Power industry-led field tests find substantial reliability impacts from 6-GHz devices

摘要

Mass-market wireless devices the Federal Communications Commission began certifying in January to operate on airwaves long held by energy assets would cause enough interference to substantially decrease utilities’ operational reliability and effectively render their communications networks inoperable, according to field testing results Southern Company filed with the FCC June 23. Southern Company, working with the telecommunications engineering firm Lockard & White and the Electric Power Research Institute, found that “interference from a single, FCC-certified [lowpower indoor] device would result in outage times measured in the tens of hours per year, rather than the required design level for critical infrastructure and public safety systems of approximately five minutes per year,” the utility said in its latest report on the effects of opening the 6 GHz band to unlicensed use.