The American Assn. of Paging Carriers (AAPC) asked the FCC to rec...

the low-power channels in response to a request by the Land Mobile Communications Council. Among the changes in the Part 90 rules for low-power operations in that band were designation of twenty-one 12.5 kHz channels pairs and 4 unpaired frequencies for noncoordinated, itinerant mobile use, subject to certain power restrictions for both mobile and portable units. In its petition for reconsideration, AAPC said that within that pool of frequencies were 8 that were 12.5 kHz removed from paging-only frequencies licensed on a shared basis in the commercial mobile radio services. At least 7 of those 8 now are available for assignment to hospitals and other health care facilities for medical radio telemetry operations on a secondary basis. But the Commission concluded that noncoordinated, itinerant use of those Group C frequencies could interfere with telemetry operations. As a result, it barred itinerant use stations on the frequencies until the end of a transition period, set for Oct. 2003, for the migration of such operations to the new wireless medical telemetry service. AAPC said many of its members operated systems on the 462 MHz paging frequencies and were hampered by the new rules. Continued use of those frequencies “is fundamentally inconsistent with the statutory requirement” that Part 90 CMRS licensees be subject to technical requirements that were comparable to those faced by operators that provided substantially similar services, AAPC said. “Rather than continue using the frequencies for low- power operations, therefore, the Commission properly should prohibit altogether the licensing of any new stations on these 8 frequencies,” AAPC said. It also argued that noncoordinated, itinerant use of those frequencies posed “an unacceptable risk of harmful interference to paging receivers operating on the 462 MHz CMRS paging frequencies.”