Mitchell Lazarus, a lawyer at Fletcher Heald, asked why the...

vast array of unlicensed devices. “Owing to technical limitations in hearing aids, Starkey wanted to use signals that occupy only 100 kHz. But it offered to reduce the power proportionately, to comply with the 6.3 milliwatts per 3 kHz limit,” Lazarus wrote on the firm’s blog (http://xrl.us/bm93pr). “Procedurally, it asked for either a waiver or a rulemaking. The FCC said no. The rulemaking Starkey requested ‘plainly does not warrant consideration,’ it said, and to grant a waiver would ‘undermine the underlying purpose of the rules.’ Usually we agree with the FCC’s technical decisions. But this one frankly baffles us.” Lazarus said the decision (http://xrl.us/bm93pi) by the Office of Engineering and Technology was based on several factors. “That Starkey failed to demonstrate its device would not increase the potential for interference to licensed services, and would not disrupt the ‘ecosystem’ of multiple unlicensed devices in the same bands; and that a waiver would undo the FCC’s goal of barring narrow-band systems from using the relatively high power limits under Section 15.247,” he said. “But wait a minute. If Starkey had offered a one-watt device occupying 500 kHz, the FCC would have approved it without a second thought. Get out the calculator: that permissible one-watt device, if it uses spectrum uniformly, puts the same 6.3 milliwatts into each 3 kHz of bandwidth. … Starkey wanted to use a permissible level of power-per-spectrum, just over less spectrum than a compliant device. That creates less potential for interference, not more. And it does nothing to violate the prohibition on narrow-band devices using high power: Starkey would have to stay under 0.2 watts, rather than the full watt allowed to 500 kHz devices.” Lazarus said he’s not involved in the Starkey proceeding but does a lot of work with unlicensed devices.