Parties Disagree on Spectrum in FCC Comments on WRC-Related Proposals
Boeing said the FCC is on the right track in proposing spectrum for Aeronautical Mobile (Route) Service (AM(R)S) and the Aeronautical Mobile Service (AMS). The assertion came in comments filed last week in docket 15-99. The Fixed Wireless Communications Coalition (FWCC) said the 6 GHz band isn't an appropriate place for AMS operations. The FCC proposed in an April order some fairly arcane changes to how spectrum is allocated, implementing decisions made at the World Radiocommunications Conferences held in 2007 and 2012. The agency got back a handful of comments posted before its electronic filing system went dark Wednesday as part of an overhaul of FCC systems.
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Boeing said representatives of the company participated in the two WRCs. “As the world’s largest aerospace company and a leading manufacturer of commercial aircraft and defense, space, and security systems, Boeing is constantly engaged in product development and flight testing,” Boeing said. “Flight test operations require sensitive receive antennas that are highly susceptible to harmful interference.” Boeing supported a primary allocation for the AMS in the 5091-5150 MHz band and the allocation of the 108-117.975 MHz band for the AM(R)S .
But the FWCC said the FCC shouldn't allocate various 6 GHz bands for aeronautical mobile telemetry (AMT) operations. There's “high likelihood” these operations would interfere with fixed-service (FS) use of the spectrum, the group said. “Operations in these bands support a wide variety of critical services such as public safety communications (including police and fire vehicle dispatch), coordinating the movement of trains, controlling natural gas and oil pipelines, regulating the electric grid, and backhauling wireless traffic,” the FWCC said. “All of these operations have extreme need of high reliability and protection from harmful interference. It is difficult to envision how the proposed AMT operations will adequately guarantee that these needs are met.”
The Utilities Telecom Council (UTC) opposed another proposal -- to allow amateur radio operators to use the 135.7-137.8 kHz band, which is used for power line carrier (PLC) systems that control power grid operations. The systems are a “mainstay" of utility operations, used to instantly isolate a fault on the electric grid. The FCC is right to propose a separation distance between PLC and amateur operations, the group said. “This separation distance should be supplemented by a limit on output power and antenna height, as well,” UTC said. UTC also urged the FCC to “elevate the status” of PLC systems relative to amateur radio operations. “This is appropriate given the relative importance of PLC systems and the experimental nature of the proposed Amateur operations in the band,” the utility group said.
The American Radio Relay League supported, in particular, an FCC proposal allocating the 472-479 kHz band to the amateur service on a secondary basis, amending the rules to provide for use of the 2200-meter and 630-meter bands while protecting incumbent users from interference and amending the Part 80 rules to permanently authorize radio buoy operations in the 1900-2000 kHz band under a ship station license on what is essentially a “blanket” basis. “ARRL is appreciative of the Commission’s actions and proposals in this proceeding to date which overall are responsive to the needs of the Amateur Service,” the group said. “Restoration” of the primary allocation amateur radio at 1900-2000 kHz “allows reasonable flexibility in ongoing experimentation and research in the … band once again,” ARRL said. Allocation of the 2200-meter band, “together with the proposal to adopt flexible rules for the use of that first [low-frequency] allocation, and the proposal to allocate the 630-meter band for Amateur use” “complete at least a basic complement of Amateur Radio allocations in all portions of the radio spectrum domestically.”