Changes Sought for TV White Spaces Rules
Motorola Solutions, NCTA, Cellular South and the Wireless Internet Service Providers Association all filed petitions for reconsideration at the FCC last week, asking it to make changes to white spaces rules. The commission approved an order on use of the TV white spaces at its Sept. 23 meeting. The agency said the band can be used for “super Wi-Fi."
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Broadcasters have been silent. “At this point we do not intend to file a reconsideration petition,” David Donovan, president of the Association for Maximum Service Television.
Motorola asked the FCC to tweak its adjacent channel out-of-band emissions (OOBE) restrictions, arguing that the rules as written could “seriously impede” development of white spaces devices. “The adopted limits for suppressing OOBE far exceed industry standards for IEEE 802.11 and IEEE 802.16 compliant technologies,” the company said. “This will preclude the use of existing, off-the-shelf spectrally efficient technologies and require the development of unique transmitter and variable frequency filtering solutions.”
The rules would put white spaces devices “at a distinct disadvantage” compared to “unlicensed devices designed to operate in the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands and will likely threaten” their “economic viability,” Motorola said. It recommended that the regulator change its rules to impose with less stringent adjacent channel OOBE attenuation requirements for white spaces devices “when they are operated at certain, specified distances beyond the protected contours of adjacent channel television stations.” Motorola was one of the most active companies at the FCC when the commission ran various tests on the potential interference to broadcast and cable TV from the use of white spaces devices.
NCTA said it had continuing concerns about interference from white spaces devices, but was asking for a narrow rule change regarding an FCC decision to make all information in the TV white spaces database publicly available for unrestricted browsing. This information includes the precise geographic coordinates of cable headends and tower receive sites, the cable association noted. These are “sensitive, critical infrastructure for broadband Internet, voice over IP, emergency alert messaging and other critical communications services.” The commission should require all database managers to put in place “security measures, protocols and procedures” to protect this information, NCTA said.
Cellular South asked the FCC to protect lower block A licensees operating on former TV channel 52 from adjacent channel interference. The order failed to take these licensees into account, the carrier said. This is apparently the case because much of this proceeding predated the award of authorizations for wireless operation in the lower 700 MHz band. Cellular South asked the commission to permit base stations in the band to register with the white spaces database, prohibit operation of fixed white spaces devices in channel 51 and limit the use of personal/portable devices there.
The Wireless Internet Service Providers Association asked the FCC to reconsider a decision to impose a 76-meter height above average terrain restriction on the location of sites for fixed TV white space devices, in its petition for partial reconsideration. Last month, WISPA asked the FCC to make the change “on its own motion,” following a different procedure (CD Dec 16 p4). The Federation of Internet Solution Providers of the Americas, the Native American Broadband Association, Spectrum Bridge, Comsearch, Carlson Wireless Technologies and Wireless Strategies, Inc. supported WISPA.