Satellite Companies Increase Presence at PCIA
Demand for infrastructure is increasing as carriers expand business and new buyers enter the market, PCIA President Michael Fitch told us at the PCIA Conference. Businesses are building out spectrum won in the Advanced Wireless Services auction last year and preparing for the 700 MHz auction, he said. Meanwhile, satellite companies looking to build out ATS licenses are increasing their presence at the industry event, he said.
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PCIA conference participants say business is “booming and expanding,” but that talk is “essentially more of the same” from last year, Fitch said. What’s “new and different” is that satellite companies are present on conference panels, he said. Satellite companies have had ATS licenses “for a while now,” but “the fact that they now feel the need to be at this kind of conference is telling,” he said. Satellite spectrum assets “are going to come online… [and] the terrestrial side of that is an opportunity for all the companies” attending PCIA, he said.
Also “buzzworthy” this year are distributed antenna systems (DAS), Fitch said, citing “increasing importance and interest in that component of delivering systems.” This is the first year at the conference DAS has had its own sessions track.
The FCC’s backup power requirement for cell sites, set to take effect Oct. 9, is “unjustified as a legal matter, unjustified as a technical matter and unwarranted as a practical matter,” Fitch said. From the legal angle, the FCC didn’t give the industry sufficient notice, he said. On the technical side, backup power won’t solve all the problems FCC hoped to address in the post-Katrina regulation, he said. “You can have all the backup power you want, and generators that are fueled for a week, a month or a year, and if they're flooded, it’s not going to work.” From a practical perspective, there is not enough physical space on distributed antenna systems, rooftops and some other cell sites to fit a backup power generator, he said.
The FCC has finished voting on revisions to its backup power rules, but has yet to release an order, sources said. “Informal indications are that it will be much more pragmatic than the first go around,” Fitch said. “The commission will ultimately get to a better result.”
Evidence the FCC has received on wireless towers’ danger to migratory birds is “a long way from anything that would warrant implementing new regulations,” Fitch said. FCC has received “a huge record full of contradictory information and positions,” he said. Better proof is needed since no federal responsibility exists for killings of animals that aren’t threatened or endangered species, he said. Environmental groups say they've provided adequate proof that it’s a federal problem, but “I would argue they haven’t met probably any of those tests,” Fitch said. Current evidence is “spotty,” measuring “very small samples” and lacking peer review and other standard scientific validations, he said.
PCIA formed Solving the Avian Tower Interaction Committee (STATIC) to see if voluntary agreement on migratory birds is possible. STATIC’s members comprise both sides of the debate, he said. A voluntary agreement would drop the “legalistic process” at the FCC. STATIC is “not nearly at a point” where one could say such a voluntary agreement is or is not possible, “but it’s being explored,” Fitch said. There are some points of agreement, but “certainly not a whole package,” he said.
FCC Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein’s Tuesday keynote at PCIA was a “home run in terms of addressing the audience we have here and their interests and their concerns,” Fitch said. Adelstein’s labeling of wireless as the “third channel” for broadband competition is “consistent with what plans people see materializing and being implemented by the big service providers,” he said.