You will find more details on the significant March meeting items after the break:

Spectrum Horizons: The draft Order would establish a new type of experimental license for operations between 95 GHz and 3 THz, which the FCC asserts is ripe for next-generation, short-range data links and sensing applications. The new licenses would be available for a maximum 10-year term to encourage durable investments in experimental operations. The FCC also would permit licensees to sell experimental devices directly to the public – a major change from traditional FCC policy that limits such sales only to other experimental licensees. Moreover, the FCC expects to make more than 21 gigahertz available for unlicensed use in the 116-123 GHz, 174.8-182 GHz, 185-190 GHz, and 224-246 GHz bands. The proposal includes interference protections for current “passive” uses of the spectrum horizons frequencies, including radio astronomy, earth exploration satellites, and space research. The FCC would defer action on non-experimental licensed use of the spectrum horizons frequencies, but may initiate another rulemaking after assessing the results of newly-authorized experimental and unlicensed operations.

900 MHz Broadband: The draft Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (“NPRM”) would seek to reconfigure the 900 MHz band (896-901 MHz and 935-940 MHz) to facilitate new broadband operations. Specifically, the FCC would request input on creating a paired segment of the band for wireless broadband operations, licensed on a county-by-county basis, while reserving the remainder of the band for existing private land mobile radio operations. The Commission also would inquire whether it should allocate the entire 900 MHz band to wireless broadband operations and relocate incumbents to other frequencies. The draft proposes three options for clearing out incumbent operations: (1) a voluntary exchange process allowing existing licensees to agree to a band transition plan with broadband providers in exchange for payment; (2) an auction of “overlay” licenses to broadband providers that would pay the relocation costs of incumbent operations; and (3) an incentive auction where incumbent operators would receive a payout based on the price of the new licenses won at auction. mobile now

Spectrum Partitioning, Disaggregation, and Leasing: The draft NPRM would implement part of the MOBILE NOW ACT enacted in 2018, which required the FCC to initiate a rulemaking exploring potential improvements to its spectrum partitioning, disaggregation, and leasing procedures to increase the availability of advanced telecommunications in rural areas and provided by smaller carriers. In particular, the NPRM would explore whether the FCC should ease the performance requirements imposed on partitioned or disaggregated licenses and reduce the procedural hurdles involved in secondary market spectrum transactions. The Commission also would seek input on incentivizing spectrum leasing arrangements by streamlining performance requirements while ensuring carriers still meet their buildout obligations.

911 Location Accuracy: The draft Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (“FNPRM”) would ask whether the FCC should require wireless carriers to transmit vertical (or z-axis) location information to within three meters of the handset for 80 percent of 911 calls. The FCC plans to reject a more lenient, five-meter location accuracy standard proposed by CTI, which received criticism from public safety entities. The location information would assist first responders in finding callers in multi-story buildings and supplement already-required latitude and longitude data. The location accuracy requirement would apply to the four nationwide mobile carriers on April 3, 2021, within the top 25 Cellular Market Areas (“CMAs”), and apply to other mobile carriers a year later (April 3, 2022). The proposed transition beyond the top 25 CMAs extends another two years, until April 3, 2023, for CMAs 26-50, for the nationwide carriers, and through April 3, 2024, for other carriers in those markets. The FCC’s proposal concludes that nearly all smartphones in the market are equipped with barometric pressure sensors, but cites only to information about the iPhone 6 and later models and the Samsung Galaxy smartphones, which have had barometers since 2011. However, the draft FNPRM asks whether the requirements should only apply to devices manufactured after a date certain, which would help address the continued use of older and refurbished phones without sufficient barometric accuracy. See our post on this item here.

Rural Call Completion Standards: The draft Order would impose service quality standards on intermediate providers (i.e., entities that carry, but do not originate/terminate, voice calls) to improve rural call completion. Under the FCC’s plan, intermediate carriers would be required to take action when they know, or should know, that call completion issues exist. Intermediate carriers also would be required to actively monitor the performance of any other intermediate providers with which they directly contract and address performance issues, including by removing providers that consistently fail to deliver calls from their call routes. In addition, intermediate providers would be responsible for ensuring that any additional intermediate providers to which they hand off calls are registered once the FCC establishes an intermediate provider database later this year. The FCC would not dictate how the intermediate providers must satisfy these standards, providing some flexibility in carrier compliance efforts.

