Greenville, NC (PRWEB) October 14, 2011
LBA Group, Inc. has asked the Federal Communications Commission to speed up broadband deployment by promoting wireless antenna collocation on AM radio station towers. Recommended promotions include industry education, regulatory reformand a 50 percent fee discount.
In a Sept. 30 filing (WC Docket No. 11-59), the North Carolina engineering consultancy drew upon its decades of tower engineering experience in telling FCC commissioners that collocation is a valid engineered response to the shortage of wireless antenna placements. With an estimated ten thousand AM radio station towers across the country, literally thousands of opportunities exist to economically and reliably affix wireless antennae to AM towers without degrading or altering the radiation power of the AM station, commissioners were informed.
LBA founder and president Lawrence Behr is a recognized authority on collocation. His company has engineered, patented, and successfully applied collocation technology. Behr chairs a subcommittee of the Wireless Communications Association International that is working on resolving issues between AM and broadband entities.
Yet resistance remains. There is simply too much embedded ignorance, fear, uncertainty and inertia for the two industries to come together to take a step that would be in their mutual interests, commissioners were told in the filing.
Therefore, in addition to the financial incentive that AM station owners already have in renting out space on their towers to wireless companies, LBA proposed that the FCC introduce four additional encouragements for station owners and other industry players:
