In the Report and Order and Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on air-ground telecommunications services, the FCC provides more technical information on the types of systems being proposed for the ground-to-air 849-851 MHz band and the air-to-ground band at 894-896 MHz. The FCC plan for a 3 MHz spectrum block consisting of two 1.5 MHz paired channels could be used for the same CDMA2000 1xEV-DO and/or FLASH-OFDM technologies currently being used for high speed (300 kbps or more) terrestrial Internet services. To allow use of these technologies, the FCC set a maximum ground station power limit of 500 watts ERP and an airborne mobile station maximum power limit of 12 watts ERP. Due to the high power levels, installations will be subject to the FCC's RF radiation exposure limit rules.
The Report and Order and Notice of Proposed Rulemaking has more information on the technical standards, how the licenses will be auctioned and how other users of adjacent spectrum in the 800 and 900 MHz bands will be protected. Also see the Dec. 21, 2004 RF Report for a summary of the news release on the R&O/NPRM.
