"Broadcasters Ponder

FCC Spectrum

Reclamation"

A recent Broadcasting and Cable article had this surprising headline.

The article started with this revelation,

A source confirms that broadcasters at last week's NAB board meeting in Dallas discussed the possibility of turning much of their digital spectrum back in to the government in exchange for a cut of the proceeds when that spectrum was reauctioned for wireless broadband. "There was not much support for the idea," said the source.

The "not much support" was not surprising. But the mere fact that they discussed a socially progressive potential economic stimulus concept that flies in the face of rigid broadcaster dogma and someone in the sacred inner circles of NAB had the temerity to leak it is what is surprising.

The issue at hand is the so called "big bang" proposal by Evan Kwerel and John Williams of FCC in 2002 in OPP Working Paper 38 in conjunction with the FCC's Spectrum Policy Task Force.

The abstract of the report states,

To facilitate the rapid transition from administrative allocation of spectrum to market allocation, this paper proposes that the FCC (1) reallocate restricted spectrum to flexible use; (2) conduct large-scale, two-sided auctions of spectrum voluntarily offered by incumbents together with any unassigned spectrum held by the FCC, and (3) provide incumbents with incentives to participate in such “band restructuring” auctions by immediately granting participants flexibility and allowing them to keep the proceeds from the
sale of their spectrum.

The proposal was not well received at the time.

But perhaps the NAB Board had read your blogger's comments to the FCC Innovation NOI.

Since NAB paid so much attention, here is the section they probably were thinking about:

Para. 54 (of the NOI) seeks comment on “innovations in the use of renewable energy and other green technology to makes wireless networks more energy efficient or address other environmental concerns.” At the risk of saying the obvious, the TV broadcast band uses a large amount of electric power to transmit RF signals that are actually received by an ever decreasing number of subscribers. The main apparent need for these transmitters is to guarantee to broadcast licensees “must carry” status with CATV systems. The use of electric power and the RF occupancy appears to be mainly a byproduct of this desired endgoal that gives 90+% of the viewership of licensed TV broadcasters. While over-the-air broadcasting gives consumers access to broadcast signals at no marginal cost compared to the pricing of MVDS service, policy options exist to offer basic MVDS service as comparable cost. For example, part of fees from new users utilizing former TV spectrum could be used to finance “lifeline” MVDS service.

MSS has no objection to giving present TV broadcasters long term must carry status, but questions why this must be accompanied with the waste of electric power and squatting on spectrum to deny it to others. While it is no possible under present law to let broadcasters keep must carry status without transmitting largely “unreceived” signals, MSS urges the Commission to explore and make recommendations to Congress for giving TV broadcasters incentives to cease using large amounts of electric power and cease filling spectrum with largely unwatched signals while retaining today’s must carry rights.

Reuters coverage: U.S. broadcasters balking at FCC spectrum plan

FiOS has a Bad Day!

We have been FiOS customers since we returned from France 2 years ago. In general the service has been great. But Wednesday, disaster struck and Verizon responded very poorly.

So, Mr. Seidenberg, if you are reading, here is how your firm treats customers.

Wednesday morning my wife was calling France on our Vonage line. Why Vonage if we have FiOS triple play? Simply put, VZ's international rates are an anachronistic throwback to the AT&T monopoly era. $3.43/minute for calls to France? VZ offers its payphone customers cheaper rates than that! Hasn't VZ heard that the real going rate for international calls to industrialized countries is about $.10/minute. Why should you have to pay VZ a monthly retainer to get market rates? FCC deregulated international calls a decade or so, assuming their would be effective competition. VZ showed they were wrong.

But I digress. In the middle of her call, the line died and so did all our Internet service. As little checking showed that it was probably the FiOS router since all the lights on it were now out. This is a nonstandard router with clear warnings not to use a normal router as a replacement. So I called VZ and had a discussion. The help center quickly agreed the router was dead and offered to send me a new one overnight UPS. I asked if I could get it faster. They checked and said that I could get one at a VZ store and gave the address for the one in Montgomery Mall, a few miles away. So I got the the Mall when it opened at 10:30 AM to discover the booth there had no hardware of any type. They thought the Wheaton Mall store was large and might have it. But they couldn't say where the store actually was, "next to the old Circuit City and some government office" and the only phone number they had just reached a computerized call center.

