FCC Technology Advisory Council (TAC) will focus on wireless issu...

chief technology officers (CTOs) of technology companies representing telecom, data networking, software, consumer electronics and amateur radio interests. Role of TAC is to advise Commission on technical issues, OET Deputy Chief Julius Knapp said at meeting Wed. “The FCC couldn’t always anticipate technology, but we found people in the industry often could.” Mission of TAC is to help FCC anticipate how technology “might affect policy issues in the future,” he said. In 2nd 2- year charter, TAC will continue work of first council emphasizing software-defined radio and improved spectral management and continued noise floor study, he said. New areas of study requested by FCC include: (1) Better understanding of advances in optical technology, capacity of optical networks, availability of broadband services, interconnection of networks. (2) Network security and technology to ensure network integrity and “robustness.” (3) Plethora of consumer wireless devices and how pieces fit together. “The challenge of these consumer devices are all the different ‘languages’ spoken by different devices -- much of it on unlicensed spectrum,” Knapp said. In discussion, TAC raised concept of wireless “bill of rights” begun in first council. “Regulation has been much like the 10 Commandments -- there are too many ’thou shall nots’,” TAC Chmn. Robert Lucky said. Instead TAC began to think of wireless regulation in terms of rules of what wireless devices should be able to do, he said. In proposed bill of rights, first fundamental right of all wireless devices is “to transmit at any frequency at any power as long as it doesn’t interfere with any other wireless device.” The rest of admittedly unfinished bill of rights “deals with ‘how do you know you're not interfering?'” Lucky joked. Bill of rights concept could move licensing away from “ability to exclude others” to set of protocols to allow innovation by manufacturers within certain parameters, Motorola CTO Dennis Roberson. On goal of efficient spectrum sharing and management, industry must create “self-aware” devices that are aware of other wireless devices, he said. Several members warned FCC against too-rapid regulation of unlicensed spectrum used by wireless LANs and other devices. “These unlicensed radios, mostly low cost and short range, have a potential to become a pervasive part of communications… and will melt down because there isn’t enough spectrum,” Lucky said. Proxim CTO Kevin Negus said problems “aren’t fatal and new wireless products will thrive in the market based on their ability to work in crowded spectrum.”