The Commerce Spectrum Management Advisory Committee is slated to consider...
The Commerce Spectrum Management Advisory Committee is slated to consider Thursday a final report from its Working Group 1 on rules for opening up the 1695-1710 MHz band for commercial use while protecting federal meteorological earth stations from harmful interference.…
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“The recommendations of the Working Group provide the foundation for agencies to start developing the more refined transition plans and for the FCC to start its rulemaking to implement shared use of the band,” the report said (http://1.usa.gov/VvSSKn). “Therefore, this report and associated sharing framework include recommendations for necessary elements that remain to be addressed. These include developing the coordination, testing, monitoring, and compliance processes and associated funding criteria identified in the sharing framework.” The report recommends that NTIA and the FCC develop a national interference prediction model, associated input parameters and methods for distribution of the aggregate Interference Power Spectral Density (IPSD) limits among commercial wireless licensees. The report also backs development of coordination procedures “including an automated process to assess if the proposed commercial wireless network will meet the IPSD limits, to facilitate coordination of proposed commercial wireless operations within the protection areas” and “on-going real-time monitoring to ensure the IPSD limits are not being exceeded.” The report also recommends “protection zones” rather than “exclusion zones” to protect federal facilities. But this approach requires “a clearly defined and enforceable coordination mechanism” to protect federal users from interference, the report said. The report found that commercial use of the band should be limited to mobile uplink use only. “Through discussions between Federal and commercial entities, it became clear that spectrum in this band would be solely used for mobile transmissions,” the report said. “All analysis done by WG-1 was done under this assumption.” On Tuesday, the NTIA formally recommended that the FCC reallocate the 1695-1710 MHz band for commercial use on a shared basis (CD Feb 20 p8).