Creating the right regulatory environment for the wireless market

Federal Communications Commission commissioner Kathleen Abernathy addressed a board meeting of the 3G Americas on June 3. She talked about the strides the FCC is making to implement spectrum policies that are more market driven. Below is an excerpt of her address. The full speech can be found here. I would like to take some time to share with you my thoughts on the FCC’s role in creating a flexible and market-based regulatory environment that provides you the opportunity to be responsive to consumer needs through the development and deployment of innovative services and technologies. I happen to agree with the voice in the movie, Field of Dreams that said, "if you build it, they will come". Except in this case, it is not baseball players and fields that are at issue, but the ability of the FCC to adopt regulations that are market-based and provide sufficient flexibility to service providers to respond to market needs. If the FCC can craft this type of playing field, I believe that industry will have the ability and incentive to provide innovative technologies and services to consumers. You will build it and consumers will come. To demonstrate my point I would like to take the opportunity to focus on four areas in the wireless arena where I believe that the FCC has worked to craft a regulatory environment that permits this type of innovation to occur. First, it is imperative for regulators to stay ahead of the technology curve, and in a sense, be technology visionaries. In this regard, regulators must, like businesses, identify and understand emerging technologies. To this end, it is important that we also act as technology facilitators - that is - we must recognize and reduce regulatory barriers to entry for emerging technologies through the adoption of policies that tap the benefits of emerging technologies. A second area of importance is last month’s secondary spectrum market order, which ushers in a monumental change in the way that spectrum is utilized. This new approach was crafted to maximize efficient use of the spectrum and to free-up spectrum for new services. To further our efforts, we also adopted a further notice of proposed rulemaking, which examines issues affecting the future development of secondary markets based on the regulatory framework already adopted in the order. A third important area is the increasing demand for spectrum for unlicensed uses. With the development of Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and ultra-wideband, there has been a dramatic increase in demand for the availability of and access to unlicensed spectrum. The success of the unlicensed approach to spectrum regulation has been due in large part to the FCC’s ability to clearly define the rules that govern the common use of the resource, while resisting the urge to impose heavy-handed regulation. The FCC is continuing to examine its current spectrum allocations to see if additional spectrum can be made available for unlicensed use. Just last month, the FCC adopted an item that proposes to allow access to an additional 255 MHz of unlicensed spectrum in the 5 GHz band. The final area that I would like to discuss with you is my belief that to the extent that we are able to provide greater flexibility in our rules for wireless licensees that improves incentives to develop and provide new technologies and services where there is consumer demand. The FCC has recently taken several actions, which I believe supports this approach.First, in April we adopted an order providing flexibility to public safety licensees in their use of the 4.9 GHz band for mobile and fixed broadband applications. We also provided for interoperability in the band so that public safety licensees can pursue strategic partnerships with both traditional public safety entities, such as the federal government, and non-traditional public safety entities, such as utilities. In sum, and to borrow once again from Field of Dreams, the FCC must continue to "seize the moment" by creating a regulatory environment that fosters the introduction of innovative technologies and services to consumers. While we have made significant advances in this area as demonstrated by the examples I discussed today, I am hopeful that we will progress farther.

Creating the right regulatory environment for the wireless market

News | June 11, 2003

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