference to which they would be subjected from new entrants into the spectrum they now occupy. However, the proposal makes no allowance for dealing with the problem. Imagine if your landlord subdivided all the apartments in your building without consulting you or making any provision for limiting the general increase in noise levels, or reducing the potential for disturbance from especially noisy neighbors!
By some estimates, Nextel’s proposal would reduce the coverage of some systems’ existing radio towers by almost 75 percent. This means requiring more than a doubling of facility investment in order simply to preserve what a utility already has—with no guarantee that it would solve all the new interference problems. And that does not even begin to address the time, cost, and public relations problems involved in the siting and construction of new towers.
Interference is not a simple problem. There are several different kinds, depending on the equipment as well as the spectrum. But it boils down to the experience of the user—whether a signal is lost or garbled so that communication and understanding becomes difficult or impossible. The available solutions depend on the type of interference, but they, too, boil down to restoring dependable communications.
In bygone days, avoiding interference simply meant using a different frequency, spacing the users, or lowering their power enough to avoid the problem. Today’s technology gives greater flexibility. With some technologies, for instance, even the same (or nearly the same) spectrum can be used by more than one entity at the same time. It’s like using special headphones to block out a loud party while you listen to music in the same room. The range of available options demonstrates that using old-style solutions is not only unnecessary, but also wasteful of the limited range of available frequencies.
Further impacts come from some of the more abstract details of the Nextel proposal. The bands Nextel proposes to “free up” are not nationwide in coverage, so they may not be contiguous with an entity’s need for coverage, especially in areas bordering Canada and Mexico (which are governed by treaty provisions rather than FCC). The uses of those bands would be restricted, preventing system upgrades to obtain the benefits of cellular-style equipment and digital service. Thus, users would be restricted to outdated analog technology. Worse, some existing users who already have more modern equipment could suddenly find themselves in violation of FCC regulations simply by continuing to operate, even if no one complained that they were causing interference. Moreover, Nextel also proposes that entities be “encouraged” to move into the 700 MHz band. Unfortunately, for many years there will be no equipment available to provide comparable service in that band, where little spectrum is actually available due to its ongoing use by television broadcasters.
Additionally, there would be less ability to complain about interference, whatever critical service the user provided.
Utilities Are Emergency Responders
In 1997, Congress recognized that, for many purposes, utilities are as much emergency responders as police and fire departments. Utilities and the society that relies on them simply cannot afford to have their systems compromised.
Fire and police crews rely on utilities to shut off power and gas before they can respond to a fire or similar emergency. A recent Edison Electric Institute survey of 19 shareholder-owned utilities (representing almost 27.5 million electric customers) showed that in 2002 alone, these utilities responded to close to 37,000 police and fire emergency situations, sometimes on their own initiative.
Utilities also help each other in telecommunications emergencies. In the immediate aftermath of the World Trade Center collapse, ConEd loaned radios to many other emergency responders. This put a severe strain on ConEd’s system, but since PSEG’s own system happened to cover lower Manhattan very well, PSEG agreed to let ConEd move some of its operations onto the PSEG system.
In many natural disasters, the only available communications system for utilities and others to use can be their own systems. For instance, during Hurricane Floyd, PSEG’s 900 MHz system remained up, and municipalities that lost their own public safety radio systems borrowed the company’s portables. In the Loma Prieta earthquake in California, despite massive outages of public communications (including public safety radio services), PG&E’s private wireless systems remained up and running.
Even FCC noted that “[p]ublic safety concerns—have become increasingly complex—and require a greater level of cooperation and communication among different public safety agencies and jurisdictions.” Such shared communication systems are increasingly provided by utilities. Southern LINC, for example, a private wireless carrier owned by Southern Company, provides service both to the Southern system and to approximately 3,000 public safety entities for a total of some 30,000 public safety users, including local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies and emergency management agencies. Alliant has a proposal before FCC to develop, by the end of March 2004, an advanced 800 MHz system that would be shared with local public safety agencies.
The Alternative
Still, FCC believes that the interference problem needs relief. In response to the Nextel proposal, electric and gas utilities have joined with cellular providers Cingular and Verizon to propose an alternative solution to the interference problem. The coalition has submitted a plan that relies on commission enforcement of detailed, sound engineering practices, as well as on the responsibility and proactive efforts of interfering entities to avoid the problem in the first place and resolve it immediately if it appears.
An example of the operational behavior advocated by the coalition is Southern LINC. Not only does Southern LINC (using the same cellular technology as Nextel) follow good engineering practices in order to create little interference in the first place, it also aggressively works to correct any interference that does occur. In addition, by providing service to public safety agencies, Southern LINC already effectively shares spectrum to maximize the efficient use of that scarce resource. Ironically, the most recent version of Nextel’s proposal would allow Southern LINC (but only that company) to continue operating as before, under rules almost identical to the utilities’ coalition plan. Although Nextel’s proposal would “grandfather” Southern LINC, the company—a direct competitor of Nextel in its territory—would be seriously harmed by many other aspects of the proposal and actively opposes it.
Emergency service workers need reliable communications to ensure public safety. The best way to ensure dependable communications is to require all spectrum users to use good engineering practices, coordinate with other potentially affected users, and remedy any interference they cause, at their own expense. Requiring utility and other public safety providers to change frequencies, suffer increased interference, remain limited to antique technology, and pay all or most of the expenses they incur not only harms public safety, but also is unfair to them and the public that relies upon them and runs counter to the current movement toward cooperative, forward-thinking, efficient security solutions so necessary in light of today’s stringent economic and societal realities.
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