Wireless Carriers Warn of Interference from Airborne Platforms
The FCC should proceed with caution as it considers the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), balloon-mounted systems and other aerial base stations that could be quickly dispatched to disaster areas to keep communications alive when other systems falter, CTIA said. The Public Safety Bureau sought comment about low-altitude aerial telecommunications systems in a Jan. 28 public notice. Many of the responses were posted by the FCC Tuesday.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Communications Daily is required reading for senior executives at top telecom corporations, law firms, lobbying organizations, associations and government agencies (including the FCC). Join them today!
Emergency systems pose interference concerns for CMRS services still operating after disaster strikes because of the density of low power sites used in cellularized architecture, CTIA said. Any deployments must be coordinated with carriers beforehand, CTIA said. “Ultimately, the Commission should ensure that any such deployments avoid hampering the ability of consumers to make and receive calls and wireless providers to maintain or restore commercial service promptly in a disaster area,” the group said.
CTIA said the commission has recognized the valuable role wireless played following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Hurricane Katrina and other disasters. “The risk of inserting aerial transmissions includes interference to commercial wireless systems that successfully maintained operations in the disaster area or that will restore service promptly,” CTIA said.
Sprint Nextel said it has examined the role airborne systems could play in disaster communications and determined that the “interference risks associated with aerial platforms outweigh their potential benefits.” Aerial platforms pose a threat because they operate at a higher altitude than cell towers covering a much larger section of the earth’s surface, the carrier said. “Sprint Nextel’s network is engineered such that most cell sites reuse all of its licensed frequencies in a given area,” the carrier observed. “Any overlap of signals from an aerial platform with coverage from a functioning terrestrial site can easily create co-channel interference."
The National Public Safety Telecommunications Council was more enthusiastic, noting that in 2008 it filed a petition for rulemaking at the FCC asking that 24 12.5 kHz 700 MHz reserved channels be assigned for deployable trunked systems. “Mounting the trunking system infrastructure aboard an aircraft would allow for immediate use in an impacted area as soon as the aircraft reached the scene above the disaster,” NPSTC said.
While aerial telecommunications architecture may have a role to play in disaster response, satellites offer far more in terms of coverage and “rapidity of deployment,” said the Satellite Industry Association. UAVs and balloons operate at far lower altitudes than satellites, limiting their coverage areas, SIA said. Such satellites are already deployed and can quickly be positioned for service, while UAVs and balloons require more preparation, the association said. SIA said the rules for the architecture, especially in terms of specific spectrum use, should be developed through a rulemaking to make certain they fully protect satellite services.
ViaSat’s satellite network could be adapted to “support the aerial platforms anticipated” by the FCC, the company said in its comments. ViaSat has aeronautical mobile satellite services authorization and could use that “to provide critical backhaul and other connectivity” to the platforms, it said. ViaSat is “actively exploring ways to complement the capabilities of those platforms,” it said. ViaSat said it can also play a role when the aerial platforms are impractical, for instance, by providing backpack-sized earth terminals that could serve as Wi-Fi hotspots or connect handsets to the PSTN over satellite.