Tech, ISP Groups Urge FCC to Reject 6 GHz Stay Request
The Wi-Fi Alliance, NCTA and others urged the FCC to reject a request that it stop certifying low-power indoor (LPI) devices in the 6 GHz band, sought by the Utilities Technology Council and others (see 2112080058). Utilities supported the stay, citing the results of recent field tests by Southern Co.
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“The recent Request for Stay is simply another attempt to re-litigate the outcome of the 6 GHz Order -- an effort that is already underway at the Court of Appeals and which … Petitioners are now barred from pursuing at the Commission,” the alliance said. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit is considering a challenge to the order (see 2109170057). “Petitioners cannot seek reconsideration and instead fabricate a process that does not exist in order to justify a stay request,” said the alliance filing posted Wednesday in docket 18-295: “Petitioners are time-barred from seeking reconsideration under the Commission’s rules” since a recon petition must be filed within 30 days of publication of an order, and the 6 GHz order was published May 28, 2020.
Southern said the threat is real. “Southern’s electric utility operations will … be exposed to immediate and significant risk that will result in irreparable harm to the public absent a stay,” the utility holding company said: “Actual field testing of FCC-certified LPI devices operating under real-world conditions confirmed that such devices will in fact cause harmful interference to licensed fixed microwave systems in the 6 GHz band.”
Without a stay “there will be a significant increasing risk of irreparable and imminent harm to communications necessary for electric reliability, as well as the welfare and safety of workers and the general public,” said FirstEnergy: Southern tests “showed the potential for harmful interference to licensed 6 GHz microwave systems ... was significantly higher than theoretical modeling previously demonstrated.”
PacifiCorp said it uses 6 GHz for transmission line protection. Even the briefest interruption “could allow damage from a fault to quickly cascade beyond the immediate area of the fault, causing widespread electric outages and potentially millions of dollars of damage to the power grid and/or threaten other property or persons on or near the transmission system,” the utility wrote.
The "order adopted conservative rules allowing unlicensed LPI operations, including consumer Wi-Fi, to share 1200 megahertz of spectrum in the 6 GHz band while protecting incumbent users,” said NCTA: It's “the culmination of a careful multi-year review of an extensive record that included input from a wide variety of stakeholders, including Petitioners and other utility and public safety users.”
New America’s Open Technology Institute and Public Knowledge also opposed a stay. “The Commission is not required to address repetitive requests without a substantial new basis in fact or law, both of which Petitioners have failed to provide,” they said: “There is no evidence that harmful interference will result from the authorization or use of LPI devices in the 6 GHz band.”
Petitioners “seek a truly extraordinary outcome via a procedurally improper stay request,” said Apple, Broadcom, Cisco, Facebook, Google, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Intel, Microsoft, Meta Platforms and Qualcomm: “Petitioners would have the Commission upend all 6 GHz LPI operations for years, until after the Commission ‘has completed a further rulemaking to develop new rules for the operation of unlicensed operations ... in the 6 GHz band’ in response to their Petition for Rulemaking, which is in fact a late-filed petition for reconsideration.”