So off to Wheaton Mall. In all fairness, the VZ staff there was very nice and very apologetic about their bumbling colleagues to had sent me on a wild goose chase. So back home empty handed. Fortunately, I had bought a VZ Wireless cellphone with an unadvertised feature: with a $20 extra cable you can connect it to a computer and use it as a wireless broadband modem. BUT unless the other specialized modems VZW sells, you can turn the high priced broadband service on and off subject only to 3 changes/account/month. So I call VZW, obviously could not reach them by Internet at this point, and turned the wireless broadband feature on. Thus we limped along for the next day or so.

1 PM Thursday the UPS guy shows up with the new router. It says run the CD with it when you connect it. Turns out the CD is Windows only! As you might guess, your blogger is a Mac fan. Another call to VZ and lots of apologies, turns out the CD shouldn't ne needed if you had run the previous one with the old router. OK, but the new router still didn't work. After 30 minutes of more resets of various equipment - I must admit it is impressive how they can troubleshoot problems without a truck roll. We are back in business.

Then I ask if I can get credit for the lost service. You can ask and in 2 months (!!) you will find out what they decide. Will they just wipe the VZW broadband charge off the books? No one could understand that logic.

So, Mr. Seidenberg, if you are reading this, could you look into this accounting credit? Could you also explain why none of your staff in the DC area has an extra router that customers can pickup in case of hardware failure?

FCC Announces Workshop
on ex parte Reform

Faithful readers may recall that ex parte reform has been a recurring issue in this blog. (A B C D) No doubt as a response to this grass roots campaign, the Commission announced yesterday a workshop Wednesday on ex parte reform that will be simulcast over the web. I hope you watch it, or better yet, come and ask questions.

Washington, D.C. --The Federal Communications Commission will hold a staff workshop on October 28, 2009 to explore possible revisions to the Commission’s ex parte rules and processes to enhance the transparency of the Commission’s actions while at the same time maximizing the exchange of information between the public and the Commission.

This workshop follows an internal study of the current ex parte rules by Commission staff which identified a number of areas in which the current rules might be improved or updated. The workshop will also explore new issues posed by the increasing use of Internet-based media of communication and expression, such as blogs.

The workshop participants consist of practicing attorneys as well as representatives of companies, trade associations, and public interest groups, all of whom have substantial experience with the ex parte rules. The panelists will provide their perspectives on the successes and shortcomings of the current rules and suggest alternatives to better balance the goals of fairness, openness, and efficiency. A moderating panel of senior FCC staff will direct the panel discussions and pose questions.

RF Filters: An Important but Often Overlooked Issue in Spectrum Policy

Problems With the New 3G and 4G Frequency Band

by Mike Alferman*, Guest Blogger

The current big push to ‘mobilize’ the Internet is raising the awareness in the industry to the capabilities and requirements for a passive component that normally doesn’t get into the spotlight. However, this component – the RF Bandpass Filter, has been a key item in radio spectrum policy for years. With the efforts to open up new frequency bands for wireless internet use, the RF Filter may in fact start doing some driving. However, without some intervention, it could be that the commercial realization of the needed filters may not happen.

Historically, the FCC allocated frequency bands and added additional spectrum as ‘Guard Bands’ to prevent the interference between services operating on adjacent frequency bands. In addition, the in-band frequency use was coordinated based on the best practice engineering requirements of the time. As commented in the this blog, when UHF TV was first licensed in the US, (with non-critical services located on either side of the allocated bands) the adjacent channels were left unoccupied as it was determined that the discrete component LC RF and IF Filters available in the TV receiver Tuners when the band was opened were incapable of the high performance required to eliminate adjacent stations from interfering with each other. Thus, due to the poor performance of the receiver tuner’s RF filters, large areas of the allocated spectrum were left unused. This spectrally wasteful practice wasn’t significant as there was enough spectrum capacity for the needs at that time. Obviously, times have changed.

