PROPOSED WIRELESS AD STANDARDS RELEASED BY WAA

Carriers such as AT&T are aware of guidelines and will work with them, Kris Cone of AT&T Wireless said. “AT&T will tweak their standards to conform more to WAA guidelines, but from a carrier’s perspective, different devices will have slightly different standards,” he said. In response, Tom Bair, chmn. of WAA Ad Standards Committee, said: “The burden of WAA is to come up with the least common denominator. If this format is used, it will work on most every device.”

Effectively conveyed ads and aesthetics were priorities in draft, WAA officials said. WAP standards are based on 80/20 rule, requiring text and graphic ads to be received well on 80% of screens. Bair said “standards are expected to evolve rapidly as devices change.” Committee didn’t recommend page positions or include technical or business issues in draft, although WAA touched on issues of privacy.

Privacy is major concern facing wireless industry, officials said. WAA is proponent of self-regulation rather than govt. regulation of wireless industry. Guest speaker Kevin Noonan, vp- Internet & Media Research, Yankee Group, said: “There is a lot of potential for government regulation, we've seen this in the online world. This industry wants to self-regulate.” WAA has no-SPAM policy and philosophy to avoid invasion of privacy. It regards wireless devices as highly personal in nature, and said research had shown that consumers were wary of ads on those devices, with carriers particularly careful about integration of ads onto wireless devices. “Carriers are the ones who field the customer care calls and PR backlash from ads,” AT&T’s Cone said.

Draft, presented Tues. at WAA general meeting here, specifies technical details of formats and sizes. Technical details and screen shots of standards can be seen at www.waaglobal.org. Members of WAA will have 30 days to review and comment on standards before they become final. Experts from industry-leading companies participated in subcommittees for 3 platforms. WAA’s European arm developed GSM SMS Standards for GSM mobile networks that predominate in Europe. Non-GSM SMS Standards are for CDMA and TDMA used in most US networks.

WAA also is working on technical standards for industry in voice and audio and will release location-based wireless ad specification in Aug. -- Laura Lee WCA Show Notebook…

Saying company holds MMDS licenses in 90 markets, Sprint Vp- Federal Regulatory Affairs Jay Keithley said company had filed applications at FCC to provide 2-way services in 56 markets and had received approval for 49. Sprint Broadband Direct, as company’s fixed wireless offering is marketed, has 48,000 customers on its network, with plans to expand to 100,000 by year- end, he said on Wed. panel. One of toughest problems that Sprint has faced is meeting demand, he said: “We have had upstream capacity problems. We have been offering services upstream on our MDS 1 and 2 channels in all of our markets.” FCC recently approved company’s offering upstream communications in-band to handle capacity issues, Keithley said. “The problems we are having, candidly, are getting rolling with a very popular service.” ----

Concerns over how FCC will decide 3rd generation spectrum allocation has dominated conference discussions this week, while additional uncertainty of NextWave ruling last week has been raised repeatedly. Supreme Court decision upholding NextWave licenses “has thrown the C-block spectrum up in the air,” Motorola Telecommunications Dir. Steve Sharkey said. “Since that was spectrum that carriers were going to depend on for expansion of their services, it puts even more pressure on” 3G decisions, he said. Unfortunately, Sharkey said, one of advantages of auctions that had been touted had been “that they could make services available to the public more quickly and in this case that hasn’t been the result.” ----

Instructional TV Fixed Service and MMDS licensees said they faced basic issue of how to structure 15-year ITFS excess capacity agreements with 3G outcome unclear. One main problem, said John Schwartz, pres., Instructional Telecommunications Foundations, is that advanced service offerings that are part of agreements signed now could change dramatically in 15 years. Issue is particularly relevant on levels of interference from adjacent MMDS operations that ITFS licensees agree to accept now, if those neighboring systems should alter their offerings significantly in the future, he said. Curtis Henderson, senior vp-gen. counsel, Nucentrix Broadband Networks, acknowledged that such considerations were part of “balancing act” for such leasing agreements, which have become more complex with onset of digital and 2-way services. “We have to ask for some flexibility in designing and operating an integrated system,” he said in panel discussion.