Cingular Wireless and the Satellite Industry Assn. (SIA) asked th...

Sec. 301 of the Communications Act, which bars wireless transmissions without a license and “unquestionably requires a license for all low- power transmissions.” As a result, Cingular said, the Commission can’t authorize UWB operations on an unlicensed basis. It told the agency that Congress had identified 4 services in which spectrum use could be permitted without a license and that UWB didn’t fall into any of them. “The Commission’s authority to permit unlicensed UWB operations is therefore nonexistent,” Cingular said: “Once these devices proliferate, there will be no way to cure the interference they cause. This was a problem Sec. 301 was intended to prevent.” Cingular and other wireless companies have contended that the FCC erred in allowing UWB devices to operate under Part 15, in part because there hasn’t been extensive enough testing of the impact on commercial mobile radio service (CMRS) operations and Enhanced 911. Some commenters said the FCC should have conducted tests using actual UWB devices before granting authorization. Cingular said in its May 22 petition that the FCC’s UWB decisions were arbitrary and capricious: “The Commission recognized that any changes to Part 15 must continue to insulate FCC licensees from harmful interference and that, given the importance of this noninterference condition, it ’should be cautious until it has gained further experience with this technology.’ Yet the Commission rejected every conservative measure proposed by the CMRS industry to protect their operations from harmful interference and to ensure that UWB devices do not interfere with E911 calls.” It said the FCC moved forward without “an adequate test record,” even though its Technical Advisory Committee had suggested testing would be critical in any UWB decision. In a separate petition and engineering analysis, SIA said the FCC should revamp its UWB rules because they exposed fixed satellite service (FSS) operations in 4 GHz downlink bands to harmful interference. Rollout of “ubiquitous” UWB devices will interfere with C- band downlinks, creating concern for satellite operators because FSS systems make wide use of that band, SIA said. Those frequencies are used for program distribution to cable headends and radio/TV broadcast stations, broadband communications to Navy vessels, commercial weather data distribution to airlines and position location for truck fleets. “UWB interference could jeopardize the billions of dollars that FSS operators, customers and distributors have invested in FSS systems for commercial and national security purposes and could interrupt vital FSS services,” said SIA, which is seeking reconsideration of an earlier FCC rejection of a previous challenge by the group. SIA said the earlier denial was based on criticisms of the association’s findings “that do not withstand scrutiny,” the petition said. SIA argued that the interference-to-noise ratio adopted by the Commission, unlike that used by SIA, would expose FSS earth station receivers to harmful interference.