The FCC is currently responding to the need to use every possible MHz of the public’s valuable spectrum and has eliminated the practice of adding significant Guard Bands between new services. While being more efficient in spectrum use, this has created a real problem! The reality of all RF Filter design is that a certain amount of frequency is required for the transition from the Passband to the Stopband (the roll-off). It should be noted that the theoretical ‘brick wall’ filter will forever remain theoretical because in addition to the roll-off of the basic filter design, allowances must be made in the design of practical filters for the shift of the filter due to temperature as well as for manufacturing tolerances. This means that current practical commercial RF Bandpass Filters for the new frequency allocations are not capable of preventing some interference between services.

To be certain, RF Filter performance has come a long way since the days of the old UHF TV tuner! Filters then were large multi-stage discrete LC units with modest performance – and to operate had to be aligned in manufacturing. In the late 80’s, Surface Acoustic Wave (SAW) filters became common in TV tuner IF stages. The performance of the SAW Filters was significantly better than what could be achieved with LC filters with much better manufacturability - in a much smaller package. In the last 20 years SAW Filters have continued to improve. The performance of the relatively low frequency SAW IF Filters of the late 80’s is now possible with SAW RF Filters at the much higher operating frequencies. At this time, the operating frequency for commercial SAWs has increased to above 2.5 GHz, the Filter rejection ‘skirts’ have greatly improved, the Insertion Loss of an average SAW Filter has been minimized – and all achieved at the same time as a 94% decrease in the package size and cost. BAW (Bulk Acoustic Wave – also called FBAR) Filters became common in the last 5 years and have yet higher frequency capability and better roll-off than SAW filters. However the cost, packaging and development time of BAW Filters are still a few years behind that of SAW filters.

Technically, in order to better meet the requirements for the new frequency bands, the needs for the improvement of both SAW and BAW Filter performance are similar. Adding a frequency trimming step in manufacturing improves the manufacturing yields, but adds costs and increases the price of each filter. Both SAW and BAW Filters shift with operating temperature due to the materials they are made with. Decreasing this temperature shift has been the focus of development work for several years, and it’s clear that it will be a few years before the manufacturability and electrical performance of the temperature compensated filters will be at the same point as the current generation filters.

SAW and BAW filters have become the most widely used RF Bandpass filters in the world, with Billions being used each year in Cell phones. There is no filter technology that can provide better performance in a small, cost-effective solution for the standard frequency bands around the globe. However, the move to create new frequency bands for 3G and 4G services has been regional. The US has come up with several bands which will not be allocated worldwide and the spectrum auctions have resulted in a limited number of licensees that will use a particular band. This means that instead of unifying (standardizing) the frequencies to be used, competing services will be using different frequency bands. This market fragmentation creates a limited market for the RF Filters for each band. This is a problem for the commercial SAW and BAW Filter manufacturers. It should be noted that the new requirements (without Guard Bands) make the design of the filters for each band significantly different from the design for other bands – significantly increasing the design effort required and even requiring special materials and special processing. This means it is unlikely that the filter manufacturers can profitably produce the new more technically challenging RF Bandpass Filters at the low prices demanded by the equipment manufacturers. It should be noted that this uncertain profitability falls in the Passive Component industry, which currently only has single-digit profit margins and is fighting for survival.

The new materials and special processing needed to increase the technical performance of the SAW and BAW Filters for these new bands add both high costs and uncertainty of the electrical performance. The structures being developed for the new filter designs will take a few years before they reach the stable manufacturing of the current generation of filters. If you add up the factors of the relatively small market for each new frequency band with the higher costs for producing the filters and the uncertainties of the manufacturers making a profit, you begin to realize that the commercial issues may well rival the technical challenges. When combining these significant challenges, it can be seen why there is currently a strong reluctance by the SAW and BAW filter manufacturers to move forward to develop all the necessary RF Filters.

