Satellite Operators Push for Spectrum Safeguards from UMFU

With the satellite industry increasingly offering broadband speeds and direct-to-home services, it needs enough protected access to greenfield millimeter wave spectrum bands to enable those offerings, the Satellite Industry Association said Tuesday in a filing in FCC docket 14-177. Satellite commenters joined wireless and other interests responding to a spectrum frontiers Further NPRM (see 1610030047). SIA said the FCC needs to ensure satellite systems can locate individually licensed earth stations on a coordinated basis and can deploy user terminals in parts of the upper millimeter wave bands. It said the FCC needs to guarantee V-band satellite systems have enough access to uplink and downlink spectrum for those individually licensed earth stations and end user terminals. The 37.39 GHz, 47 GHz, 50 GHz and 70/80 GHz bands "have substantial existing FSS [fixed satellite service] allocations" and the industry "plans to make intensive use" of that spectrum, SIA said. It backed protection of feeder links in the 24.75-25.25 GHz band and for the FCC to specify that satellite use of that band isn't limited to broadcasting satellite service feeder links. It said rules for upper microwave flexible use (UMFU) in the 24, 47 and 50 GHz bands should, at least, identify aggregate interference to satellites as a possible risk "and commit to addressing it," akin to what it did with 28 GHz. Global VSAT Forum (GVF) said the V-band spectrum needs of broadband satellite systems preclude some of the spectrum sharing ideas in the NPRM for satellite end user terminals in parts of the 47 GHz band. Instead, GVF said, UMFU terminals could operate on an opportunistic basis, having full use of the band when FSS end user operations were small. Inmarsat said current satellite bands opened for UMFU use should keep primary satellite allocations and consideration should be given to opening the band to diverse satellite operations perhaps on a secondary basis if there's no pre-existing satellite allocation. It urged individual examination of the utility of each band for addressing future spectrum needs without first determining technical rules and licensing regimes: "In some cases, the best approach may be to introduce [UMFU service] on a secondary basis, if at all." Boeing, which is pursuing creation of a V-band non-geostationary orbit satellite constellation (see 1606230050), said the FCC should avoid any UMFU spectrum allocation in the 47 and 50 GHz bands and keep UMFU operations to the 28 GHz and 37/39 GHz bands. It urged letting satellite systems operate downlink transmissions in the 37/39 GHz band at ITU power flux density levels, saying the lower limits the FCC adopted are now outdated, given better technology. And it said any UMFU sharing in the 42 GHz band should be done on a shared basis, with satellite end user terminals able to receive signals there on a shared opportunistic basis with UMFU systems.