Shortwave Coalition Petition Raises Concerns Among Amateur Operators
Commenters raised concerns on an April petition by the Shortwave Modernization Coalition (SMC) asking the FCC to launch a rulemaking to amend its eligibility and technical rules for industrial/business pool licensees to authorize licensed use of frequencies above 2 MHz and below 25 MHz for fixed, long-distance, non-voice communications (see 2305010053). Through experimental use of 2-25 MHz band frequencies “SMC members have developed and refined technologies to, among other things, enhance spectrum sharing in the band without materially increasing the risk of harmful interference to other authorized … users,” SMC said.
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Hundreds of amateur radio operators question the effect on amateur operations. More than 700 comments were filed by Thursday in RM-11953. A June 30 notice by the Office of Managing Director asked for comment within 30 days.
“The SMC claims that there has been no complaint of interference from the Amateur Radio Service,” said Anthony Foster, an amateur operator from Ohio: “Since the signals from SMC are encoded digitally, it is not possible for the typical amateur radio operator to decode and understand the source of interference. … Their statement about not causing interference is faulty and has no basis.”
“I’m a licensed amateur radio operator, and have good reason to believe that this proposed service will substantially interfere with my operations,” said Carl Batchelder, who didn’t disclose his location. Many of the comments filed were similarly short.
“The Petition contains considerable technical detail, but also appears to lack detail from the experiments that are the foundation for the Petition,” said FlexRadio Systems. The petition “has potentially far-reaching impact, in the form of interference, to existing users of the spectrum involved (2-25MHz),” the company said: “While FlexRadio is philosophically in favor of both modernization and more efficient use of the High Frequency spectrum, FlexRadio believes in carefully weighing the impact proposals will have on existing users.” FlexRadio asked for another 30 days to develop more complete comments.
Skywave Networks urged the FCC to delay the comment deadline until Sept. 5. The company noted it has invested “millions of dollars into the development of world-class, ultra-low latency shortwave technology, which is capable of opening access to international trading through fixed, long-distance, nonvoice communications in the 2-25 MHz Band.” But Skywave said it’s still analyzing the SMC petition. The company “agrees with SMC that the 2-25 MHz Band in the Industrial/Business Pool is underutilized and ripe for modernization.”
Commenters from Collins Aerospace raised concerns about the 2.85, 3.4, 4.65, 5.45, 11.4 and 21.924 MHz bands as “the areas of most concern by the aviation community as those are the portions of the aeronautical spectrum where interference would be expected to occur.” The study SMC used “to justify the suitability of the new spectrum rules is solely focused on interference within the US and represents interference levels in terms of the percentage of US population that might experience harmful interference,” the Collins commenters said. “This naturally biases the results towards lower reported levels of harmful interference because the majority of the population lives in cities or towns where the man-made noise levels are elevated, meaning that higher signal levels are tolerable before they actually interfere with reception,” they said.