Spectrum regulators have denied a request for an extension to file comments on a petition to rewrite the rules governing Ultra-Wide Band (UWB), a wireless technology that spreads the content of a signal across hundreds of megahertz of frequencies and poses a potential interference risk to GPS.
The 51-page petition filed with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) by Robert Bosch LLC says potential new products and systems “are not permitted by the current UWB rules, due to a conservative initial regulatory environment created for this technology by the Commission sixteen years ago.” Bosch asks the FCC to revisit the rules “to allow new, useful, innovative and spectrum-efficient UWB products to be brought to the United States marketplace, as they are now in most other countries of the world.”
That conservative regulatory approach was the result, at least in part, of concerns about the impact of UWB on GPS users. The GPS Innovation Alliance and Aviation Spectrum Resources asked for an additional 30 days to prepare responses.
The FCC’s Office of Engineering and Technology said, however, that the question at hand was one of how to address a petition to change the rules and not deciding on any actual rule changes themselves. The petition itself was also not unexpectedly complex, the FCC wrote.
The FCC denied the request for an extension to file comments. Comments remain due on August 19 with reply comments due September 3. The FCC docket is RM-11844.
