FCC Should Handle DTS with Waiver Process, Microsoft and Unlicensed Advocates Say

The FCC should reconsider its relaxed rules for ATSC 3.0 distributed transmission systems and instead adopt an expedited waiver process, said Microsoft in reply comments Friday in docket 20-74 (see 2108040076). NAB and America’s Public Television Stations didn’t push back on Microsoft’s arguments that an expansion of DTS would hurt unlicensed use of the TV bands, but they “embrace that outcome as a victory in eliminating a perceived ‘constrain[t]’ on their business objectives,” Microsoft said. “Their response is that they are happy with the apparently unintended outcome of expanded coverage and that any harm to unlicensed operations is unimportant,” Microsoft said. NAB and APTS’ response “confirms that the Commission erred” in the original order, Microsoft said. “The soundest approach to permit the further expansion of a broadcast station’s DTS signal beyond its maximum facility is through a targeted expedited-waiver process.” The FCC’s original decision “failed to account for the vast harms imposed on TV White Spaces and the public interest,” said the New America Foundation’s Open Technology Institute, Public Knowledge and Tribal Digital Village in joint reply comments in docket 20-74. “The ability of several rural, Tribal, and other hard-to-serve communities nationwide to procure broadband networks depends on the Commission getting this policy right."