TerreStar, WTMS Companies Ask FCC to Reconsider Denial of 1.4 GHz Waiver

failure to meet the construction deadline was due to circumstances beyond TerreStar’s control, and that grant of the waiver request serves the public interest,” it said. The company said it was well on its way to building out a smart-grid ecosystem when wireless medical telemetry service (WMTS) equipment was deployed in the adjacent band. “The sensitivity of these receivers -- built, certified, and deployed during and after 2011 -- was not known, and could not have been predicted," the filing said. TerreStar shifted business plans to use the spectrum instead for wireless medical telemetry, doing so in partnership with WMTS providers, the filing said. That “would protect existing and future WMTS operations in the adjacent band from potential interference; it would lead to expanded use of the 1.4 GHz band for WMTS, which would generate public interest benefits far greater than those from any other presently feasible use,” it said. WMTS companies said the bureau should have approved. It erred “by failing to consider the nation’s growing need for wireless medical telemetry capacity and the grave interference threat posed to the safety-of-life Wireless Medical Telemetry Service,” GE Healthcare said. The American Society for Healthcare Engineering and Philips Healthcare also filed for recon (see here and here) in docket 16-290.