FCC Official Warns Muni Wi-Fi Boosters on Wireless Hazards
SAN MATEO, Cal. -- A red flag on city use of Wi-Fi has been raised by an FCC official. “You have to be very careful,” Alan Scrime warned city officials, vendors and others at the World Internet Institute’s Digital Cities Convention here late Tues. Because Wi-Fi is unlicensed, “it’s not a guaranteed service,” said Scrime, chief of the Policy & Rules Div., FCC Office of Engineering & Technology.
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Don’t presume the technology is suitable for critical infrastructure, such as police and fire communications, Scrime warned. Imagine city workers locked out of data access, as happens to him on Wi-Fi networks at busy conferences, he said: “It is not designed to be a robust service.” He also warned that cities wouldn’t get the immunity granted common carriers, “so you open yourself up to lawsuits.” Scrime urged listeners to come up with “good, solid end-user agreements.”
Scrime strongly endorsed licensed use of 4.9 GHz spectrum designated by the FCC for public safety. He also said 255 MHz will be available after agreement late this year or early next on the 5.8 GHZ range used for military radar.
“The FCC doesn’t really… have a dog in this fight,” Scrime said, referring to legislation on municipal authority to offer wireless broadband -- but “it’s still an item of interest.” The topic impinges on FCC concerns about encouraging competition, pole attachment rules, cross-subsidies, the right to use authorized services under OTARD and social obligations such as the universal service fund, E-911 -- and CALEA, where “the federal government’s probably going to have an interest in compliance,” Scrime said.
Congress will legislate to ensure municipalities can run Wi-Fi networks, said Lauren Gelman, assistant dir.- Stanford Law School Center for Internet& Society. That probably will come in about a year, around election time, she predicted. Jack Leutza, the Cal. PUC’s Telecom Div. dir., said he agrees Congress will decide the question and quickly, but didn’t say what rights cities might secure.
Scrime wouldn’t comment substantively on airlines’ pleas to the FCC to keep the agency that operates Boston’s Logan Airport from preventing them from offering customers free Wi-Fi. But he did say more than 2,000 comments have been filed, showing “it’s an issue people care a great deal about.”
WiMAX probably will be “not very satisfactory” in unlicensed spectrum, Scrime said, terming the most promising use in licensed spectrum, with service areas divided into sectors to permit reuse of frequencies.
“Cognitive radio is on the horizon,” Scrime said. But contrary to those who believe its arrival will end a need for regulation, “that probably won’t change very quickly” because of givens such as public safety uses and licenses for cellphone spectrum.
The Cal. PUC “would be interested in making sure customers are treated fairly” on muni wireless service and is in touch with the FCC on this, Leutza said. The PUC isn’t likely to move into information-services regulation but does have a role educating the public about communications choices, he said. And the Commission probably will start early next year on a study to answer the question, “What is universal service in the digital age?” Scrime said.