FCC Doesn't Need Additional Parameters for Broadband Maps, Verizon Says
Don’t adopt additional parameters for broadband maps, Verizon representatives told the FCC. The parameters adopted in last month’s order (see 2007160062) fully satisfy the requirements of the March broadband data law (see 2003240049), Verizon said. “Standardizing additional parameters such as…
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[a reference signal received power] value or fade margin would make the maps less, not more, accurate,” the carrier said in a filing posted Tuesday in docket 19-195: “The Order’s link budget and propagation model reporting requirements, together with the audit, crowdsourcing, third-party data, and challenge process provisions, already satisfy the Broadband DATA Act’s requirement for a verification process. At most, speed test data and infrastructure data should be used for case-by-case verification in small areas, when other verification methods have identified a potential issue.” The Verizon officials spoke with staff from the Wireless and Wireline bureaus and Office of Economic and Analytics. T-Mobile also raised concerns about the July order in calls with FCC staff. The carrier cited “the lack of confidential treatment of link budget information for mobile wireless providers while presuming that link budgets should be confidential for fixed wireless providers” and the requirement of a second set of maps for in-vehicle mobile usage. “Link budgets are highly proprietary and commercially sensitive,” T-Mobile said: The order “lacks any justification for arbitrarily treating mobile link budgets differently than fixed wireless link budgets.”