Five Wireless Communications Service (WCS) licensees urged FCC Fr...
Five Wireless Communications Service (WCS) licensees urged FCC Fri. to not act on special temporary authority (STA) request submitted by XM Radio to operate 778 high-power terrestrial repeaters. July 12 request by XM covered repeaters operating at powers of…
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Timely, relevant coverage of court proceedings and agency rulings involving tariffs, classification, valuation, origin and antidumping and countervailing duties. Each day, Trade Law Daily subscribers receive a daily headline email, in-depth PDF edition and access to all relevant documents via our trade law source document library and website.
2 kw up to 40 kw in 61 markets. In recent months, WCS licensees have raised concerns at Commission about potential interference to their operations if satellite digital audio radio service (SDARS) licensees are permitted to operate terrestrial repeaters at more than 2 kw. XM Radio and Sirius Satellite Radio have disputed concerns in ex parte filings, saying WCS operators such as AT&T Wireless had designed front end of receivers to tune to entire 2320-2345 MHz band and that SDARS operators shouldn’t have to bear costs for that engineering oversight. In latest ex parte filing, WCS licensees AT&T Wireless, BellSouth, Metricom, Verizon Wireless and WorldCom asked agency to not act on XM’s request until all stakeholders had chance to “analyze fully the significant blanketing interference issues it presents.” They said XM’s request marked first time that it had provided information on “more than a handful of markets.” They said XM filed request and then announced that commercial operations would begin Sept. 12, “apparently assuming that the Commission would automatically grant that request.” Before FCC approves authorization, “serious” interference issues remain to be addressed,” WCS licensees said. “XM’s STA request is truly unprecedented,” they said. “XM apparently has constructed its entire nationwide terrestrial repeater network on the basis of an experimental authorization and in full knowledge that the Commission has not adopted service rules for these repeaters and has not had an opportunity to examine -- much less approve -- XM’s equipment designs.” WCS also contended that STA request was far different from data provided to FCC, including more than 5 times as many high-power repeaters as filings earlier this year had indicated.