Background:

Use of spectrum above 95 GHz is largely uncharted territory. Apart from several minor authorizations for amateur radio and industrial, scientific, and medical (“ISM”) operations under Part 18, all non-Federal operations in these frequency ranges have only been permitted by the FCC via experimental licenses. Various parts of this extremely broad range of bands are used by radio astronomy and other passive services.

The Commission has used its Spectrum Frontiers proceeding to gauge interest in spectrum above 95 GHz. While several parties filed comments in that proceeding touting a range of both communications and non-communications applications services (including spectroscopy, imaging, and sensing), the Commission took no meaningful steps toward making the band more available. The Draft NPRM would seek comment on (I) possible licensed operations in various frequency ranges; (II) making particular frequency bands available for unlicensed use; and (III) creating a new framework for experimental licenses for spectrum above 95 GHz.

I. Licensed Allocations

The Draft NPRM would propose that rules in these bands may be based on the light-licensing fixed point-to-point rules that currently apply to the 70/80/90 GHz bands which provide for:

• Non-exclusive nationwide licenses in any portion of the bands in question with 10-year terms
• Registration of links through a system maintained by a database manager
• A twelve-month construction requirement (after registration)
• Interference protection based on registration priority

As written, the Draft NPRM requests feedback on whether to permit fixed point-to-multipoint systems in addition to fixed point-to-point links in these bands, and on whether there is any interest in deploying mobile services in spectrum above 95 GHz.

Noting that almost all of the bands in the 95-275 GHz range that would be under consideration are shared bands, the Draft NPRM devotes considerable space to raising issues regarding shared operation of licensed fixed links with other allocated uses, as applicable, including not only FSS and MSS, but radio astronomy, Earth Exploration Satellite Service (“EESS”), the Space Research Service (“SRS”), the Inter-Satellite Service (“ISS”), radiolocation, and radionavigation, as well as sharing between Federal and non-Federal users.

II. Unlicensed Operations

This anticipated proposal comes in the wake of the Commission declining in the November 2017 Spectrum Frontiers orders that, in general, turned a deaf ear to please by Microsoft and others to increase unlicensed opportunities in the range between 24 and 86 GHz. In contrast with that action, the Draft NPRM states that “[p]otential future [unlicensed] applications in these bands [might]include ultra-high definition video, and high-speed data transmission, such as temporary fiber optic line replacement, chip-to-chip communication within computer equipment, and replacement of computer data cables in data centers with wireless links.”

Further, given that these frequencies enable certain non-communications applications of potential interest to industry and research, such as emerging terahertz spectroscopy applications, the Draft NPRM includes queries whether unlicensed operations more properly fall within the Part 18 ISM rules, and what changes in that rule part may be appropriate to accommodate these uses.

III. Experimental Licenses

• Greater Marketing Flexibility by allowing direct sales of experimental equipment used in market trials to trial participants (whereas existing ERS rules only allow limited equipment sales to other ERS licensees during market trials).
• Broader Geographic Scope by giving experimental licensees “substantial flexibility to conduct ... experiments over a wide geographic area ... and adapt their program of experimentation as needed.”
• Longer License Terms namely ten-year term instead of the two- and five-year terms currently available for other ERS licenses.

The FCC is tentatively scheduled to vote on the draft item during the Open Commission Meeting scheduled for February 22. Assuming the item is approved, the Draft NPRM suggests that comments will be due 30 days (and reply comments 45 days) after the date of publication in the Federal Register. The mere issuance of the Draft NPRM is welcome news for a number of equipment and service developers who have been pushing for greater access to these frequency ranges and, if the Commission’s expectations reflected in the draft item are fulfilled, may give others reason to pursue plans that have not been fully ignited because of the lack of formal encouragement to develop a regulatory framework, and greater certainty, in these bands.