The FCC’s Office of Engineering and Technology (OET) has released an Incentive Auction public notice regarding a proposed methodology to predict potential interference between broadcast television and 600 MHz licensed wireless service. OET notes that the FCC’s existing digital television (DTV) interference rules are not directly applicable in the Incentive Auction and do not address interference from DTV into wireless systems. Some Incentive Auction commenters had proposed using a pre-defined separation distance between TV and mobile service areas (ranging from 100 to 500 kilometers) and generally provided limited technical analysis in support of these proposals. However, OET is concerned that establishing pre-defined distances may be “spectrally inefficient and overly conservative.” Accordingly, OET proposes and invites comment on a methodology to accommodate market variation that OET describes as using established planning factors and industry standards and applying commonly used protocols, databases, and propagation models to create a predictive model that can be run on a computer. The public notice sets forth specific topics for comment. Comments on OET’s proposed Incentive Auction interference prediction methodology are due by February 28, 2014.
