AIA Wants FCC NPRM on Spectrum for Drones
The Aerospace Industries Association hopes the FCC acts soon on its longstanding request for technical and operational rules for using the 5030-5091 MHz band for unmanned aircraft systems controls. The FCC reallocated the band in 2017 in an order in docket 15-99 implementing changes from the 2012 World Radiocommunication Conference. AIA petitioned in February 2018 asking the FCC to follow up.
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Lawyers who follow drone issues told us the FAA had initial concerns with the petition but later dropped any objections. If the FAA asked for a hold, the commission would be unlikely to act, they said. The FAA and the FCC didn’t comment Thursday.
In April 2018, the Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau sought comment on the petition in RM-11798. CTIA said then (see 1805300049) the FCC needed more information before moving to an NPRM and the AIA petition was vague. Talks followed with CTIA and the Small Unmanned Aerial Vehicles Coalition. The coalition this week outlined the groups' discussions and offered caveats (see 1909110033).
“This has been something that’s been 18 months in the making,” Max Fenkell, AIA director-unmanned and emerging aviation technologies, told us Wednesday. The association filed a clarification in June. “We have been communicating” with CTIA, the UAV coalition and others “to really see this thing to get to an NPRM,” Fenkell said. “The NPRM is the right place to have these conversations because no NPRM when it’s released is ever perfect. Industry can talk all they want, but until the NPRM comes out, we need the comment period to talk to the FCC, we need ex partes to talk to the FCC and all that happens and all that can happen when an NPRM is released.”
Many UAS operations won’t need the spectrum, Fenkell said. “This is meant for large [drones] that have a complex payload where you need the reliability that comes with aviation safety spectrum,” he said: “This is not necessarily meant for package delivery or small UAS operations. … We’ve been very clear since the get-go this is not meant for every UAS application. That would be very impractical.” Companies are manufacturing equipment that works in the band, but operators have to obtain an FCC experimental license, Fenkell said. “That’s no way to run a business,” he said. “For all of industry’s sake, we need to get this moving forward.”
The UAV coalition’s “main concern was that the AIA petition for rulemaking sort of accurately reflect what it is that AIA seeks,” said Gregory Guice of McGuireWoods Consulting, the drone group's outside counsel. The coalition wanted to make sure the discussions were “fully memorialized in the record so that the FCC, the party best able to make the call, can decide whether it’s appropriate to move forward of not,” he said. CTIA didn't comment.
Jonathan Rupprecht, a lawyer who specializes in drones, said the rulemaking is “very important” to the drone community. “As these aircraft get further and further away, there is a problem with command and control,” he said. At some point, drones will need dedicated spectrum because of limitations of unlicensed bands, he said.