Amateur Radio Operators Raise Concerns on Clearing 3.1-3.55 GHz Band
The FCC is getting pushback from amateur radio operators concerned about a proposal to remove existing nonfederal secondary and amateur allocations in the 3.1-3.55 GHz band and to relocate incumbent nonfederal operations out of the band. Commissioners approved an NPRM…
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5-0 at their December meeting (see 1912120063). “Many of us have significant investments in equipment that operates at and near 3456.0 MHz,” wrote Martin Woll, an operator in Los Angeles: “I recommend that existing Amateur Radio privileges be retained on a secondary basis in a 100-KHz portion, a mere 0.02 percent, of the subject band.” If the proposal is approved “and it is not possible for the [amateur operators] to continue to operate this network, then during a disaster, we may find ourselves without a means to communicate and coordinate our agency’s response,” said Corey Siegel, interim chief of the San Francisco Auxiliary Communications Service. “Amateur radio operators have contributed to the state of the radio art in this portion of the radio spectrum in equipment design, antenna design, understanding of propagation characteristics, waveforms, and communications protocols,” commented Charles Atchison, treasurer of the North Texas Microwave Society. “Amateurs have already invested much time and money in development of … stations that operate in this frequency range,” said Tom Wheeler, amateur radio operator from Overland Park, Kansas: “At microwave frequencies, it's prohibitively expensive to retool stations. Moving to a new microwave band means discarding existing station transceiving equipment and antennas. New equipment must be acquired.” The FCC had logged 295 comments on the topic, in docket 19-348, through Monday.