Sprint, NAB File Recon Petitions on Interservice Interference
The FCC should reconsider its plan for dealing with interservice interference after the incentive auction, said NAB and Sprint in reconsideration petitions posted Friday in docket 12-268. The commission's method for predicting interference from TV stations to wireless uses “severely…
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underestimates the real-world level of interference that could result,” Sprint said. FCC methodology is “unnecessarily complex, will not lead to accurate predictions and creates needless uncertainty and risk for bidders in the forward auction,” said NAB. The association also took the commission to task for not instituting a cap on interference and population losses in the repacking, a complaint in tune with its ongoing court challenge against the incentive auction order for not sufficiently protecting broadcast coverage areas. The NAB petition also uses language commonly associated with the threat of litigation: “The Commission should revisit its arbitrary and capricious treatment of aggregate caps on such losses.” Sprint wants the FCC to use a different statistical measure for calculating interference within a 600 MHz spectrum block, while NAB wants to completely revamp the commission's approach to the problem. Adopting a simpler methodology would “increase confidence that winning bidders in the forward auction will actually be able to deploy service using the licenses they have won,” NAB said.