Satellite Executives See 'Tough Battle' Ahead on C-Band Reallocation at 2015 WRC
The satellite industry faces tough fights ahead to protect the C band from reallocation for mobile services uses, industry executives said Thursday during a Washington Space Business Roundtable event. The FCC is looking at a portion of the C band -- 3550 MHz-3650 MHz -- for spectrum sharing purposes and is considering possible revisions to the rules for its proposed Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) that would govern sharing between incumbent satellite and federal users of the spectrum and new entrants to the band. Delegates to the ITU-run World Radiocommunication Conference (WRC), set for Nov. 2-27 in Geneva, will consider a proposal from the international wireless industry seeking an even larger reallocation of the C band for mobile services, which the satellite industry opposes (see 1411130041).
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SES believes it’s “important to be sure that the FCC recognizes that FSS earth stations operating above 3700 MHz could receive significant levels of interference, so it’s important that adjacent band users also be included in that class,” Vice President-Spectrum Management Kim Baum said. Part of the FCC’s re-examination of its CBRS rules involves the size of proposed exclusion zones meant to protect incumbents from interference. Many FSS earth stations above 3700 MHz are unregistered, which is a “huge issue” because it’s difficult to protect those earth stations “if you don’t even know where they are,” Baum said. SES also has concerns about how the FCC will implement its proposed Spectrum Access System for the CBRS, and how spectrum sharing on the band will affect aggregate interference, she said. “From our perspective that’s very complex and hasn’t really been studied in the real world,” Baum said.
The push for C-band reallocation at WRC “doesn’t look good, it doesn’t bode well for the industry when you have to deal with 192 administrations saying ‘we don’t think that we need your services,’” said Intelsat Associate General Counsel Gonzalo de Dios. One of the options from the ITU Radiocommunication Sector (ITU-R) that the WRC will consider would be a recommendation to make nearly no changes to the allocation of the C band, while others would recommend varying degrees of reallocation, de Dios said.
The ITU-R’s options have a basis in the technical aspects of the C-band debate, which favor a view that it remains “extremely challenging” to share the entire band without risking disruption to satellite systems, he said. The debate at WRC “will be a tough battle” that “will be a political debate instead of a technical debate,” de Dios said. The satellite industry pushed back against reallocation at the 2007 WRC, but faces a far more entrenched wireless industry this time, he said.
Successful pushback at WRC will require effective support from the satellite industry, Global VSAT Forum Secretary General David Hartshorn said. “We haven’t lost, but the extent to which we succeed” will depend on how much industry supports opposition to reallocation, he said. The satellite industry is also reaching out to markets where the C-band is used differently than in the U.S., Inmarsat Vice President-Government Affairs Chris Murphy said.
In Africa and Latin America, “there are thousands and thousands of antennas deployed that people don’t know the exact locations for, so protecting them is a challenge,” Murphy said. “They’re providing services that are often the only communications that communities or rural areas have. Some of these are lifeline connections.” Those countries “have many votes at the ITU and they have the ability to group together and make sure that their services are protected,” Murphy said. The satellite industry is “making sure that they’re being active at the ITU and elsewhere to make sure those services don’t go away,” he said.