FCC Adopts Sweeping Changes to Experimental Rules

The Federal Communications Commission made significant changes to its Part 5 Experimental Radio Service (ERS) by creating a more flexible framework to support the rapid pace of technological innovation and to further implement the recommendations of the National Broadband Plan.

These changes add three new types of experimental licenses and revise and streamline existing rules and procedures for experimenting, testing, and marketing radio frequency (RF) devices, while protecting incumbent licensees from interference. The Report and Order (R&O) expands upon and complements the existing ERS structure, in which the FCC issues individual licenses for each experiment. The new licenses will provide innovators greater flexibility in how they conduct research and development by permitting them to modify existing experiments and conduct new experiments within a broad range of frequencies, emissions, and power levels at defined geographic locations under a single license. By eliminating the process of applying and waiting for approval of each individual experiment, these new licenses will reduce the regulatory burden on licensees. This flexibility will promote creativity and accelerate the introduction of new products to the marketplace.

Specifically, these new licenses are:

1. Program experimental license: This license will allow colleges, research laboratories, health care institutions, and manufacturers that have demonstrated experience in RF technology to conduct ongoing series of research experiments and tests.
2. Medical testing license: This license will be available to health care facilities with RF expertise to assess newly developed RF based medical devices for patient compatibility, electromagnetic compatibility and to conduct clinical trials at patients’ homes or in other geographic areas that are not within the health care licensee’s control.
3. Compliance testing license: This license will provide FCC-recognized laboratories the flexibility to undertake RF product compliance testing under the FCC’s equipment authorization procedures.