David E. Hilliard

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has adopted new technical rules intended to promote unlicensed innovation for applications as diverse as “hot car” child safety and virtual reality gaming. The new rules, which took effect July 24, 2023, require unlicensed radar and other field disturbance sensor (FDS) devices operating in the 57-71 GHz band (60 GHz Band) to comply with technical and operational requirements intended to increase design and operational flexibility. With these new rules, the FCC seeks to enable new and innovative applications—including child detection in hot vehicles—while preserving the band for shared use with other unlicensed technologies, including WiGig technologies supporting Virtual Reality (VR) and Extended Reality (XR) applications.

On April 12, 2022, new rules adopted by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC or Commission) took effect that will expand innovators’ ability to market, import, and pre-sell radio frequency (RF) devices that are still under FCC equipment authorization review. Under the new rules, manufacturers and others may now conditionally sell RF devices to consumers and import RF devices for certain pre-sale activities (e.g., packaging and delivering devices to retail locations, loading devices with software to demonstrate device capabilities for displays, etc.) prior to completing the equipment authorization process. While the new rules present a significant opportunity to help bring innovative new devices to consumers quickly, as discussed below, industry must take care to comply with certain conditions if they wish to engage in pre-sale activities.

On June 17, 2021, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC or Commission) voted unanimously to approve its Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) and Notice of Inquiry (NOI) proposing significant changes to the FCC’s equipment authorization regime and competitive bidding certification rules to further the goals of protecting the nation’s communications networks and supply chains from equipment and services that pose an unacceptable risk to national security. This latest proposal builds upon the Commission’s ongoing efforts to protect our nation’s communications networks as well as other federal government efforts.[1] Comments on the NPRM and NOI will be due 30 days after the item is published in the Federal Register and Reply Comments will be due 60 days after publication.

On May 27, 2021, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC or Commission) released a draft Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) and Notice of Inquiry (NOI) proposing significant changes to the FCC’s equipment authorization regime and spectrum auction certifications, intended to protect U.S. communications networks from equipment and services that pose an unacceptable risk to national security.

While Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) rules may be top of mind for Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS or drones) users and manufacturers, if you’re launching a drone business the chances are your drones are going to be communicating by radio. That is why it is also critically important to pay attention to the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) authority to regulate issues impacting radio waves and UAS. Here are five things that every drone manufacturer should know about the FCC.