FCC Needs More Scientific Evidence to Assess Overall Problem of Radio Interference, Hatfield Says

"There are a lot more sources of interference out there than there used to be, but I want to make the case that they are individually less interfering,” said Mitchell Lazarus of Fletcher Heald. “A lot of the devices that are alleged to be causing interference, in fact, have a lot of social value.” Lazarus said he makes his living sitting in meetings at the FCC “arguing that some low-power broadband device is going to be very useful to society [with] literally no interference to other users.” Lazarus said he has advocated everything from high-speed Wi-Fi, ultra-sideband and broadband-over-powerline devices, to airport body scanners. “All of these are interference sources to somebody … but they also deliver value to society and it’s important to take than value into account,” he said. “Every band has incumbents -- there’s no empty spectrum,” Lazarus said. “The incumbents will typically oppose whatever you want to do, regardless of the social value and regardless of how low the actual interference risk is.” In weighing the good and bad of every new device or service the FCC “also has to contend with the incumbents who are saying, ‘Bad, bad, bad,'” he said.

Dale Hatfield, senior fellow at the center and former chief of the FCC Office of Engineering and Technology, said he hears a lot more anecdotes about interference problems than he used to. “The trouble with anecdotes is you don’t know” if they are “a sample that really shows what the overall [problem] is or isolated incidents,” Hatfield said. “We need more scientific-based information to be able to make good decisions here to really determine, is the problem getting better or is it getting worse.”

The FCC staff has a history of balancing interference arguments “objectively” and “professionally,” said David Solomon, former chief of the Enforcement Bureau, now at Wilkinson Barker. “You have kind of the external process of groups coming in, and lobbying from the groups and lobbying from Congress and it often slows things down and it complicates things,” Solomon said. Regulators have to balance the substance of the arguments, he said. “The other level of balancing is the more, quote, political, or stated better … sort of broader policy balancing, and the two kind of work hand-in-hand.” As a result “things just get stalled sometimes,” he said.

Paul Margie of Wiltshire Grannis, a former FCC wireless adviser, said interference concerns have a positive side as well. “We are having this problem because we have so much more use, so much more innovation,” he said. While some consideration should be given to noise-floor issues, “we have to, before we do that, recognize that this is a good problem to have, and it’s a lot better than the alternative of having a system that produces less utility or hinders innovation,” Margie said. He pointed to the debate over LightSquared’s proposal to use its spectrum for terrestrial service. “In LightSquared there were people who were arguing that the reduction in overall value of GPS service … has an enormous value,” he said. “On the other side people were saying the new technology had an enormous value. I don’t want to say which one of those is right, but I think if that’s the kind of conversation we're having, that’s a good conversation.”

Rebecca Dorch, director of the Western Region for the FCC Enforcement Bureau, said she has few staffers available to handle interference complaints. The agency’s primary emphasis as a result is to respond to complaints about interference to public safety or critical infrastructure, Dorch said. “It’s sometimes very hard for us to take the measurements to establish whether there’s interference or not,” she said. “It’s much easier for us to determine whether or not someone is compliant with the [FCC’s] technical rules.”