DOD Proposal to Share BAS Spectrum Raising Big Concerns for Broadcasters
"Since it appears that the smaller spectrum slice of 1755-1780 can be cleared without any need to impact BAS operations, we have no idea why DOD is making clearing those 25 megahertz contingent on ’sharing’ 85 with us,” said NAB Executive Vice President Rick Kaplan, former chief of the FCC Wireless Bureau. “Moreover, in NTIA’s spectrum report released just last year, DOD asserted that nearly all of its operations could not share spectrum with broadcasters in the BAS band. No new testing has been done, so it’s unclear what has changed. The only thing that has changed recently is that we just finished shrinking our BAS allocation from 120 to 85 megahertz to make way for mobile broadband.”
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Commissioner Ajit Pai said he will take a close look at the DOD proposal. “Since DOD has put it on the table we should seriously consider it” Pai said in an interview last week. “One of the things I intend to do ... is to understand better from both the broadcasting side and from the federal user side what technological opportunities exist in that band and what limitations there are. I don’t have a preconceived notion as to how things should end up. I think that we should do what’s right from a technical and policy perspective.”
The NTIA report (http://1.usa.gov/GVWwr7) said DOD identified the BAS band “as its preferred option to relocate most of its operations.” But at the same time, the report evaluated a number of DOD systems and whether they could share the 2025-2110 MHz spectrum. One of the areas studied was the use of the band for Military Tactical Radio Relay (TRR), tactical communications systems that provide mid- to high-capacity digital information to battlefield commanders. “The prevalence of TRR systems among the Army, Navy, and Marine Corps at many locations across the country would make sharing the band with the current incumbent broadcast auxiliary service (BAS), electronic news gathering (ENG), cable antenna relay service (CARS), and TV auxiliary services impractical,” the report said.
The report reached a similar conclusion regarding the Air Combat Training System, Precision Guided Munitions systems, Aeronautical Mobile Telemetry systems and unmanned aerial systems, unmanned aerial vehicles and remotely piloted vehicles systems deployed by DOD. Sharing of the band with Law Enforcement Mobile Video Surveillance would be “difficult, but may be possible,” the report said.
At the Commerce Spectrum Management Advisory Committee meeting last week (CD July 25 p1), David Donovan, president of the New York State Broadcasters Association, discussed the importance of BAS. “The ability to use electronic news gathering is absolutely critical to getting vital, life saving information out to folks,” Donovan said. Donovan said the recent CSMAC working groups did not examine the potential for interference between military systems and the broadcast BAS service and that given the large protection zones for military systems, which can range for hundreds of kilometers, it may be impossible for these systems to share with broadcast emergency alert systems.
BAS services are essential to provide on the spot coverage of news events from public safety officials, especially during emergencies, Donovan said, saying broadcasters just moved to more advanced digital systems that use less spectrum and there are no available spectrum alternatives. The only potential service is “bonded cellular,” he said. However, that system depends on the survivability of the underlying wireless cellular system, which had significant problems in New York during Superstorm Sandy and during the Boston Marathon bombings, he said. Thus before moving any military systems to new bands, CSMAC should examine impact of such a move on systems already operating in those bands, he said.
The need to cover breaking news events makes sharing the 2025-2110 band extremely difficult, said Consulting Engineer Dane Ericksen, co-chair of Engineers for the Integrity of Broadcast Auxiliary Services Spectrum. The sharing proposal is like “suggesting someone should be allowed to park blocking the fire station drive-way, and saying if something happens we'll negotiate about getting out of the way,” said Ericksen. He said that because the DOD uses of the band are so much more powerful than the use by BAS, interference on the broadcast side is very likely, and the DOD signal could be affected, too. “I don’t see how this would be compatible,” he said.