May 15, 2017–The Wireless Innovation Forum has asked the FCC to reconsider its plan in a part 95 order scheduled to be adopted at this week’s May 18 meeting to rename the Citizens Band Radio Service the CB Radio Service and use the CBRS acronym.
“WInnForum reminds the Commission that there is already a designation for ‘CBRS’, which is the [Citizens] Broadband Radio Service as defined fully in 47 CFR Part 96 for the 3.5 GHz Band,” the group said in an ex parte fling in WT docket 10-119 and GN docket 15-319. “We are extremely concerned that another designation for ‘CBRS’ will certainly not avoid confusion and will indeed cause substantial confusion in the ecosystem for the 3.5 GHz CBRS. In addition, we are also concerned that we will now have to distinguish the 3.5 GHz CBRS from the CB Radio Service CBRS in order to avoid confusion in all of our documentation. This will impose a significant burden on the WInnForum and its members. … We ask that the Commission remove the CBRS designation for the Part 95 CB Radio Service.”
Meanwhile, an ex parte filing in GN docket 12-354 reporting on a meeting with Erin McGrath, wireless legal adviser to Commissioner Mike O’Rielly, who is looking on behalf of Chairman Ajit Pai at possible changes to the 3.5 GHz band rules, said that representatives of Alphabet, Inc.’s Access Group and Google Fiber “discussed the substantial commercial interest in using both PAL [priority access license] and GAA [general authorized access] channels to deliver LTE services in the 3.5 GHz band. Potential service providers are working aggressively to initiate commercial operations, based on the rules that the FCC adopted. We described the work of the Wireless Innovation Forum, with participation by more than 47 companies, and the CBRS Alliance, with 52 corporate members.
“Furthermore, we described Alphabet’s investment in research and development in the 3.5 GHz band,” the filing added. “We recommended that the Commission promote certainty and support the work and investment made by industry thus far by maintaining the CBRS regulatory framework. We further recommended that the FCC can do so while considering discrete changes to PAL rules, but that wholesale changes would undermine investment and deployment in the 3.5 GHz band.” —Paul Kirby, paul.kirby@wolterskluwer.com
Courtesy TRDaily