NASA told FCC it was critical to U.S. credibility in ITU negotiat...

Commission to consider international spectrum usage when making U.S. allocations and assignments, particularly those that affected operators in Canada and Mexico or were global in nature. “The problems encountered with the allocation of bands to the mobile satellite service in bands designated for worldwide IMT-2000 usage could be averted in future spectrum policy decisions if more attention is paid to the longer term desirability of adopting international harmonization of spectrum usage,” NASA said. Agency said many ITU regulations involving spectrum used by satellite services were developed with U.S. delegation acting as lead advocate. That means agreements within ITU framework should be incorporated into U.S. policy, NASA said. “Many of the changes to the international table of frequency allocations have, as yet, not been implemented within the U.S. table,” NASA said. “In fact, to NASA’s knowledge, some of these omissions go back as far as the final acts of WRC-92.” Agency acknowledged FCC was updating U.S. allocation table based on ITU changes but stressed it was important “to make every effort to reflect the results of World Radio Conferences in a timelier manner.” In other areas, NASA expressed concern about issuance of “blanket waivers to unlicensed technologies, which have yet to demonstrate that frequency sharing with other radio services is feasible.” Such waivers should be considered in broader context of potential interference to existing services such as safety-of-life operations, NASA said. Traditionally, new services have faced burden of demonstrating compatibility with existing operations in particular band, although FCC didn’t always follow that course, filing said. “NASA encourages the Commission to place the ‘burden of proof’ clearly in the hands of the proponents of new technology rather than on the incumbent radio services,” it said.