FCC Proposal To Limit Access To 5725-5850 MHz Band

New submitter thittesd0375 (1111917) writes New rules adopted by the FCC will greatly limit the amount of bandwidth available in the unlicensed U-NII band used to deliver internet to rural areas. The filters required to comply with the new rules would shrink the available frequencies from 125MHz to only 45MHz. Petitions to reconsider this ruling can be submitted here and previous petitions can be found here.

OP vs Reality

[Anonymous Coward]

OP said:

> to deliver internet to rural areas

Article says:

> the Commission’s Enforcement Bureau found that certain models of devices certified for use in these bands were designed in a way that users were able
to disable the DFS mechanism. With the DFS mechanism inactive, the device could transmit on an active
radar channel and cause harmful interference.

and:

> Early field studies performed by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration’s (NTIA’s) Institute for Telecommunications Sciences (ITS) and FAA staff indicated the interference sources were certain unlicensed U-NII devices that operated in the same frequency band as these Federal radar systems. This interference was occurring despite the Commission’s rules that require U-NII devices operating in this band to incorporate an interference mitigation technique called dynamic frequency selection (DFS).

Oh look, people buying illegal 1Watt emitters from China and attaching them to bigass antennae to "deliver internet in rural areas" on fixed channels without DFS when regulations strictly say "nope", now crying that they're being "stepped on".

gtfo.

This is actually a net gain..

[poptix]

They're trying to protect Terminal Doppler Weather Radar, they've added restrictions on the upper band but removed the indoor restrictions on the lower (5.2ghz) band. A fair tradeoff in the opinion of someone that used to work at a WISP.

Re:So who is behind this?

[msauve]

Yep. And the summary completely misses the part which is likely to upset most /. users:

Accordingly, we are adopting the proposal in the NPRM that manufacturers must take steps to prevent unauthorized software changes to their equipment in all of the U-NII bands

That may effectively put an end to all the Linux based APs (DD-WRT, Tomato, OpenWRT, etc.)

Re:OP vs Reality

[mister_playboy]

Finland's average speed still beats the average service offered in the US's densest cities. How to you square your point with this reality?

The endless apologies for the shitty state of our Internet service is pathetic.