The Mobility Division of the FCC's Wireless Telecommunications Bureau today granted a waiver to the Association of American Railroads (AAR) to allow railroads to use signal boosters with an effective radiated power (ERP) of 30 watts to maintain communications between the front and rear of trains. The order adopted in WT docket 14-98 excludes the channels at the edge of the railroad frequencies to address concerns about the potential for interference to non-railroad channels. As a result, the waiver applies to frequencies from 452/457.90625 megahertz to 452/457.9625 MHz. Also, railroads operating under the waiver can only use single-channel Class A boosters, the order said.
First Responder Network Authority (FirstNet) proposals for defining "public safety entities" and "rural" are coming under fire from some stakeholders, including the Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials-International and some states.
Regarding the definition of public safety entities, critics said FirstNet should adopt a narrow definition that includes only traditional first responders. As for the definition of rural, some states said they were concerned that it was too narrow and might leave out areas from FirstNet coverage; some also said they were worried about separately defining "wilderness" and "frontier." However, others, including utilities, states and localities, and industry entities, said they supported the definitions of public safety entities and rural proposed by FirstNet.
The FCC's Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau is "working expeditiously to pull together options" for Commissioners to consider in its indoor 911 location accuracy proceeding, David Simpson, the bureau's chief, said today. However, he could not say when action by the Commission was likely.
The FCC announced that it plans to delay its incentive auction until early 2016, from the previous date of mid-2015, citing legal challenges to the incentive auction order it adopted in May (TRDaily, May 15). "As Chairman [Tom] Wheeler indicated several weeks ago, the court challenges to the auction rules by some broadcasters have introduced uncertainty. Earlier this week, the court issued a briefing schedule in which the final briefs are not due until late January 2015. Oral arguments will follow at a later date yet to be determined, with a decision not likely until mid-2015," Gary Epstein, chair of the Incentive Auction Task Force, said in a blog posting this afternoon.
On October 27, 2014, the FCC late this afternoon released a report and order that eliminates a Dec. 31, 2016, deadline for public safety licensees to convert their 700 megahertz band narrowband spectrum to 6.25 kilohertz technology. The order in PS dockets13-87 and 06-229 and WT docket 96-86 also reallocates the 700 MHz band reserve channels to general use with priority access going to relocated T-band licensees, and it designates secondary trunking channels for air-to-ground (ATG) communications.
Whoever thinks that their call to 911 would go unanswered? But in a terrifying incident this spring, thousands of Americans found themselves in need of help — and got none. For six hours, emergency services went dark for more than 11 million people across seven states. The entire state of Washington found itself disconnected from 911. The outage may have gone unnoticed by some, but for the more than 6,000 people trying to reach help, April 9 may well have been the scariest time of their lives.
Now a study from the Federal Communications Commission offers the most in-depth explanation of the outage and why it occurred. In a 40-page report, the FCC found that an entirely preventable software error was responsible for causing 911 service to drop. The incident affected 81 call dispatch centers, rendering emergency services inoperable in all of Washington and parts of North Carolina, South Carolina, Pennsylvania, California, Minnesota and Florida.