OET Faces Tough Challenge Navigating Increasing Demands: Acting Chief
The FCC Office of Engineering and Technology faces a growing workload and increasingly complex issues to work through, acting Chief Ron Repasi said during an FCBA webinar Friday. “I would say, overall, we manage,” Repasi said, laughing. “It’s becoming difficult…
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because we’ve got a lot of competing demands” and not just on spectrum, he said. The number of OET staff has remained constant for the past decade, Repasi said, with about 25 at the FCC lab in Columbia, Maryland, and the remaining 50 at FCC headquarters. They’re not all engineers and OET also has lawyers and telecom specialists on staff, he said. OET strives to be “fact-based in its work,” Repasi said. “I won’t say that we’re not involved in policymaking; we certainly are,” though maybe not as visibly as other parts of the FCC, he said. “We’re really good at spotting issues, but we have to be even better at coming up with solutions,” he said. “When we get new proposals the first thing we look at is what is the potential for harmful interference,” Repasi said. Spectrum is “already very congested” and OET has to consider “what’s already authorized,” he said. Transparency is critical in any application for a new use of spectrum, he said: “We have to be in a position, from a technical and engineering perspective, to be able to know what the model or the simulation is that’s being used to show what the potential is for harmful interference. We have to know what the input parameters are.” OET is having ongoing discussions with NTIA officials “to minimize the number of surprises” and collaboration is improving, Repasi said. He noted coordination has long been seen as important for government spectrum and the Interdepartment Radio Advisory Committee is the longest-standing federal advisory committee, predating the FCC. IRAC is “still a valid and relevant advisory committee that we participate in,” he said. The challenge is there’s not any clear spectrum so “everything has to be shared,” said Michael Ha, chief of the OET Policy and Rules Division. “Every time we deploy a new sharing system we learn something new,” said Martin Doczkat, chief of the Electromagnetic and Compatibility Division. “We’re learning and applying lessons as new models are introduced,” he said.