The FCC granted a request from the Association of Federal Communication Consulting Engineers filed last week, requesting a 21-day extension of the time for comments in the FCC Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) in its Third Periodic DTV review. Comments on the Notice were initially due Wednesday, Aug. 8, with reply comments due Aug. 23, 2007. AFCCE argued additional time was needed to fully review the technical details raised in the NPRM. The request also pointed out that the new DTV Table of Allotments was expected to be released soon (see article in this week’s RF Report).

While the FCC believed that there was merit to the request, the full 21-day extension was declined, but the commission did offer seven additional days for comments to be submitted.

Reasoning by the commission was that while an extension was needed, it was felt that the full 21 days was unnecessarily long and couldn’t be justified as it might impact on the overall schedule for the Feb. 17, 2009 transition.