What can be done to make the development of necessary higher-performance RF Filters attractive to develop? For one, it must be realized by the community that the RF Filters for the new bands are not just a simple commodity on which the usual high-volume pricing pressure can be applied. They are a critical component which must meet the tough new requirements – or else the rest of the higher profit radio will not function properly. In addition, as suggested by MSS in the Comments to the FCC NOI, there must be a dialog with the FCC, the NTIA and the major RF filter manufacturers to assess what can be possible with commercial technology – including discussion on both sides of performance roadmaps. Also, equipment manufacturers can not just assume that because there is a need, someone will develop technology that works as they want – and it will be the same low prices as Cellular filters.

=====

* Mike Alferman, mikealferman2@embarqmail.com, has been active with RF for 40 years: 12+ years at EPCOS/Siemens as head of RF Applications Engineering and Product Marketing for SAW/BAW Filters and Modules. Key role in developing RF filtering solutions for cellular handsets, WiFi consumer equipment and WiMAX RF modules. 9 years at Andersen Laboratories as SAW Filter Design Engineer and SAW Applications Engineer. Key role in developing cellular Basestation IF Filters, HDTV IF Filters and Radar Chirp Filters. Held various other Communications Technician, Engineering Technician and Field Engineering positions. Significant Experience with Cellular Systems and Handsets, Land Mobile Radio and Radar/EW systems.Holder of Commercial General Radiotelephone License (formerly called First Class) and Amateur Radio Advanced Class License (WA2NAS)

Mobile DTV Standard Adopted by Industry

On Friday the Open Mobile Video Coalition (OMVC), "an alliance of U.S. commercial and public broadcasters formed to accelerate the development and rollout of mobile DTV products and services" issued this press release:

OMVC ... today announced it is “All Systems Go” for a new era of television service on mobile devices. With Thursday’s adoption of a final mobile digital television (Mobile DTV) broadcast standard by the Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC), U.S. broadcasters are poised to roll out an array of digital program services that will be available to consumers on devices ranging from in-car screens to portable DVD players and mobile phones.

“I congratulate ATSC for its remarkable achievement in bringing this standard to fulfillment. Mobile DTV utilizes the same digital spectrum that local TV stations use to send beautiful HD programming to the nation’s living rooms. With adoption of the ATSC Mobile DTV standard, small-screen versions of that programming and other services also will now be available over mobile devices,” said Brandon Burgess, president of the OMVC and CEO of ION Media Networks.

OMVC today demonstrated the services enabled by the new standard during a Mobile DTV briefing for government officials and others on a bus traveling around the Nation’s Capital. Seven Washington-area TV stations transmitted live local news, weather, sports and favorite programs to Mobile DTV compatible devices including mobile phones, laptop computers and netbook PCs. Senior representatives of the participating DTV stations, ATSC, the Association for Maximum Service Television (MSTV), the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) and technology companies participated in the dialog about the new standard and the new mobile services it will support.

Broadcasting & Cable, the prime cheerleader for broadcasters, has this quote:

Paul Karpowicz, NAB Television Board chairman and president of Meredith Broadcast Group, added, "This milestone ushers in the new era of digital television broadcasting, giving local TV stations and networks new opportunities to reach viewers on the go. This will introduce the power of local broadcasting to a new generation of viewers and provide all-important emergency alert, local news and other programming to consumers across the nation."

In case you want to know what this system actually is, an ATSC document with real details is here. A brief summary from p. 12-13 of this document states:

The M/H system provides mobile/pedestrian/handheld broadcasting services using a portion of the ~19.39 Mbps ATSC 8-VSB payload, while the remainder is still available for HD and/or multiple SD television services. The M/H system is a dual-stream system—the ATSC service multiplex for existing digital television services and the M/H service multiplex for one or more mobile, pedestrian and handheld services.

