The FCC shouldn’t adopt new receiver interference immunity perfor...

by users with different characteristics can undermine market incentives, stifle innovation and raise costs for consumers.” PanAmSat said existing receiver requirements the FCC had adopted for adjacent satellite interference at 2 degrees spacing determined receiver specifications, creating an incentive for manufacturers to protect their own devices. However, additional requirements will increase manufacturing and equipment costs and possibly stifle innovation, PanAmSat said. If the Commission must create new parameters, the company said, directionality of receivers should be taken into account. The Satellite Industry Assn. (SIA) agreed with PanAmSat saying in its own comments that new requirements could “freeze” the development of satellite technology: “Satellite operators should be free to implement new technologies and improve the quality of their service. Otherwise, they may lose the ability to provide services that are competitive with terrestrial offerings and available throughout the U.S. at prices that are distance insensitive.” Meanwhile, Mobile Satellite Ventures (MSV) told the Commission that it should consider adopting standards, particularly in the L-band (1-2 GHz), based on concerns raised in the ancillary terrestrial component (ATC) proceeding. The company said Inmarsat’s opposition to the implementation of ATC was based on the fact that its mobile terminals were particularly sensitive to interference: “Because the Commission has not established performance standards for L-band mobile terminals, Inmarsat can claim any overload threshold for its terminals in order to needlessly restrict the power and location of its competitors’ base stations.” MSV proposed 2 solutions: (1) Adoption of a minimum overload threshold for L-band mobile terminals by using a “best practices” overload threshold. The mobile terminal least susceptible to interference would be used as the “best practices” terminal and no interference protection could be sought when exceeding the overload threshold. (2) Claims of certain overload thresholds must be proved with testing data: “By floating such exaggerated claims of overload susceptibility before the Commission without any technical support, opponents of spectrum flexibility place the Commission and other proponents of spectrum flexibility in the difficult position of having to disprove these claims.”