Up In The Air

To cope with increasing data traffic across the country, the Federal Communications Commission voted on Wednesday to allot telecom giant AT&T unused airwaves for mobile broadband service expansion. The FCC revised the rules to the Wireless Communication Services or WCS band, and eased restrictions, after another company, Sirius XM Radio Inc, arrived to an agreement with AT&T. Part of the WCS band will be set aside to make sure it will not interfere with Sirius’ satellite services.

According to AT&T representative Joan Marsh, the company can now start working on the deployment of equipment to the WCS band for mobile broadband services in the next 3 years. Early this year, the telecom giant had to give up spectrum license as a fine for failing to get regulatory approval for its acquisition of T-Mobile.

The WCS spectrum was auctioned of the the FCC back in 1997. Unfortunately, it has not been optimised because it can potentially cause interference to other wireless services, including satellite.

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