Hundreds of Commenters Argue FCC Should Reject NextNav Proposal

The lower 900 MHz band “is utilized for a wide range of purposes, including industrial, scientific, and medical equipment, Location and Monitoring Service systems, federal radiolocation, Part 15 unlicensed devices and amateur radio operators,” said a broad coalition of groups and companies led by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. NextNav claims the band “underutilized,” justifying a reconfiguration, the filing said. “We disagree with that contention,” it added.

Public interest and consumer groups stressed the band's importance for unlicensed use. The band is “the only low-band spectrum available for unlicensed use and home to a massive and rapidly growing ecosystem that supports home and business IoT and other device connectivity needs,” said the groups' filing, led by New America’s Open Technology Institute and Public Knowledge.

“Tens of millions of consumers, businesses, schools and other government services rely on the band to connect hundreds of millions of devices,” the groups said. Even if the FCC finds “merit in NextNav’s notion of leveraging low-band spectrum to create an enhanced PNT network, these drawbacks should compel the Commission to consider alternatives.”

In a filing posted Friday, NextNav said it's "committed to engaging with all stakeholders about its proposal." Updating the lower 900 MHz band plan and service rules would provide Americans with "the public good of a widely accessible [terrestrial] PNT network worth billions of dollars when there is otherwise no economically viable plan on the horizon to create such a network,” NextNav said.

It stressed public safety and national security benefits: NextNav’s next-generation service “promises more accurate location readings and, by extension, more timely emergency responses” and will “enable more reliable emergency-call routing by providing the kind of timely and granular location information needed to ensure emergency calls are routed to the proper public safety answering point.” The public interest benefits are “enormous.” In addition, NextNav said the U.S. “will enjoy access to a privately funded, consumer friendly [terrestrial] PNT deployment to serve as a much-needed complement and backup to GPS, with a clear path to widespread adoption.”

"The national security, economic, and public safety needs of America demand a reliable complement and backup to this vital technology all of us use daily,” emailed NextNav CEO Mariam Sorond. “NextNav offers an innovative solution that provides enormous benefits to the public and also unleashes much-needed spectrum for 5G broadband -- at no cost to taxpayers.”

Commenters disagreed.

“Multiple billions of devices” use the band, said ARRL, which represents amateurs. ARRL argued that NextNav got the spectrum in an auction for a value that reflected limited use under the commission’s location and monitoring service (LMS) rules. “Against all evidence, NextNav incorrectly argues that the band is ‘underutilized’ and therefore ripe for major restructuring,” the group said: “While it appears that NextNav, its predecessors, and its intended future license transferors have not constructed many of the systems for which the licenses were auctioned decades ago, the suggestion that the band is under-utilized by others is demonstrably false.”

Workhorse Spectrum

The Lower 900 MHz band “is a vital, workhorse spectrum band for consumers, government, and industry,” said the International Bridge, Tunnel & Turnpike Association. “North American electronic tolling operations rely exclusively on the Lower 900 MHz Band.” Putting high-power 5G and PNT operations in the band would “substantially disrupt the current ecosystem of diverse operations.”

The NextNav proposal “would threaten our ability to process toll transactions with the accuracy and level of service the traveling public expects and deserves,” said the Golden Gate Bridge, Highway and Transportation District. It has invested some $60 million in its toll systems, which “rely exclusively on the Lower 900 MHz Band,” the district said.

NextNav’s petition for rulemaking “makes numerous assertions about current usage on the Band without evidence or input from the many entities that populate it,” said the Georgia State Road and Tollway Authority (SRTA). NextNav also makes “unsupported claims and assumptions about its proposed system and the protection of incumbent users,” the authority said. “NextNav’s proposed rearrangement of the Band would risk impeding the flow of traffic and jeopardizing the revenue on which states depend to repay the indebtedness issued to pay for the capital costs of the various roads and for the upkeep of their transportation network,” SRTA said.

The Wireless ISP Association said its members make substantial use of the spectrum that NextNav is targeting. Not only is the band “not underutilized, but it may be one of the most crowded parts of the spectrum, other than, perhaps, some broadcast and other unlicensed bands,” WISPA said: “The likelihood that millions of devices will suddenly change frequencies in order to protect the system NextNav seeks to deploy is thus extremely slim at best.”

The Security Industry Association (SIA) said millions of homes and small businesses use Z-Wave technology, in the lower 900 MHz band, for home automation and security. Millions of security cameras also run on the band, SIA said: “This frequency is essential for devices that need to provide real-time management or remote access across a larger range or one with significant facility interference.” Millions of electronic access control devices also use the spectrum, the group said.

Texas Instruments noted that electric, gas and water utilities use 902-928 MHz for distribution, metering and monitoring. “These utility infrastructure systems have been designed for an extended service life of up to 20 years, and the NextNav petition would cause substantial negative impact to millions of installed devices,” Texas Instruments said.

NextNav’s petition will likely be approved if Vice President Kamala Harris is elected president, New Street’s Blair Levin told investors Friday. “Democrats will favor the petition as providing a backup to GPS seems like a beneficial (and bipartisan) idea that is good for national security and the economy.” Should former President Donald Trump win, he said, support may depend on the position that carriers have staked out. “This is another example of how partisan tendencies affect spectrum policy but more at the margins than at the core. We think the petition will ultimately be granted -- though the comments may cause us to adjust.”