Update: In a new report filed by the AP, the FCC has granted Sprint a partial waiver on exchanging additional blocks of spectrum with public safety agencies that would have adversely affected its Nextel service had the original June 26 deadline been enforced.
500 public safety agencies that are affected by this exchange had appealed to the FCC earlier in the week to extend the deadline due to the agencies needing more time to prepare for the exchange, which has been slowly progressing over three years, but has been hampered by technical and operational issues.
The FCC has set new requirements with this partial waiver with Sprint handing over its Nextel channels within 60 days after the public agencies say they’re ready to make the switch, and it must ensure agencies using former Nextel channels won’t suffer interference from nearby channels Nextel still uses.
The FCC is still considering the remainder of the appeal and has issued no further comment on the issue.Â
Sprint has requested the FCC to prolong the deadline in regards to it using a certain spectrum that neighbor various public safety agencies’ spectrum.
In a move by the FCC to have less interference between the public safety spectrum and the wireless industry, the 800 MHz band was to be vacated and swapped by Sprint by June 26th of this year. The motion from Sprint comes after the FCC granted various public safety agencies with an extension of the deadline to July 1st of 2009. The FCC still has to rule on whether to allow Sprint anymore time for the swap as Sprint’s request focuses on a different spectrum; one that is a buffer zone for preventing any kind of interference. The request put in by Sprint pans out to having the swap take place in respect to the gradual swap of the public safety agencies in their respective regions.
Last month, Sprint was ordered by a federal appeals court to stick to the June 26th date for the swap.
