FCC Has Big Job Ahead to Get Ready for WRC in 2015, Pai Says

The FCC efforts have already fallen behind those by the Interdepartment Radio Advisory Committee Radio Conference Subcommittee, which looks after government interests. The subcommittee has already met three times and developed four views “which still have to go through the IRAC and through the NTIA staff and out for signature,” said Darlene Drazenovich, an NTIA official who oversees the work of that group. The subcommittee will submit the views to the FCC later this month and take up more next month, Drazenovich said. “We have a short time to do a lot of work,” she said.

Pai said he had read through the WAC’s charter and agreed the committee has a big job ahead. “We're obviously in the very preliminary stages of the preparations for the 2015 conference, but in looking over the scope of your activity this is where the rubber meets the road in communications,” he said. “It might not be the highest profile things that would capture the attention of the mainstream media, but I think those of us in this field know that the work you're doing and will do over the next several years … will be so important to the communications marketplace."

"As we go, ideally, so goes the world,” said Harris, executive vice president at Neustar and the first chief of the FCC’s International Bureau. “It’s important that we manage to get our views out there in a coherent and powerful way because it really has an enormous effect on the communications industry, not just in the United States, but globally. Those of you who have been doing this, you've seen this every four years and you actually can look at the services being offered today all around the world, whereas when I came to the International Bureau they simply did not exist.

"It’s absolutely a critical endeavor to get the private sector views together in a coherent, hopefully consensus fashion, so that we can get it before the commission and get the commission to work with us within the administration so that the U.S. presents a point of view at the WRC which will advance U.S. industry, U.S. consumers, and, ultimately, the U.S. economy,” Harris said.

"Other regions are getting prepared earlier and earlier,” said WAC Vice Chair Diane Cornell, vice president at Inmarsat and a former FCC official. “Preparing U.S. positions well in advance really is absolutely critical to a successful outcome. You all know that oh-so-well. We're only three and a half years away from the next conference and less than three years from the next conference prep meeting and there are some very big issues on the agenda."

International Bureau Chief Mindel De La Torre apologized to attendees for the complicated process they faced to become members of the WAC, a more complex process than they faced prior to the 2012 WRC. “The reason it’s different is because there’s different ethics rules in place,” De La Torre said: “We just ended up having to do things a little bit differently.” Government attorneys who handle ethics issues had to deal with how different the WAC is from other advisory committees, with its broad participation and given the importance of its Informal Working Groups (IWGs), she said. “I think we're set."

Harris named chairs for the four IWGs, who will do much of the heavy lifting as the WAC moves forward. Chair of IWG-1, maritime, aeronautical and radar services, is Audrey Allison of Boeing; Vice Chair will be Kris Hutchison, Aviation Spectrum Resources; IWG 2, terrestrial services, Charles Rush, TMG, chair, and Jayne Stancavage, Intel, vice chair; IWG 3, space services, Jack Wengryniuk, DirecTV, chair, with Kim Baum, Motorola, vice chair; IWG 4 regulatory issues, Steve Baruch, Leventhal Senter, chair, and Jose Albuquerque, Intelsat, vice chair.