Before we get to this week’s news highlights (in EWA's member newsletter The Insider), I’m compelled to comment in response to the FCC’s back-to-back denials of waiver requests (see related stories below) from business enterprises that sought permission to use spectrum capacity that, while admittedly assigned for eligible classes of users other than EWA’s two applicants at the moment, is not in use to the point that there remains significant capacity to burn. We understand that the FCC’s leadership are not fans of waivers. I bet that they have even given orders to the Bureaus to knock off granting any waivers. Some of the denial language would seem to indicate such instructions. Heck, we would prefer not to have to suggest to our customers that a waiver seems to be the best approach either when the rules are out-of-sync with today’s spectrum realities. 

But absent expedited rule making processes – something less than five years would seem to be a reasonable initial goal – what other practicable tools do we have at our disposal to accommodate critical spectrum requests other than throwing our arms up in the air in desperation? Filing a Petition for Rulemaking and waiting for good things to happen is not an effective alternative, at least not today in the private land mobile wireless world. And to make this apparent shift in spectrum management policy even more nuttier, I recall several years back at an industry gathering that, we were advised by an FCC representative to stop filing so many Petitions for Rulemaking. I think at moments precisely like this, Oliver Hardy would look directly at the camera with that dumb-founded look of his.