CROSS-BORDER ISSUES REMAIN IN 800 MHZ REBANDING OPTIONS

Although cross-border coordination issues raised by 800 MHz rebanding proposals have gotten less public attention than other issues in the proceeding, “it’s very important,” an industry source said: “The interoperability channels are very important. We do have to get that taken care of.” The IC filing was finalized in late March but didn’t appear among FCC documents until Oct. 29.

The “consensus plan” backed by Nextel, the Assn. of Public Safety Communications Officials and the Industrial Telecom Assn. (ITA) would mitigate interference to public safety users at 800 MHz through a rebanding proposal. It would involve reconfiguring the 700, 800 and 900 MHz bands, with Nextel exchanging spectrum it has in each of those bands for spectrum elsewhere, including 10 MHz at 1.9 GHz. Nextel has agreed to pay up to $850 million to relocate private wireless and public safety incumbents. A competing plan backed by CTIA, the United Telecom Council (UTC) and others focuses on best practices and other techniques for fixing interference. The FCC reportedly is still weighing several scenarios for how it would ease interference to public safety incumbents at 800 MHz. One scenario apparently would give Nextel something less than the full 10 MHz it has been seeking at 1.9 GHz, several sources said, including the possibility of just 6 MHz.

The scenarios being weighed at the FCC reportedly run the “full gamut” of issues in the proceeding, a source said. Numerous sources said interest at the FCC appeared to be leaning toward some version of rebanding, although that didn’t mean that other possibilities were off the table. Under a scenario in which Nextel would get less than the 10 MHz it seeks at 1.9 GHz, one possibility appeared to be 2 blocks of 3 MHz, a source said.

Nextel has said its plan, including the funding commitment, is a complete package, but it hasn’t indicated publicly what it would do if the FCC approved less than the full scope of the consensus proposal. Depending on how much less spectrum the agency might ask the carrier to accept in a swap, a source said: “At a certain point, it’s not feasible anymore and it’s up to Nextel to say how little they could live with.”

Industry Canada outlined numerous sharing arrangements with the FCC for the use of spectrum along the border, saying many Canadian licensees depended on those arrangements for “everyday operations.” Arrangements involving 800 MHz operations along the border include 806-821/851-866 MHz and 821-824/866-869 MHz. For “equitable access” to spectrum along the border, IC said it had created special sharing arrangements with the FCC for frequencies between 806-824 and 851-869 MHz. In each of 3 “sharing zones” and 2 sectors, it said frequency blocks were assigned to each country for “unrestricted geographic use.”

The consensus plan would divide the 800 MHz band into 2 contiguous spectrum blocks, with public safety, business/industrial land transportation (B/ILT) and specialized mobile radio licensees remaining in the 20 MHz noncellular block. Nextel would relocate to a 16 MHz cellular block in that band. The proposal would create a guard band in the noncellular block at 814-816 and 859-861 MHz for low-power systems and other B/ILT licensees. “Since the consensus plan proposed a new frequency band for PS [public safety], the mutual aid channels will no longer be part of the U.S. public safety spectrum block, which will be redesigned for low-site, low-power licensees,” the IC said. Under the consensus plan, Canadian public safety users operating mutual aid channels might need to buy new equipment “because their current equipment can’t be retuned to the lower portion of the 800 MHz band,” the filing said. Canadian licensees operating within certain power flux density restrictions might have to move, it said.

In other areas, IC cited special sharing arrangements, including an agreement with the N.Y. State Police for the shared use of parts of the 800 MHz band for a 30 km radius around the Kitchener-Waterloo, Ont., area. Canada has full use of the spectrum but is subject to certain restrictions. The consensus plan would reallocate 823.1-824/868.1-864 MHz for cellularized operations, IC said. Other special sharing arrangements involve systems in Mich. and Ohio, it said. “Channels were successfully coordinated to control interference from the other country’s stations,” the IC said. “The reallocation of licensees out of this spectrum block will certainly affect this arrangement and may cause some concerns to many IC users,” it said.

Backers of the consensus plan told the FCC earlier that their proposal included proposed border area realignment plans that would separate public safety and cellular systems “to the maximum extent possible.” They said “no current primary border area licensee will lose any channels due to realignment and secondary use of Mexican and Canadian channels by U.S. licensees in the U.S. border area is preserved.”

UTC Gen. Counsel Jill Lyon said many of her group’s members used 800 MHz sites for critical infrastructure operations on the Mexican or Canadian borders. “The border issues are extremely important to those folks,” she said. “In the consensus plan, those systems don’t see how they can continue to operate,” she said.