Industry Groups Weigh in on Rural Broadband Spectrum Priorities

The US Department of Agriculture is collecting comment on what is the best spectrum management policy to get broadband to more rural areas. In its comments, the Wireless Internet Service Providers Association (WISPA) said it is all for a "rural first" approach to spectrum, which it calls quickest, most cost-effective way to get high-speed broadband to farmers, who can use it to help monitor and manage their crops. The GPS Innovation Alliance cautioned that any spectrum policy should be mindful of potential interference to its low-power satellite GPS signals and the half-billion GPS devices they service. "[S]pectrum policies must consider that systems that support navigation functions like GPS are sensitive to adjacent-band operations in different ways than systems that operate communications services" like terrestrial-based communications networks, it said.