FCC ACTION SEEN LIKELY BY YEAR-END ON ‘INTERFERENCE TEMPERATURE’

“I don’t know how far we're going to go with it,” Thomas said of interference temperature, saying something could be released as early as the “next several months… This one is not a chip shot. We'll see where the public debate goes with this because the last thing we want to do is create tremendous uncertainty in the industry.” Thomas said one issue that had yet to be determined was what bands the Commission would cover in the proceeding, although he told us later that the proceeding probably would cite several bands for comment.

Last fall’s Spectrum Policy Task Force Report brought up the idea of interference temperature as part of its outline of possible spectrum management reforms. The concept involves putting a ceiling on the noise environment in which receivers would be required to operate. To the extent the so-called “temperature” in a certain band wasn’t reached, a user that operated below that threshold would gain the benefit of additional operating flexibility.

In a Q&A following a separate speech at the NSMA annual conference, Comr. Abernathy touted the streamlined timelines that were expected for companies lining up at the FCC with spectrum leasing requests. Last week, the Commission adopted rules to allow licensees to lease unused or unneeded spectrum to 3rd parties, creating 2 different mechanisms for leasing, depending on the amount of responsibility assumed by the lessee (CD May 16 p1). Spectrum manager leasing allows parties to enter leasing arrangements without obtaining prior FCC approval as long as de facto and de jure control is kept by the licensee. De facto transfer leasing allows long-term or short-term leasing in which the licensee keeps de jure control but de facto control goes to the lessee over the course of the lease. This 2nd option requires prior FCC approval under a streamlined process. “The goal would be to have minimal lag time because the leases that are non-de facto are viewed as pretty much consistent with how we want to see the spectrum used and it’s just a matter of accessing that spectrum more efficiently,” she said. That doesn’t mean that for arrangements that require FCC approval there’s a “magic date” of 3 or 5 days, Abernathy said. “It would completely defeat the purpose if it was 3 months.” She said the spectrum leasing rules didn’t open the door to uses that wouldn’t otherwise be authorized by the FCC.

“As you're looking at secondary markets, it’s not as if you can go into spectrum that’s being used today for cellular communications and say that you want to go into air-to-ground because you would be outside of the scope of the technical rules,” Abernathy said. As in other cases, new applications could be explored by applying for an experimental license from the OET, she said. Abernathy said she had heard from a wireless CEO that streamlining of spectrum leasing rules would allow him to explore new applications by leasing spectrum in underutilized areas. Otherwise, the CEO told Abernathy, the carrier couldn’t have taken spectrum offline in areas where it was serving subscribers to try out new services.

Thomas acknowledged that questions raised by the FCC over interference temperature were likely to draw some degree of controversy. “Band by band, it’s a defined maximum harmful interference that an incumbent can expect,” he said. That would allow underlay technologies, including unlicensed devices such as ultra-wideband, to operate in an incumbent’s licensed spectrum. “The incumbent doesn’t really have anything to say about it as long as you stay below that ceiling and obviously that’s going to start a total debate before you do that,” he said. Asked whether interference temperature for a given swath of spectrum could vary between urban and rural areas, Thomas said that might be a possibility. “I really don’t know,” he said, saying there were strong arguments that there was lighter utilization of spectrum in rural areas than in metro regions: “It is a consideration.”

On cognitive radios, which use software to alter operating parameters such as the frequency in use or signal strength, a proceeding will be opened in the 4th quarter of this year with “the normal comment period.” The FCC held a day-long workshop on cognitive radio technologies Mon. in which panelists said commercial applications of that technology were about 5 years away (CD May 20 p3).

On a separate panel on regulatory issues, United Telecom Council (UTC) Vp-Gen. Counsel Jill Lyon said an FCC proceeding on how or whether to configure the 800 MHz band was taking longer than expected. She said it had been 18 months since Nextel filed its original White Paper outlining a proposal for mitigating interference to public safety systems from commercial wireless operators at 800 MHz through a spectrum swap involving 700, 800 and 900 MHz and 1.2 GHz. Nextel, public safety groups and private wireless entities have backed that reconfiguration plan, which includes an $850 million pledge to help relocate private wireless and public safety operators that would have to relocate. UTC and others have stressed to the FCC the need to explore alternatives that wouldn’t involve such large-scale relocations but instead would rely on factors such as best practices for resolving interference problems. Motorola earlier this month updated the FCC on technical advances for avoiding 800 MHz public safety interference, including increased signal strength for public safety systems and better receiver technology (CD May 8 p4). “The latest word on a possible decision is now early fall,” Lyon said, with a likely period being year’s end.

Washington attorney Paul Sinderbrand, counsel to the Wireless Communications Assn. (WCA), said a proposed revamp of MMDS and ITFS rules by WCA and others had received some “push-back” among Commission staff members who were concerned about its complexity. Earlier this year, the FCC adopted a proposal that would move away from a regulatory approach for the Instructional TV Fixed Service (ITFS) and Multichannel Distribution Service (MDS) that was widely seen as not going far enough to foster new technology applications such as high-speed data services. Last fall, the Wireless Bureau sought comments on a proposal by MDS and ITFS industry groups that sought to revamp those legacy regulations, including elimination of site-by-site licensing requirements and changes in interference rules to segregate high-power and low-power operations. “We have proposed some complicated interference rules because it’s a complicated situation,” he said. Among some staff members there’s a tendency to prefer existing PCS rules as a model because of their simplicity, he said. But Sinderbrand said that in many cases, the promise of flexibility held out by the PCS rules hadn’t come to pass. “It’s a flexible use service where nobody has really taken advantage of flexibility,” he said of the PCS rules.

On the spectrum leasing rules adopted by the FCC last week (CD May 16 p1), several panelists said questions remained about how secondary markets would work in practice under those policy changes, with last week’s news release leaving several details unanswered. “The devil will be in the details in the report and order,"” Sinderbrand said, saying MMDS and ITFS operators had long undertaken leasing arrangements. The item was the product “of a lot of last- minute politicking going back and forth,” he said, saying one question was how much enforcement muscle the Commission would put behind the new rules. “The news release is silent on how secondary markets are implemented in practice,” added attorney Mitchell Lazarus, co-chmn. of the Fixed Wireless Communications Coalition (FWCC). Several panelists said they still were awaiting the “fine print” of the order before assessing its full impact. UTC’s Lyon said the order looked like “this is going to be a great opportunity, primarily for commercial operators.” She said it was likely to have less of an effect on the “mission critical” applications of utilities and other critical infrastructure providers that often were reluctant to use anything but their own spectrum for such systems.

Washington attorney Carlos Nalda, representing the Satellite Industry Assn. (SIA), said SIA had raised some concerns about spectrum policy proposals laid out in last fall’s Spectrum Policy Task Force report, particularly on receiver performance standards and the interference temperature. The idea of an interference temperature speaks to some of the coordination issues that crop up between satellite systems and fixed service operations, he said. Satellite earth station links can be 22,000 miles long, meaning satellite receivers are very sensitive to interference because signal strength is low: “The need to protect those links is real,” he said.