Spectrum Intel, a lead-generation service created by the Enterprise Wireless Alliance, provides actionable information from the FCC’s Universal Licensing System (ULS) to salespeople, according to Eric Hill, EVP Operations at EWA. “Salespeople need to know where customer opportunities are and licensing staff need to have a better way to understand the spectrum environment,” he said. “We’ve organized the ULS data and made it much more accessible and actionable. Spectrum Intel users have access to a world-class database search and reporting capability. It simplifies identifying sales leads and speeds up conducting many types of frequency and other license data analysis.”
The ULS is the FCC database that tracks licensing activity on Land Mobile Radio frequencies in the VHF, UHF, 800 MHz, and 900 MHz bands. Whenever an organization becomes a licensee or whenever an existing licensee modifies a system, or whenever a license is about to expire, is cancelled or terminated, that data appears in the ULS. Spectrum Intel gathers this and other sales-related licensing information specific to the market area (e.g., town, counties, state) designated by the Spectrum Intel customer. The leads – including licensee contact information, transmitter details, frequencies affected, emission designators, the name of firm that provided license assistance, and dozens of other material facts – are then emailed weekly.
“Salespeople and business owners find this information helpful because it could mean a prospective customer or competitor is moving the tower, changing the antenna height, changing power, or other changes” Hill said. “These changes represent possible leads for sales of equipment, engineering services, and tower services.”
Spectrum Intel users may also conduct custom searches on the same ULS data, covering any size area locally, regionally or nationally.
Hill gave an example of a customer with sales territories in various parts of a state. Spectrum Intel allows that customer to customize their parameters with a template to divide the state into three sections. Each salesperson receives their own customized report weekly for their territory. “It was simple,” Hill said. “We plotted each sales territory center points, then a 100-mile radius circle,” Hill said. EWA is completing an additional capability that allows the weekly report market area to be set up on a county-by-county basis.
Tower owners can use Spectrum InteI to maintain situational awareness of changes in co-channel or adjacent channel spectrum use by their tenants, which may pose interference difficulties. “In the case that interference is already detected, using Spectrum Intel to take a look at ULS data gives users a quick way to see who may be causing the problem,” Hill said. “The licensee’s application or their existing license reveal the parameters authorized by the FCC, which may have bearing on observed problems.”
Spectrum Intel allows individuals to keep an eye on expired, terminated, or canceled licenses as well, whether it is because of an FCC action or because the license wasn’t renewed. “A salesperson interested in providing licensing assistance or equipment sales, or a licensee wishing to expand their network – perhaps in a congested area – can glance over a Spectrum Intel report and see opportunities,” Hill said.
Spectrum Intel links license and application data to the FCC’s ULS so a user can easily take a look at the actual and most up-to-date record of a license. While users of Spectrum Intel can keep tabs on Land Mobile Radio frequencies today, EWA plans to add microwave, maritime, aircraft, and other license databases in the future.
The Spectrum Intel databases are refreshed daily and replaced weekly, consistent with the schedule of FCC updates, thus keeping the ULS data fresh and accurate. “We cleanse, refactor, and join the various different tables before we ingest the updates,” said Hill, “to optimize how fast we can produce results of ad hoc queries of anywhere in the country.”
EWA, which is celebrating its 70th anniversary as an FCC-certified frequency advisory committee, provides its members and clients with advocacy before the FCC and Congress, and with consulting services, frequency coordination, license preparation, spectrum and license management, and associated business intelligence services.
For more information and to request a demo of Spectrum Intel, click here, or contact EWA at 1-800-482-8282 or Spectrum.Intel@EnterpriseWireless.org.
By J. Sharpe Smith, Inside Towers Technology Editor
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