Neology Disputes NextNav's Technical Claims as 900 MHz Fight Continues
Neology, which provides a platform for tolling services that uses the 900 MHz band, filed a technical study at the FCC this week challenging arguments by NextNav in support of its proposal to use the spectrum for a “terrestrial complement” to GPS for positioning, navigation and timing (PNT).
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NextNav “asks the Commission to believe that placing enough high-power 5G base stations in the band to reach everywhere in the country with four overlapping signals -- and having every mobile phone in the country configured to operate on those same frequencies -- would have no harmful impact on any current users of the band,” said Neology's filing, posted Monday in docket 24-240. NextNav’s technology studies “rely on faulty assumptions, omit critical issues, and even model the use of far lower power levels” than those it requests to use for PNT.
“We stand by our engineering and are confident in our comprehensive technical analysis," said NextNav Vice President of Regulatory Affairs Renee Gregory in an emailed statement. It "found that 5G-powered 3D PNT would impose minimal costs related to licensed tolling operations, limited to potential retuning of a subset of tolling operators’ toll readers.”
Meanwhile, NextNav board member Wyman Howard met with FCC Commissioner Olivia Trusty in support of the company's proposal. Moving forward on the plan would send “a signal to adversaries that we’re awake and have buttoned down our vulnerabilities and filled the gaps they’re counting on to exploit,” Howard said in a filing last week. A "layered" architecture, including at least one terrestrial component, says “we’re not leaving anything to chance.”
In another FCC filing Tuesday in docket 12-202, Progeny submitted a progress report on the construction and operation of its multilateration location and monitoring service licenses, which stressed their use by affiliate NextNav. “NextNav has continued to build a comprehensive record upon which the Commission can move forward” on an NPRM “to enable 5G-based 3D PNT in the lower 900 MHz band.”