WASHINGTON-The Federal Communications Commission’s long-awaited decision on what should happen with low-power private wireless systems during refarming has been delayed by concerns over interference with heart monitors.
The Land Mobile Communications Council submitted a plan last June to deal with low-power systems but operators of medical telemetry devices are unhappy with the plan and hope to prevent it from being implemented, said Henry Goldberg, an attorney representing Hewlett-Packard Co.
The Industrial Telecommunications Association representing LMCC, and Hewlett-Packard and its partner Spacelabs Medical Inc., have been sending letters to the FCC disputing whether the Low Power Pool Consensus Plan would require hospitals to stop using wireless heart monitors used to broadcast signals regarding health conditions to doctors.
The consensus plan was developed to allow low-power operators to migrate from the 450-470 MHz band so high-power operators can use that spectrum. “The whole idea of refarming is to license high-power systems on those channels (450-470 MHz),” said ITA spokesman J. Sharpe Smith.
Low-power operators were able to convince the FCC they needed to be protected during the refarming process. The FCC instituted a freeze on the migration of low-power operators to protect them. The FCC has said the freeze will remain in place for seven months following the acceptance of an industry-developed plan. The consensus plan is that industry-developed plan.
ITA President Mark Crosby said in a Feb. 19 letter that “nothing in the refarming proceeding would require incumbent low-power licensees to shut down.” Goldberg responded April 15 that “allowing co-channel high-powered operations on the same frequency will subject them to interference that makes them unusable, which is [the same thing].”
Medical telemetry devices recently were given access to additional spectrum but even that spectrum has been causing the FCC headaches. As part of the digital television conversion proceeding at the FCC, telemetry devices were given access to additional TV channels to operate as secondary users.
Unfortunately, this message was not adequately delivered to the medical community and interference occurred between a hospital and a TV station in Texas converting to digital TV. No patients were injured, and the FCC joined forces with the Food and Drug Administration to urge broadcasters and hospitals to work together.
Goldberg warns if the FCC does not adequately protect medical telemetry devices during refarming, “there will be an even bigger cry if high-power land mobile [systems] interfere with medical telemetry.”
It is unclear what impact the sparring letters between ITA and Goldberg have had on the FCC. “We have proposed a number of things to the FCC but they haven’t acted. I have no read on when they will act,” Goldberg said.
Action may come soon. Dan Phythyon, chief of the FCC’s Wireless Telecommunications Bureau, told the LMCC last week at its annual meeting that a decision on low-power operators’ migration would be made soon, perhaps this week.
