24 GHz Emissions Limits Sought by Administration Remain in Limbo at FCC
An NPRM on out-of-band emissions limits into the 24 GHz band, proposed by Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel a year ago, remains on hold at the FCC. She circulated the NPRM Dec. 27, 2021, but it has yet to get the required four votes. Rosenworcel and Commissioner Geoffrey Starks have voted for the item, but Republicans Brendan Carr and Nathan Simington haven’t voted. NTIA endorsed the limits, on behalf of NASA, NOAA and the National Science Foundation.
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Assigning blame is difficult. At least one of the Republican offices submitted proposed changes to the NPRM months ago but has yet to get a response, FCC officials told us. As a result, the item remains one of several yet to be voted based on the circulation list and is currently the oldest item on the list.
“The FCC has worked remarkably well over the past two years with only four commissioners” and “managed to get through a lot of orders,” emailed Jim Dunstan, TechFreedom general counsel: “Four commissioners are generally working fairly well together, which has been a relief from the number of 3-2 votes we've seen over the past decade -- far more party-line splits than when I started practicing before the FCC 40 years ago,” he said.
If the chair’s office isn’t responding to Republican requests for changes on 24 GHz NPRM, it could presage problems ahead, Dunstan said. It could “signal that the chair's office is about done trying to obtain a Republican vote in exchange for concessions, which means we may well be in for significant gridlock without a fifth commissioner in 2023,” he said: “There are only so many non-controversial proceedings that you can get through that will garner at least one Republican commissioner vote. I think we're near the end of the list.”
Others say the 24 GHz NPRM and other items on the circulation list can be worked through over time. The list “generally can clear, with or without a third majority commissioner, by committing time and effort to do so, and perhaps some process fixes I’ve previously suggested here would help too,” former Commissioner Mike O’Rielly told us. Rosenworcel “certainly faces challenges, but she and her team are very capable and will best figure out what priority to place on these items to work with her colleagues in order to get them completed,” he said.
In April 2021, the Office of Engineering and Technology and Wireless Bureau sought comment on aligning Parts 2 and 30 of the FCC’s rules with the unwanted emissions limits into the passive 23.6-24.0 GHz band that were adopted at the World Radiocommunication Conference in 2019. The next step would be an NPRM.
The FCC should adopt the rules “as soon as reasonably possible,” NTIA said in response to the public notice. “Modifying the Table of Allocations and aligning the Commission’s rules with the OOBE limits adopted in the Radio Regulations at WRC-19 would harmonize U.S regulations and provide important protection to extremely sensitive passive weather sensing and existing and future space-based sensing operations considered vital for ensuring the accuracy and timeliness of severe weather phenomenon (e.g., hurricanes and tornados), as well as meeting the Administration’s goals for climate monitoring and climatological science,” the agency said.
In a meeting last week with an aide to Rosenworcel, National Weather Association CEO Janice Bunting and American Meteorological Society President Richard Clark and others called for action. “The participants noted their reply comment submitted to the record in 2021 highlighting the need to follow the direction from WRC-19 to adjust emission limits in line with agreed standards at a minimum,” said a filing in docket 21-186: “European regulators had chosen to implement stricter standards than those called for by WRC-19 given concern about impacts to passive measurements in the 23.8 GHz band that are critical to numerical weather modeling and prediction.”