T-Band Questions Raised as FCC Updates APCO; 800 MHz Rebanding Nearly Complete
BALTIMORE -- The T band remains a big concern for some APCO members, based on questions at an FCC session Tuesday at the group's annual meeting. Commission officials didn’t focus on the band during a presentation, but almost all the questions afterwards were on the topic. “I didn’t know it would be the first question, but I did know it would be one of the questions,” joked Public Safety Bureau Deputy Chief David Furth, who led the session.
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Congress should consider letting public safety keep the T band, GAO recommends (see 1906210050). New York and 10 other large cities use the band, to be auctioned in 2021 absent congressional action. Congress asked GAO to look at the T band and the FCC worked with the auditor's staff on the report, Furth said. “We at the FCC have to follow the law as it stands and at least as it stands now, Congress has not changed the law,” Furth said. “We have an obligation to meet the requirements of the law and to do it in a responsible way.”
Furth downplayed concerns by some licensees that without issuing a public notice, the FCC stopped processing applications for Part 90 license renewals for the T band (see 1907170043). “Whether or not we process them, the status quo is maintained for those licenses,” Furth told us: “No licensee is being put in jeopardy if they file a renewal application and we don’t act on it.”
APCO annually gets an update from Furth. This year, he brought staffers who do much of the FCC’s work on public safety. Interest appeared high, with attendees packing a small meeting room to overflow.
The agency, working with Sprint, is very near completion of the 800 MHz rebanding, designed to eliminate interference by separating its signals from public safety communications, said Chief Michael Wilhelm of the Policy and Licensing Division. The entire band has been retuned except for 25 stations on the U.S.-Mexico border, Wilhelm said. “This is significant,” he said: Sprint and licensees succeeded in rebanding more than 2,171 licensees since the start in 2002. Public safety interference complaints are now “very small,” Wilhelm said. “What we set out to do in 2002, we succeeded in doing.” Wilhelm hopes next year he can report the process is finished.
Wilhelm said the FCC is still considering use of the 6 GHz band by Wi-Fi and other unlicensed devices and hopes for a quick decision. “It’s not a greenfield band,” he said. “There are critical public safety and other microwave systems.” Proponents of opening the band note that devices would transmit at low power levels, he said. APCO and others warn a large of number of devices would be inference risks, he said.
“We’re looking at some potential solutions,” Wilhelm said: “One of them obviously is improving the performance of the microwave receivers.” The FCC is also looking at limiting the devices to indoor use, he said. Ray Baum’s law requires the FCC to look for more unlicensed spectrum, he noted, The demand for unlicensed devices is “overwhelming,” he said. “There are many, many, many thousands of devices in a typical neighborhood.”
The commission is considering the future of the 4.9 GHz band, now exclusively licensed to public safety, Wilhelm said. The band “hasn’t really lived up to its full potential,” he said. Several licensees use it “for innovative purposes, but across the country, that band is fairly lightly used.” By allowing wider use of the band, the FCC could potentially expand the user base, which could mean a “better marketplace for public safety to purchase 4.9 equipment,” Wilhelm said.