Central to the M/H system are additions to the physical layer of the ATSC transmission system that are easily decodable under high Doppler rate conditions. The requirements for these additions are defined in this Part. Extra training sequences and forward error correction (FEC) are added to assist reception of the enhanced stream(s).

So the new system, formally A/153, just takes capacity from the 19.4 Mb/s that "free"/over-the-air DTV is sending in a 6 MHz TV channel and diverts it to mobile services. Since the mobile services are in a much more difficult reception situation due to poor antennas and motion that results in doppler shifts, this shift of capacity is not a zero sum game. Every b/s of end capacity used for mobile reception will divert more than 1 b/s from home DTV reception. Thus having bought a new big DTV receiver, you may find that the number of b/s available from "free TV", hence picture quality, will decrease as broadcasters go after a new market using spectrum they didn't pay for to compete against others who paid for spectrum. (If broadcasters directly sell services to viewers, then they must split the income with Uncle Same per existing legislation.)

While this technology can be introduced without any additional FCC action due to the deregulatory nature of FCC technical regulation these days, it is likely that the broadcasting establishment will use this as a justification to get even more protection for their signals and limit spectrum options for others.

NY Times coverage

New ECFS to be Unveiled
Next Friday

Those of us who are communications policy wonks are endless frustrated by the workings of the Commission’s Electronic
Comment Filing System (ECFS), first introduced in 1998 and planned under the Hundt Chairmanship. I saw Chmn. Hundt recently at a social event and he was surprised to hear that the original systems is still in use with only minor updates.

On October 14th the Commission announced the new system and scheduled a public demo for 10/23. They described the new features as following:

With the 2.0 upgrade, ECFS will including many new features, including fully Section 508 compliance; the ability for users to file multiple documents to multiple rulemakings in a single submission; advanced search and query of rulemakings; ability to extract comments; RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds; and the ability to export data results to Excel or PDF formats.

Oddly, there is no explicit announcement of when the new system will be available.

The announced new features are certainly welcome. But we would like to see if they have solved some of the following problems:

1. Allowing people with overseas addresses to file directly without an obscure "work around" of giving misleading addresses.

2. Allow viewing of documents that "fall between the cracks" now and are not viewable such as new petitions for rulemaking and petitions for review of actions that do not have docket or file numbers.

3. Will more documents be posted with text that can be copied electronically. Some parties now file scanned .pdf files or locked .pdf files that can not be copied. This complicates the work of both FCC staff in preparing comment summaries and outside parties preparing reply comments.

4. ECFS 1.0 has an undocumented and unsupported feature that is very useful: you can derive a URL for a specific docket and use it to go directly to the current list of comments for that docket. For example, the comments for Docket 04-186 are (or at least have been_http://fjallfoss.fcc.gov/cgi-bin/websql/prod/ecfs/comsrch_v2.hts?ws_mode=retrieve_list&id_proceeding=04-186 I hope ECFS 2.0 has a similar feature.

.

TWENTY-ONE DAY EXTENSION OF TIME TO FILE REPLY COMMENTS
ON
WIRELESS INNOVATION AND INVESTMENT NOTICE OF INQUIRY

GN Docket No. 09-157
GN Docket No. 09-51

Revised Reply Comment Deadline: November 5, 2009

From an FCC PN:

On August 27, 2009, the Commission issued the Wireless Innovation and Investment Notice of
Inquiry (NOI),which provided that comments were due on September 28, 2009, and that reply comments
were due on October 12, 2009. On September 10, 2009, the Commission released the Public Noticein
this proceeding, extending the comment and reply comment deadlines to help ensure development of a
more complete record. The Commission established a new pleading cycle for the NOI, with comments
due on September 30, 2009 and replies due on October 15, 2009.

On October 2, 2009, CTIA –The Wireless Association (“CTIA”) and Public Knowledge filed a
joint request for a 21-day extension of the reply comment deadline “[to] enable interested parties to
review and evaluate the record submitted in the initial comment round.” CTIA and Public Knowledge
state that the current deadline for reply comments is just 15 days after the initial comments were filed,
that it coincides with filing deadlines in other pending Commission proceedings, and that extending the
due date for reply comments would serve the public interest by affording interested parties participating
in the proceedings a more feasible sequence of filing deadlines, thereby providing sufficient time to digest
the record and formulate meaningful responses on reply.

