C-Band Alliance, Content Companies Pushing Safeguards
The C-Band Alliance has no problems with safeguards some content companies want to see in any C-band transition plan to protect video downlinks, it said in an FCC docket 18-122 posting Wednesday. The CBA said it will be talking specific…
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provisions, including technical rules, the FCC could adopt to implement such safeguards. The content companies, earlier this month recapping meetings with aides to Chairman Ajit Pai and the other commissioners, said those safeguards must include having at least 300 MHz available for video downlinks in the repacked C band, meaning no more than 200 MHz of C band can be repurposed. They said protecting those downlinks from interference include having a sufficient guard band, reasonable power limits for 5G base stations and mobile units, minimizing out-of-band emissions and guaranteeing any earth station filters meet or surpass any assumed levels of radiofrequency rejection. They argued against allowing fixed point-to-multipoint transmissions in the repacked C band as making "a difficult spectrum management task impossible." They said the FCC could incentivize spectrum repacking that protects video downlinks by requiring that companies selling spectrum rights wouldn't see profits until after finishing a transition of incumbents and a provision of agreed-on protections to video downlinks, while not allowing mobile users to start operations in a given market until the repack is done. The content companies were CBS, Discovery, Disney, Fox and Univision.