FCC faces regulatory parity, auctions will the playing field be leveled?

Mobile Phone News, Oct 4, 1993

FCC FACES REGULATORY PARITY, AUCTIONS

WILL THE PLAYING FIELD BE LEVELED?

The FCC's Sept. 23 open meeting took on marathon proportions, as the commission dealt with a variety of issues, including implementing the regulatory parity and auction sections of the president's Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act. If you thought regulatory parity was a done deal once the president signed the bill, think again; the fun at the FCC has just begun. A Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) introduced at the open meeting last week looks to the industry to help to establish rules defining regulatory status and treatment of mobile services, including PCS.

Besides the fact such rule changes have been mandated by Congress, this particular notice must become a Report & Order (R&O) fairly soon to facilitate the other congressional mandate: auctions. Newly allocated PCS spectrum cannot go on the block until its regulatory parameters are defined, including whether it will be considered a private or common carrier service. This, in turn, could have an impact on who can or cannot bid on its available channels.

Information sought by the FCC includes: How to define common and private carriers; how new services, including PCS and "commercial mobile services," are affected by regulatory parity and what new regulation should apply; who will be regulated by the new rules and who will not; and what transition scheme should be implemented.

Comments and replies probably will be submitted during a November/December time frame, and the FCC needs to adopt suggestions by Feb. 3, 1994, to get auctions going by the May 6, 1994, deadline. Commission staffers will be looking for help regarding what constitutes "functional equivalency"--i.e., are fleet operators the functional equivalent of a cellular carrier? What are the implications of interconnection? Will wide-area and nationwide paging systems be considered the functional equivalent of some wireline-based information systems providers because of their message store-and-forward capabilities?

...PCS Licensees Can Choose Regulatory Designation

To throw more gas on the fire, PCS spectrum winners will be allowed to choose which of their services will be considered common carrier and which are regulated as private carrier. Although the concept sounds confusing, FCC officials do not anticipate any regulatory headaches in its implementation.

Commissioner Ervin Duggan, in a statement regarding the regulatory-parity item, mentioned some efforts that could be applied to PCS, paging, SMR, cellular and other mobile service niches, including: The FCC could require nondiscriminatory interconnection among all wireline or wireless; the FCC could make interconnection easier to accomplish by using Title II powers, even to the extent of requiring tariffs in some cases; the FCC could promote interoperability of like equipment on all systems, making it easier for the user to switch systems; the FCC could help to ensure seamless and transparent roaming; and the FCC could try to ensure fair and vigorous competition.

To such an end, Duggan brought up the possible creation of a Mobile Services Bureau to oversee new services and those existing services that will be redefined under regulatory-parity rules.