In keeping with tradition on New Year’s Eve, I’m taking stock of what happened during the year. In no particular order, below is my list of the top ten telecommunications decisions of 2009. These are probably skewed toward wireless broadband decisions, but aren’t intended to be limited to any particular issue. Given the transition in administrations, it was a very slow year, so you might find some of my choices unusual.
- Stimulus funding
- National Broadband Plan
- Certification of equipment in the upper 25 MHz of the 3.65 GHz band
- Net neutrality
- Wireless antenna siting order
- Extension of DTV transition deadline
- WCS and Sirius-XM testing
- 3.65 GHz sharing decision
- Confirmations of Chairman Julius Genachowski and Commissioners Mignon Clyburn and Meredith Attwell Baker
- Confirmations of Lawrence Strickling as Assistant Secretary of NTIA and Jonathan Adelstein as RUS Administrator
This one is a no-brainer. The decision of Congress to allocate a portion of the stimulus funding for broadband dominated the year for broadband suppliers, service providers, and anyone else even remotely interested in broadband deployment and adoption.
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 also mandates that the FCC create a National Broadband Plan. The FCC is scheduled to deliver its report to Congress on February 17, 2010.
Yes, an equipment certification makes the list. Although this flew under the radar generally, it has generated significant buzz in the 3.65 GHz community. For the first time since the rules were enacted, the FCC authorized equipment to use the “unrestricted” upper 25 MHz of the 3.65 GHz band.
Yes, a Notice or Proposed Rulemaking makes the list as well. Although only a notice, the decision to propose a stricter standard for broadband than Congress requires of monopoly POTS providers pursuant to Section 201 of the Communications Act is shocking enough to deserve inclusion here. The NPRM also proposes to exclude all broadband ecosystem players except service providers (including wireless service providers) from the scope of the net neutrality rules.
The FCC released an order on November 18, 2009, defining reasonable timeframes for State and local action on wireless facilities siting requests as 90 days for collocations and 150 days for other types of siting applications. While this order didn’t give the wireless industry everything it asked for, the order should speed up the typically slow approval process for local antenna siting approval.
In the DTV Delay Act enacted on February 11, 2009, Congress delayed the DTV transition deadline from February 17, 2009, to June 12, 2009. Although announcement of the delay was accompanied by much fanfare, the transition itself was largely a non-event. The FCC quickly issued an order implementing the delay and minimized the potential consumer impact.
The Office of Engineering and Technology announced that the WCS Coalition and Sirius-XM would each conduct public demonstration tests of potential interference between proposed mobile wireless broadband services in the WCS band and SDARS services. This reaffirmed the public testing methodology used to analyze interference concerns in the white spaces proceeding.
Another decision involving the 3.65 GHz band makes the list. In an order released December 22, 2009, the Broadband Division of the Wireless Telecommunications Bureau confirmed that 3.65 GHz licensees are not entitled to “first in time” protection against interference that may be caused by newcomers, incumbents and that newcomers have a mutual obligation to cooperate in sharing the band.
Although this entry technically encompasses multiple decisions, the important point here is that the FCC again has a full slate of Commissioners.
Another entry encompassing multiple decisions that, this time filling leadership roles at the other agencies tasked with promoting broadband deployment in the United States.
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broadband net neutrality wireless