Satellite, Pay-TV Companies Still Worry About 3.5 GHz Interference Issues
Satellite and pay-TV companies continue to urge protection of C-band satellite operations from small cell operations now approved to operate in the same part of the 3.5 GHz band. While opportunities for spectrum sharing are increasing, satellite operators need to make sure they can operate in the C-band with sufficient protected access, Rebecca Cowen-Hirsch, Inmarsat senior vice president-government strategy and policy, told us: "It's all about good neighbors and technical compatibility."
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Rather than new obligations on fixed satellite services, the FCC "should focus on technological solutions that will prevent disruption of services" needed by FSS earth station customers, the Satellite Industry Association said in a filing posted Aug. 17 in docket 12-354 among the last comments filed in the 3.5 GHz order the agency adopted in April (see 1504210061). The deadline for reply comments in that rulemaking was Aug. 14. "Even strong advocates of introducing terrestrial 3.5 GHz services have recognized that interference prevention is an essential element of any new regulatory framework," SIA said. It pushed back against proposals it said would "limit the level of protection" that FSS earth stations have today from Citizens Broadband Radio Service Devices (CBSD), such as a Google proposal that protection zones be tailored to account for such issues as propagation, terrain, earth station pointing angles and transmitter characteristics, which SIA said would require FSS providers "continually to provide updated technical parameters in order to receive protection from CBSD services." The FCC also should use protection criteria using worst-case assumptions rather than real-time conditions -- as had been advocated by such parties as Google, the Information Technology Industry Council and the Wi-Fi Alliance -- because having to tailor that protection to the real-time conditions of each setting "would be difficult to achieve, unduly burden FSS operators and raise significant confidentiality concerns," SIA said.
CBSDs now can operate adjacent to 3.7 GHz and with less restrictive emission masks, said CBS, Disney, Time Warner, 21st Century Fox and Viacom in a joint submission posted Monday. But they noted that an Alion study indicated protecting a C-Band satellite earth station from a CBSD base station would need nearly 10 kilometers for Category A devices, and more than 16 kilometers for Category B devices. Protection distances due to multiple CBSDs “could be significantly larger,” said the TV programmers. Thus any spectrum access system needs to be proven to protect incumbent operations before CBSDs are deployed, the content companies said.
C-band satellite control operations haven't had technical compatibility problems yet, said Inmarsat's Cowen-Hirsch said. But she noted there also hasn't been a significant influx of commercial uses that could create interference, and the topic will be part of this fall's World Radiocommunication Conference.