I haven't been paying attention to the WISP market, so I'm not up to speed on these issues.
https://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-proposes-fines-against-wisps-and-issues-warning-industry-0
The Federal Communications Commission�s Enforcement Bureau today announced proposed fines and issued a formal industry warning related to devices that apparently caused interference to the Federal Aviation Administration�s terminal doppler weather radar station in San Juan, Puerto Rico. The Enforcement Bureau proposed three separate $25,000 fines against wireless Internet service providers Boom Solutions, Integra Wireless, and WinPR.
[...]
In addition to the proposed fines, the Bureau�s Enforcement Advisory warned operators, manufacturers, and marketers of Unlicensed National Information Infrastructure devices that these devices must be certified under FCC rules. Such devices that operate in the 5.25 GHz to 5.35 GHz and 5.47 GHz to 5.725 GHz bands risk interfering with radar systems if not properly configured to share the spectrum
[...]
Most gear now will hop frequencies automatically if they receive a DFS interference.
If your gear supports this, turn it on.
Brad,
$25k seems like a cheap fine, really. Have you seen the price of spectrum these days?
And links operating in a licensed spectrum tend to incur $1k per link per year in usage fees.
Most gear now will hop frequencies automatically if they receive a DFS interference.
If your gear supports this, turn it on.
Said gear almost always has an option to ignore it too, thanks to different regulatory requirements.
North-American operator: Hey, you're actually in India, so don't do DFS on those channels!
Radio equipment: 'Kay.
Queue argument for doing it right and having a link in a non-DFS susceptible channel to survive those many-minute long radar event triggered outages.
And counter-argument for the increased costs, so what's the point in using cheap 5GHz radios and spectrum in the first place?
Counter-counter-argument that 5GHz gear is so cheap! Such throughput! Wow!
I've seen and heard these stories before, and that's usually how it goes.
I don’t know where you’re doing your licensing but I pay about $500 every 10 years for my license links.
And $25,000 is what you paid to use the link in legally possibly causing wanton endangerment to life, and then you have to stop using it.
I don’t know where you’re doing your licensing but I pay about $500 every 10 years for my license links.
I should have clarified - CA operator here.
I expect Industry Canada fees differ quite a bit, but that's about our average for licensing in the upper bands.
Good equipment uses GPS and manages frequency allowance accordingly.
In the business plan, cheap equipment beats good equipment every time
Cutting corners on safety is great for the business plan too ....
Most gear now will hop frequencies automatically if they receive a DFS interference.
"Most" should mean "everything intended for sale in FCC-controlled territories" since it's a requirement to use that spectrum for part 15 purposes at all. If you don't support DFS, you're not supposed to use that spectrum at all, and therefore you shouldn't offer to configure it for the user if you support regulatory domain type compliance at all.
I suspect at least some gear gets around that with the whole "intended for configuration by qualified individuals" schtick, but that's pretty weak IMO.
If your gear supports this, turn it on.
More like don't turn it off if you're using most stuff and don't defeat the regulatory domain functionality, either. If you're using gear intended for the aforementioned "qualified individuals", well, make sure you're qualified to configure the thing.
I want to say most of the low-cost wISP targeted gear that I'm aware of has never supported the DFS-required spectrum without actually implementing DFS. If you're buying high-$$$ carrier-class gear, I should at least hope you know how to configure it properly.
Oddly, I have some general-purpose access points that do, though the instructions are clear that they're for indoor use only when using those channels.