A draft FCC second order on reconsideration that was circulated Feb. 18 would grant an unopposed petition seeking reconsideration of provisions in a 2013 fifth report and order that increased to 8 watts the maximum transmitter power limit for end-of-train devices (TRDaily, April 18, 2013), an FCC source told TRDaily today. The petition for reconsideration, which was filed by the Public Safety Communications Council (PSCC), asked the Commission to reconsider two trunking rules in its order, which was adopted in WT docket 07-100.

PSCC asked the FCC to make the following changes for applications seeking to deploy trunking systems in the VHF and UHF bands:

1) FCC had adopted a “reciprocal contour rule.  This means that an applicant’s interference contour cannot overlap a co-channel incumbents coverage contour and the applicant’s coverage contour cannot overlap the incumbents interference contour.  PSCC asked that  the reciprocal contour protection rule should be modified to make it apply only to B/ILT pool frequencies, not public safety frequencies.  Instead, PSCC wants the public safety frequency coordinators to determine when a proposed system, such as a low power system to cover a prison or courthouse can be placed within the interference contour of an incumbent without interference to the incumbent.

2)  To use the service contour of the base station as the service and interference contours of the associated mobile stations. This is applicable at VHF, where base and mobile frequencies do not follow any standardized pairing.  With this change, at VHF, it would be necessary to protect the incumbent mobile channel from contour overlap from new trunked mobile stations.

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