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July 14, 2000
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Tiny New Economy Company
Spends Heavily for Bandwidth
By MARK WIGFIELD
Dow Jones Newswires
WASHINGTON -- Time Domain Inc.
(www.timedomain.com), a tiny Alabama start-up communications company, had sales of
$700,000 last year. But it spent $720,000 to lobby lawmakers and
regulators.
The high-price lobbying effort was needed to bring attention to the
promise of its new technology, Time Domain says. But critics see the drive
as an example of New Economy special interests using the old politics of
money and political influence to get their way. In this case, Time Domain
wants to share a piece of the limited radio spectrum "real estate." Both
sides agree that such efforts are likely to become more common as a boom in
wireless technology crowds the airwaves.
Time Domain specializes in ultrawideband technology, which can be used
in ground-penetrating radar to locate broken pipelines, find victims
beneath earthquake-shattered buildings or track people or objects with
great precision. Ultimately, the company wants to use the technology for
local data networks, moving vast amounts of information without wiring.
But what Time Domain considers the "sweet spot" on the spectrum for
wireless data already is closely guarded by the airline industry. The
company wants to share that space, but the airline industry fears possible
interference with global-positioning system devices, whose uses range from
air-traffic control and navigation to handheld consumer devices that guide
hikers through the woods. Opponents contend that Time Domain's aggressive
lobbying has politicized the issue, possibly jeopardizing public
safety.
Ralph Petroff, Time Domain's chief executive, is betting regulators will
find the company's technology not only harmless but also a unique way to
create more space on the crowded airwaves. The firm got a key endorsement
recently from U S West Inc., now Qwest
Communications International Inc., which took a 5% stake in the
concern, joining 20 institutional investors, including WorldCom Inc.'s venture fund and
Sony Corp.
"Spectrum is the lifeblood of the industry," Mr. Petroff says. "We're
facing a spectrum drought." Ultrawideband's solution is to turn "garbage"
spectrum -- now occupied by background radio emissions of such devices as
computers and electric shavers -- into usable airwaves for a host of new
services.
The concept won a victory at the Federal Communications Commission in
May. The agency said it would set rules for ultrawideband, subject to
conducting interference tests. The decision came only after a big push by
Time Domain.
Mr. Petroff says he had to recruit an army of lobbyists to get
regulators to consider testing the technology, and he himself shuttled
between Huntsville and Washington more than 100 times since late 1996. He
hired blue-chip power brokers such as Jonathan Yarowsky of Patton Boggs.
Mr. Yarowsky, a former White House lawyer, and his firm lobbied the FCC,
White House, Congress and Commerce Department. Mimi Dawson, a former FCC
commissioner, worked the FCC. Also working Capitol Hill was Ray Cole of Van
Scoyoc Associates, who until last year worked for Time Domain's home-state
senator, Richard Shelby, an Alabama Republican.
"You have entrenched groups that view any change as bad before the facts
are in," says Greg Simon, another Time Domain lobbyist and a former White
House official. Indeed, while the FCC began talking with developers of
ultrawideband technologies in 1989, the issue got nowhere until the
mid-1990s when lobbyists and lawmakers pushed for action.
A breakthrough came at a 1999 conference, when FCC Commissioner Susan
Ness "made a terrific speech and jump-started the whole thing," says Time
Domain Vice President Jeffrey Ross. Ms. Ness says she was convinced that
the FCC should proceed with testing and crafting rules.
The Commerce Department's National Telecommunications and Information
Administration, which protects government spectrum use, heard opposition
from the Federal Aviation Administration, which uses the global positioning
system, or GPS, for air-traffic control. "I talked to the Commerce
Department to make sure things moved along," Mr. Simon says.
Then Sen. Shelby helped persuade the FAA to grant waivers to Time Domain
to make 2,500 ultrawideband radar-vision devices that enable police and
firefighters to literally look through walls. Lobbyists got language in a
defense bill allowing the government to pay for independent tests of the
technology. Both Mr. Shelby and Rep. Robert Cramer, a Democrat who
represents the district where Time Domain is based, serve on their
appropriations committees, which have a big say on the test money. Sen.
Shelby helped obtain a provision in a transportation spending bill that
earmarks $2.4 million for testing sought by the NTIA, a spokeswoman for Mr.
Shelby said.
The FCC, after an 18-month initial inquiry, said it would establish
rules for ultrawideband and called for all testing to be completed by Oct.
30.
Rob Mulloy, vice president of rival ultrawideband company Multispectral
Solutions Inc. of Bethesda, Md., wonders about the aggressive timeline.
After listening to the airlines and other critics, "we were concerned
things were being pushed through on the political side without
consideration of interference," he says. Alabama's lawmakers have "come to
bat for Time Domain" and "tried to accelerate the process to have a quick
ruling," he says.
The entire industry could suffer, Mr. Mulloy maintains, if inadequate
testing allows technology to come to market that creates interference
problems. Unlike Time Domain, Multispectral Solutions isn't using the GPS
spectrum.
Opponents shouldn't be able to use the regulatory process "to crush
emerging technology," Sen. Shelby's spokeswoman says. The senator's
priority "was to provide resources to ensure aviation safety," she says,
adding that Mr. Shelby believes government studies should be conducted
quickly to provide policy makers with as much information as possible.
But the FCC has singled out GPS interference for special scrutiny,
leaving open the possibility of a delay on a final decision for Time
Domain.
"We're all for new technology," says David Stempler of the Air Travelers
Association. "Just don't do it at the expense of existing systems ... don't
run over things the public is so dependent on."
Mr. Petroff is optimistic that Time Domain will prevail. He says: "It's
awful what you have to do to get permission to transmit 50-millionths of a
watt" -- the power emitted by an ultrawideband chip.
Write to Mark Wigfield at
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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