Today the Land Mobile Communications Council (LMCC) filed a request with the FCC seeking a 30-day extension from December 28, 2021, to January 27, 2022, of the Reply Comment deadline in the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) 4.9 GHz Eight Notice of Further Proposed Rulemaking (FNPRM). The FNPRM asks interested parties to consider multiple approaches for promoting greater public safety use of the band and to comment on a variety of shared access models for facilitating non-public safety access.

A substantial number of parties submitted comments in response to the FNPRM, and while the comments reflect areas of agreement, particularly the need for a more detailed licensing structure, other critical issues did not achieve a level of agreement among affected parties. Nonetheless, the Comments did provide useful clarification of areas where consensus might yet be achieved if the parties have sufficient time to collaborate before filing Reply Comments. As such, the Council, in its request, stated that “a 30-day extension of the Reply Comment deadline will provide that opportunity.” The current deadline, falling in what for many is a holiday week between Christmas and New Year’s, is a “particularly inopportune time to try to achieve greater commonality in addressing the complex issues presented in the FNPRM.”

The LMCC’s extension request concluded with the statement that “no parties are more interested than the members of the LMCC in the adoption of 4.9 GHz rules that are consistent with the FCC’s goals and with the positions of its member organizations. Providing an additional 30-day period for Reply Comments should have no meaningful impact on the FCC’s decision-making process but could yield a more useful record on which to base those decisions.” For these reasons, the LMCC requests that the FCC extend the Reply Comment deadline in this proceeding until January 27, 2022.

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