Following meeting last month on interference issues, satellite di...

and Sirius Satellite Radio proposed rules that would cap number of high-power repeaters that could be deployed without first coordinating with WCS licensees. WCS licensee AT&T Wireless (ATTW) offered counterproposal, providing technical analysis that carrier said would demonstrate why SDARS plan still would cause interference to fixed wireless operations. XM submitted draft rule to FCC for terrestrial repeaters in effort to rebut concerns that repeaters operating at levels above 2 kw could cause interference. XM told FCC that AT&T Wireless “recently disclosed that its concerns with terrestrial repeaters are based on its having designed the front end of its receivers to tune to the entire 2305-2360 MHz band, covering both the WCS and the DARS band, and that it has no filtering to eliminate DARS transmissions in the 2320-2345 MHz band.” XM said it shouldn’t have to bear costs of AT&T’s “failure to adopt reasonable engineering practices.” Sirius raised similar arguments, saying WCS licensees should have used receivers with enough front-end selectivity to reject “the amount of interference that the rules already permit from nearby WCS operations.” XM proposed rule that would: (1) Put no additional limitations on low-power repeaters. (2) Define “medium-power” repeaters as operating between 2 and 10 kw. Such repeaters provide more targeted transmissions that increase power in given direction, using sectorized antennas and focus energy into relatively narrow beamwidth. Such antennas decrease probability that WCS base station would be located within that range. Every medium-power repeater would be coordinated with WCS licensees. (3) Limit to 250 number high-power repeaters, operating at 10-40 kw, that XM would operate without coordination. In Mon. ex parte filing, AT&T referred to meeting last month in which SDARS and WCS licensees exchanged technical data. SDARS licensees provided details on planned repeaters in Atlanta, Boston and San Francisco. AT&T said its interference analysis found: (1) If SDARS licensees operated terrestrial repeaters at levels of 10-13 kw each, “interference to the ATTWS fixed wireless base station would preclude the provision of service to more than 171,000 households in Atlanta alone.” (2) If SDARS licensees operated repeaters at 40 kw, interference to base station would preclude AT&T fixed wireless service to almost 435,000 households there. (3) If high-power repeaters were replaced with multiple standard power repeaters operating at 2 kw, SDARS licensees could “achieve the same coverage for their own service but reduce the size of the exclusion zone in Atlanta” by 43.2%. Carrier wrote: “Both sets of licensees paid for their spectrum at auction or in the secondary market. It is reasonable to expect that both services should bear the burden of establishing a viable co- existence.” AT&T urged FCC to adopt rule in which SDARS licensees could deploy terrestrial repeaters at peak power of up to 400 w/MHz, evenly distributed across band for total of 2 kw per 5 MHz. Proposal also would limit out-of-band emissions generated by SDARS terrestrial repeaters to levels specified by licensees that have less than transmitter power levels.