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 There is a new “next great thing” concept now moving through the land, undergoing promotion in the popular press and probably destined to be a future concern (and cost burden) to the citizens of the United States. That term is “Smart Grid.” And it’s a term that would be much easier to deal with if, [...]  Some wildlife conservationists and communications industry members have reached an understanding about how to start giving migrating birds safer flights when they take wing in the vicinity of wireless and broadcast towers. In a memorandum submitted this month (May) to the Federal Communications Commission, the ad hoc group recommended the FCC develop interim standards on [...]  It is our experience that RF safety accountability and hazard avoidance is well established in the wireless communications sector. However, hazardous industrial RF is widely encountered in a wide variety of industry settings through all manner of process equipment and non-radio systems. Many of these systems are benign just out of the manufacturer’s shops, but [...]  It has become increasingly popular to install bi-directional amplifiers (BDA’s) and distributed antenna systems (DAS’s) to overcome problems of cellular and other wireless coverage within buildings. Properly engineered, and coordinated with the cell cos being retransmitted these can greatly help in overcoming building problems. However, these systems are readily available, and are increasingly being installed [...] Who would have thought that oil wells could interfere with cell towers? Yet, in the bizarre world of RF interference – it happened! The FCC Los Angeles Office received a complaint of interference to the reception of Sprint cell towers in Long Beach, [...] As everyone knows, the FCC has released a draft of their National Broadband Plan. Whoopee! They labored mightily, and they gave birth to a mouse. And probably a congenitally deformed mouse at that! At least in its outline form, the plan is what you might expect from a panel of LEPs (Lawyers, Economists, and Politicians) [...]  We’re not used to freebies from the FCC, but they just offered up a broadband Speedchecker to see how your carrier is performing. Get it here. Nothing’s really free from the FCC, of course. The Speedchecker is a Trojan horse. Before you can run it, you have to give up personal address information, presumably to [...]  The Spectrum Dashboard pulls from the FCC’s license databases and lets anyone browse the allocations table for licensed spectrum. Users can search FCC license records using a map interface, or search the records by common name – Verizon, for example – which greatly simplifies pulling together data by carrier. Determining who has radio frequency licenses in a given metropolitan area suddenly is [...]  LBA asks the Old RF Curmudgeon “Now that the remaining analog TV nightlight stations have gone dark and the DTV transition fireworks are pretty much over, what is the success, or lack thereof, of the enterprise. This event is important because it was a major field test of whether the general population can be successfully moved [...] LBA asks: What do you think of the future of AM broadcasting as you see it today? This one is emotional, of course. After all, AM radio is one of the very oldest uses of the radio spectrum (beginning ~1919), as evidenced in part by the Medium Frequency band on which it began and still [...]  LBA has pioneered solutions that permit cellular, PCS and 4-G providers to use AM broadcast towers as antenna platforms. The CoLoCoil™ AM isocoupler is one of the LBA proprietary AM wireless colocation solutions widely used by major carriers. The CoLoCoil™ safely separates AM and wireless operations, and isolates both directional and non-directional AM towers from [...] *** If you are new to The Old Curmudgeon series, read the previous blog for a brief introduction.*** LBA asks – “Well, RF Curmudgeon, what do you say to this RF interference and spectrum pollution from the nifty LED devices popping up everywhere? Why I can’t drive through an intersection without LED traffic lights blanking [...] The Old RF Curmudgeon has been poking his beak into the RF world for very close to fifty years. With both commercial and amateur radio experience, close contacts in broadcast engineering, radio site management experience, lots of paper pushed into the FCC, an immense curiosity about “how things work,” and a “real gud college education,” [...] The Alaska Supreme Court (Court) upheld the decision of the Alaska Workers’ Compensation Board (Board) awarding an AT&T equipment installer 100% disability as a result of his workplace electromagnetic field exposure to radiofrequency (RF) radiation at levels slightly above the FCC RF limit. The award was based on the psychological and cognitive effects of RF [...]  Recently, the Federal Communications Commission adopted Rules for a new type of consumer-oriented Internet/World Wide Web data service, known as Broadband over Power Lines (BPL). This new service is intended to provide an additional means of consumer access to the Internet, supplementing existing data services now carried by telephone lines, cable television systems, fiber optic [...]  FCC Docket MM93-177 sets out to adjust FCC rules regarding the adjustment and measurement of AM directional antenna arrays. It also seeks to modify the manner in which the reradiation impact of nearby structures is considered. Today, all towers within a fixed distance of AM antenna systems must be evaluated. Under the new proposals, only [...]  For many years the FCC has required licensees with antenna towers near AM stations to protect the radiation patterns of those stations. Currently, the FCC rules apply to any tower within 3.0 kilometers of directional AM arrays, and 1.0 kilometer of non-directional towers. Affected licensees need to take measures like AM field intensity measurements and [...] |
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