Public Safety Licensees Said to Be Slow Negotiating Retuning Agreements
Sprint Nextel indicated Thurs. a significant number of public safety licensees whose systems are being retuned in one of the latest 800 MHz rebanding rounds aren’t reaching agreements and aren’t seeking planning funds. Concern already was high at the FCC after questions surfaced this week at the Assn. of Public Safety Communications Officials annual meeting about whether rebanding can be done in the 36 months the FCC has allowed (CD Aug p2).
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Export Compliance Daily combines U.S. export control news, foreign border import regulation and policy developments into a single daily information service that reliably informs its trade professional readers about important current issues affecting their operations.
Only 45 of 424 public safety incumbents in phase 2, wave 1 of the rebanding have signed transition agreements, Sprint Nextel said. Requests for planning expense reimbursement have come from 136. But most -- 243 -- have not signed agreements or asked for money to cover planning costs. The numbers were current as of Mon.
Some retuning rounds that began earlier went more smoothly, Sprint said. For example, in phase 1 of retuning channels 1-120 - taking in nonpublic safety licensees -- of 501 incumbents, 483 have signed retuning agreements, based on numbers released Thurs.
“There are examples of good things that are going on. Some people have been very successful in moving forward with the process,” Harlin McEwen, communications adviser to police groups, told us Thurs. “There are some that are having difficulties… Then you have the 3rd category, where we don’t know what they're doing.” Concerned that lack of involvement might mean inattention, McEwen has reached out to safety agencies, he said. “If you haven’t started the process, you've got to get going,’ he said.
Sprint Nextel, about 14 months into rebanding, has been reporting on progress through the retuning waves. The FCC has refused to delay the 36-month retuning deadline, but did extend some interim deadlines. Under the original timetable, mandatory negotiation for phase 2, wave 1 was to end Aug. 1; the FCC granted a 90-day extension.
“Red flags are being raised. The question now is what the Commission will do,” a regulatory source said. “We are really surprised that here we didn’t get more” requests for planning money, said a source close to Sprint: “We haven’t seen folks avail themselves of this funding… There are a lot of folks that aren’t engaged in this process, and there needs to be greater progress.”