Not a merger, but signs of cooperation
According to Lasar’s Letter, an FCC-oriented blog at http://www.lasarletter.net/drupal/ XM has filed a letter with the FCC, in support of a recent Sirius petitiion that requests rules be promulgated to insure that WCS technologies do not interfere with SDARS repeaters. XM appears to be fully backing the Sirius proposal which includes the following points:
- Emission limits be established for DARS repeaters and WCS transmitters. Sirius contends that the firm’s research indicates that interference from WCS transmitters higher than -44 dBM (milliwatt decibels) will block service to satellite radio subscribers.
- DARS and WCS licensees must give advance notice of their equipment rollouts. “Such notice will ensure all licensees have ample opportunity to investigate whether their operations will be affected by the new deployment and request adjustments, in advance, to avoid interference,” Sirius writes.
- Firms be permitted to establish perimeters of an agreed upon size where extra transmitters can be deployed to compensate for interference.
A couple of takeaways from this news…First, remember that at one point XM was trying to buy into WCS, to use that bandwidth to augment their own. Now that the deal has fallen through, they are free to work with Sirius to limit the damage WCS services can do to SDARS broadcasts. Next, this demonstates that even in the absence of a merger, these two companies have plenty to gain by working against common enemies, rather than beating each other up. Finally, it shows that not ALL FCC regulation is bad for SDARS; some of it might even help!
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