The FCC held a workshop on May 6th to discuss the development of its new Consolidated Licensing System (CLS). The CLS will become the vehicle by which all UTC members will access their license information. The purpose of the workshop was to explore legal and technical challenges the Commission is likely to encounter as it develops and deploys the agency-wide CLS.

The CLS is intended to replace all of the Commission’s current licensing systems used for the different services it regulates, among them the ULS, ASR, COALS, CDBS, ELS and IBFS. Participants in the roundtable workshop included representatives from the legal community, broadcast, wireless, and tower industries, amateur operators, and associations and frequency advisory committees including UTC.

There was general agreement amongst the participants on such basic issues as the preference to move to all-electronic communications between the FCC and its licensees in most instances, the value of consistency of licensing terminology across services, and FRN assignments and changes. Participants also addressed issues germane to their specific interest area. UTC emphasized the importance of secure operations for the critical infrastructure industry and strongly encouraged the Commission not to adopt any new data collection requirements nor increase the licensing data that would be available for viewing by the general public via the CLS.

This was the first of several meetings the FCC intends to hold as it moves forward with the CLS. The FCC will also be adopting an NPRM that will give all licensees and other interested parties an opportunity to comment on the CLS proposal. Timing is uncertain at this point but Commission staff indicated the CLS would likely be phased in service-by-service rather than all at once.