Globalstar TLPS Talks Focusing on Exclusion Zone Sizes

and FCC, with the remaining talks with the company over more-robust channel 14 conditions, one wireless industry source told us. Those talks are at least in part about the size of exclusion zones around TLPS deployments. O'Rielly has been the focus of Globalstar lobbying for weeks. His office and Globalstar didn't comment Wednesday. An ex parte filing Tuesday in docket 13-213 recapped a conversation between Vice President-Finance, Business Operations and Strategy Tim Taylor and O'Rielly adviser Erin McGrath about a possible framework for opportunistic public use of channel 14. In a meeting with Edward Smith, an aide to Chairman Tom Wheeler, Michael Calabrese of New America’s Open Technology Institute said allowing of public access shouldn't be subject to a five-year waiting period once the FCC determines channel 14 operations won't interfere with unlicensed spectrum, in an ex parte filing Tuesday. It said the agency also should make sure of public access to an FCC-certified spectrum access system for getting onto channel 14, with conditions on a TLPS authorization requiring Globalstar make network operating system data available to SAS operators for enforcing minimum protection zones. "Making Globalstar the monopoly gatekeeper to public access ... is a clear conflict of interest," OTI said. The group said it opposed letting Globalstar block public access in any geographic area larger than needed to avoid interference. Excluding turf as large as census tracts when Globalstar is deploying Wi-Fi access points that cover far less territory "is nothing but a thinly veiled effort to make public access a meaningless condition," OTI said. Census tract exclusions also would be "an enormous waste of spectrum capacity" because it's magnitudes larger than the protection zone TLPS would need, it said. Public Knowledge previously said Globalstar TLPS exclusion zones should be no larger than census tract size.