Axon Waiver Request Ignites Fierce Opposition
Wi-Fi advocates strongly opposed a December request from Axon Enterprise for a waiver allowing it to market three investigation and surveillance devices to law enforcement agencies. These devices would operate at higher power levels than allowed under FCC rules in heavily used 5 GHz spectrum. The FCC Office of Engineering and Technology sought comment in February (see 2402060082). Oppositions were posted on Friday in docket 24-40. Axon didn’t comment Friday.
The company proposes selling law enforcement a small surveillance drone, a surveillance ground vehicle and a surveillance camera that can either be fixed or pole mounted using the technology, which operates in the 5725-5850 MHz (U-NII-3) band. FCC rules “restrict the transmit power of such devices to below what is necessary for reliable and effective use by law enforcement,” Axon said. The company said it has trialed use of the devices under an experimental license.
Axon asks to use the higher power levels reserved for frequency-hopping devices, which present a lower risk of disrupting other users, “for analog devices that would transmit constantly on particular channels … blocking those channels for other nearby users,” said NCTA. Sections 15.209 and 15.249 of the FCC’s Part 15 rules specify field strength limits of approximately -1.22 dBm equivalent isotropic radiated power, but Axon seeks a waiver allowing operations under Section 15.247 -- allowing up to 1 watt, or 30 dBm EIRP, the cabler said.
Axon “significantly understates the significance of the requested waiver” in terms of power levels, NCTA said. The company proposes that its devices operate “in the same frequencies as the country’s most heavily used Wi-Fi band … at approximately 1,000 times the power the Commission’s rules would otherwise permit,” NCTA said.
“Axon’s proposed analog, always-on, fixed-channel and high-power surveillance technology would be unnecessarily disruptive to the public’s use of the U-NII-3 band, which remains the most heavily-trafficked Wi-Fi spectrum and almost certainly the most intensively used frequency band nationwide,” said the Open Technology Institute at New America and Public Knowledge. The Axon devices seem “designed to needlessly disrupt today’s intensive and efficient use of U-NII-3 by nearly every household and business in America.”
The Wi-Fi Alliance warned against interference in the most critical spectrum for unlicensed use. “The use of the U-NII-3 band in the manner proposed by Axon will impede or prevent Wi-Fi operations,” the alliance said. It warned that the 6 GHz band, cleared for unlicensed use in 2020 (see 2004230059), “is only beginning to be deployed for Wi-Fi.” 6 GHz isn’t a substitute, the alliance said: “Many access points intended to operate at higher power in the 6 GHz band under the control of the automated frequency coordination system have not yet been approved or installed.”
The Axon request raises unanswered questions, said the Wireless ISP Association. “Axon offers no persuasive explanation for its use of analog technology with fixed channels, which is spectrally inefficient (in contrast to more efficient digitally modulated signals),” WISPA said. Also, it's unexplained why Axon spaced its four proposed channels at fixed, nonstandard intervals "that put two of them too close to the band edges to meet” the out-of-band emission requirements “applicable to digitally modulated signals,” WISPs said.