Coalition Urges Better Spectrum Management by FCC

COALITION URGES BETTER SPECTRUM MANAGEMENT BY FCC
[SOURCE: New America Foundation]
Thirteen groups have joined in comments at the FCC concerning the future of the 902-928 MHz unlicensed band, which has become very important for community, municipal and commercial wireless broadband deployments. Unlicensed users share this band with companies licensed to provide a “Location and Monitoring Service” (M-LMS), and these licensees are lobbying for increased “spectrum flexibility,” which may be detrimental to unlicensed users. Currently, there are only three major unlicensed bands: the 900 MHz, 2.4 GHz, and 5 GHz bands. The unlicensed spectrum in the 900 MHz band is the smallest but is also considered the most valuable. The M-LMS licensees acquired their licenses in 1999 and 2001 for about $3 million. If they are successful in their efforts, the value of their rights could increase to as much as $7 billion. The coalition's goals in these comments are 1) to prevent M-LMS operators from gaining additional rights at the expense of unlicensed users, 2) to prevent the FCC from granting the M-LMS licensees additional extensions on their missed construction deadlines, and 3) to encourage the FCC to not only recognize that M-LMS is a failed service but also remove the M-LMS allocation from the 902-928 MHz band, so unlicensed services can make better use of it. The coalition includes the New America Foundation, Media Access Project, the Alliance For Community Media, the Center For Digital Democracy, Common Cause the Consumer Federation of America, Free Press, Public Knowledge and other groups.
http://www.newamerica.net/Download_Docs/pdfs/Doc_File_3091_1.pdf