US court upholds FCC reassignment of automotive safety spectrum

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WASHINGTON — A U.S. appeals court on Friday dismissed a legal challenge to the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) 2020 decision to move much of a key block of spectrum reserved for automotive safety to accommodate the number growing number of wireless devices.

Last year, the Intelligent Transportation Society of America and the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials filed a lawsuit in the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia seeking to overturn the reassignment by the FCC of 60% of the spectrum block of the 5.9 GHz band. The spectrum block was reserved in 1999 for automakers to develop technology to allow vehicles to talk to each other to avoid crashes, but it has so far gone largely unused. (Reporting by David Shepardson and Nate Raymond; Editing by Mark Porter)