Part 15 Coalition Urges FCC Caution on Progeny’s E-911 Service

Critics of Progeny’s proposed rollout of its E-911 location service told FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski that the agency should carefully consider the impact the service would have on fellow users of the 900 MHz Multilateration Location and Monitoring Service band before greenlighting it. The members of the Part 15 Coalition, a group of unlicensed Part 15 device users which occupy the 902-928 MHz band, said they're concerned the FCC was moving too quickly toward a decision on the Progeny 911 location service, which they said has the potential to cause “unacceptable levels” of interference. Coalition members and Progeny officials each said told us Friday that the other side was attempting to draw attention away from the technical record. The service would help locate wireless callers to 911.

Coalition members told Genachowski, Wireless Bureau Chief Ruth Milkman, Office of Engineering and Technology (OET) Chief Julie Knapp and Genachowski aide Renee Gregory on Thursday that there’s “no need for a rush to judgment” on the Progeny service, said Henry Goldberg, counsel for the Part 15 Coalition. Questions remain about how much interference the service will create -- and those questions require further testing, he said. Coalition members said the same thing to Commissioner Ajit Pai and an aide to Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel, Goldberg said. He said Genachowski told the coalition members he was “delighted” to see the unlicensed community getting organized and noted that the Progeny case was an important issue for that group of users. He encouraged the Part 15 Coalition to continue to engage with Milkman and Knapp’s offices and “give them the space” to work through the Progeny situation, Goldberg said. An FCC spokesman declined to comment.

Goldberg and representatives for General Electric and Wireless Internet Service Providers Association (WISPA) also met with Milkman, Gregory, FCC General Counsel Sean Lev and other officials Tuesday to argue that the full commission should rule on the Progeny issue, rather than the Wireless Bureau or OET (http://bit.ly/151cM5f). Progeny counsel Bruce Olcott said he questioned “what that means as far as what the Part 15 Coalition thinks about the views on this matter that the various bureaus have reached.” OET and the Wireless Bureau have been studying these test results for “a great deal of time,” he said. “They've had engineers combing through hundreds of pages of test results. And right now the Part 15 Coalition’s goal, it appears, is making sure that neither of them make the decision about what the test reports say. We think that says something.” No one is talking about “excluding OET” and the Wireless Bureau “from the decision,” Goldberg said. “All matters decided by the commission are prepared, drafted, and shaped by the bureaus, as would be the case here. But longstanding FCC precedent is that, when the decision involves a novel question, usually of first impression, it’s made by the commission rather than the bureau on delegated authority."

Progeny conducted tests last year in conjunction with Itron, Landis+Gyr and WISPA, but the results of those tests remain controversial (CD Dec 26 p13). The FCC should “take a breath” and allow more testing and analysis to get a better sense of the level of interference the Progeny service would create, Goldberg said. The existing Progeny test results present “very clear and very substantial” evidence that the Progeny service would have a negative impact on fixed wireless broadband operations, but those tests were “not extensive enough to test the impact that Progeny has on the entire universe of unlicensed users,” said Jack Unger, chairman of WISPA’s FCC committee.

Progeny CEO Gary Parsons said there’s no need to continue drawing out the testing process, saying it has already lasted two years and has gone through “multiple” comment cycles. “Of course the opposition would like to have another year or so of doing the same thing, because that’s just a wonderful slow-rolling of the process,” he said. Progeny has made clear in its public filings that it thinks the record is “completely full,” and that the technical details of the testing results are well-understood at this point, Parsons said.

The technical record on the Progeny service “is so crystal clear” that if the FCC were to base its decision on that record, “there would be no question” it would reject Progeny’s application, Unger said. The test results show Progeny’s proposed service would pose potential interference issues that would prevent wireless broadband operators from using two-thirds of the 902-928 MHz band to deliver their services, Unger said. Those issues are in part due what Unger said is a huge “power disparity” between Progeny and other users of the band. Progeny’s license allows it a maximum of 30 watts of effective radiated power out of its antennas, while unlicensed users on the band are allowed up to 4 watts of effective isotropic radiated power (EIRP). If those two are measured on the same scale, Progeny would be allowed up to 49 watts EIRP, 12 times more power than is allowed for unlicensed users, Unger said. Given that Progeny operates those transmitters 80 percent of the time, its proposed service would basically put up “two brick walls” in the middle and upper part of the band, Unger said. Equipment made by Cambium and Ubiquiti, the two manufacturers that wireless broadband operators most frequently use, works in the middle and upper part of the band -- 916-927 MHz for Cambium and 912-927 MHz for Ubiquiti (CD March 7 p11).

Parsons said Part 15’s figures were an “extraordinary misrepresentation.” Each of Progeny’s transmitters is generally operating 10 percent of the time, so the 80 percent duty cycle figure is derived from adding together the transmissions of devices within range of one another, he said. Progeny’s license technically allows it to operate on a 100 percent duty cycle, so even operating at an 80 percent duty cycle was a move on the company’s part to be a “good spectrum neighbor,” Parsons said. Those transmitters will not send out interference at the same rates simply by virtue of them being different distances from any particular point, he said. Even the worst-case data included in the testing results were “frankly below the noise norm,” Parsons said.

Progeny’s service has gained the public support of multiple public safety groups -- including the National Emergency Number Association -- following the release the of results of indoor location accuracy tests conducted by the FCC Communications Security, Reliability and Interoperability Council’s (CSRIC) Working Group 3, which praised the service. Parsons said he has noted that support in recent meetings with FCC officials, including an April 4 meeting with Gregory. But Part 15 Coalition members have also seized on the CSRIC results, which they said in a March 20 FCC filing “indicate that Progeny’s system design is not sufficiently accurate for the public safety benefits Progeny cites” (http://bit.ly/153I3og). Public safety groups told the FCC that was not their view, with NENA noting that “while it may be technically correct that Progeny’s technology does not meet public safety’s ideal for location accuracy, no technology that is currently available or yet conceived can meet that standard” (http://bit.ly/ZrLv7E). The public safety groups “saw our service as being a very substantial improvement in what was out there, and very much needed,” Parsons said. The Part 15 Coalition told Genachowski and the other FCC officials Thursday that they should take the public safety groups’ support “with a grain of salt” because those groups haven’t heard the other side’s argument, Goldberg said.