I suppose CTIA and Public Knowledge don't agree on much, so it was best to go along with their joint recommendation.

But I could also point out that while CTIA said on October 2 that it needed more time to file reply comments, it did have time to prepare for meetings with Chmn. Genachowski and Comm. Copps on the same day it filed.

FCC transparency would improve if large trade associations filed comments on time rather than rush to have secretive meetings not available to other parties in the same proceeding at the same time they claim they need filing extensions.

Without Opposition, Senate Approves Bill Directing FCC to Start Prison Jamming Rulemaking

Those of us in Maryland received this message from Governor Martin O'Malley:


Thanks to the leadership of Senator Barbara Mikulski in the United States Senate, this week we came one step closer to eliminating the use of illegal cell phones in our prisons. The Senate unanimously passed the Safe Prisons Communications Act of 2009 which, if implemented, would provide us the tools to use technology to block illegal inmate cell phone calls from within the walls of our prisons.

The use of cell phones by inmates constitutes a significant threat to public safety in Maryland's neighborhoods. The ability to communicate with the outside world illegally provides prisoners the ability to continue their criminal activity, and in some cases, threaten witnesses in their own criminal cases.

While the dedicated professionals in Maryland's prisons have stepped up their efforts to seize illegal cell phones, the only way we can definitively end the illegal calls is by blocking their signal. This legislation would give us the ability to do just that, providing us the access to urgently needed jamming technology.

I want to thank Senator Mikulski for her co-sponsorship of this bipartisan legislation and for her tireless work to improve the public safety here in Maryland. As the Safe Prisons Communications Act makes its way through the House of Representatives, we will continue to monitor its progress and advocate for its passage.

There is no public comment yet on the usually up to date CTIA website, although their fact sheet saying

"The fundamental issue is that wireless phones are a contraband problem, not a telecommunications policy issue."

remains. Apparently the Senate disagrees.

Senate Report

Text of Legislation

Equipment Approval and Early Revelation of New Models:

A Poorly Publicized Existing Option at FCC Can Prevent This

Ever notice news articles about innovative wireless devices that are revealed not by their developers but as a byproduct of FCC equipment authorization? Here are three recent examples.

http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13746_7-10302110-48.html
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10318292-1.html
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10350839-1.html
http://www.slashgear.com/cisco-flipsharetv-streamer-system-outed-by-fcc-3062285/

Apparently these major manufacturers are not aware of an obscure 2004 FCC Public Notice that is not well publicized by FCC. Another option would be to ask the TCB that does the approval on behalf of FCC to delay notifying FCC until the last minute.

For the benefit of loyal SpectrumTalk readers, here is the text of the 2004 Notice:

OET Equipment Authorization System Upgrade
Permits Electronic Submittal of
Short-Term Confidentiality Requests

An upgrade to the Office of Engineering and Technology’s (OET) Equipment
Authorization System will be implemented effective 06/15/2004. This upgrade will provide
additional flexibility for electronic submittal of requests for confidentiality of certain
commercially sensitive information that is submitted in conjunction with applications for
equipment authorization.

Pursuant to the provisions of Sections 0.457 and 0.459 of the Commission’s rules (47
CFR §§ 0.457, 0.459), the Office of Engineering and Technology currently accepts requests to
hold in confidence certain attachments to the electronic Application for Equipment Authorization
(Form 731). These requests are granted indefinitely, and are strictly reserved for limited types of
technical information.

The new electronic process will include a provision for temporary confidentiality for
certain additional portions of an application for equipment authorization. This will give
manufacturers and distributors the ability to import and/or distribute devices following
equipment authorization, while maintaining the confidentiality of detailed technical information
about the product prior to product launch. Electronic submittal of a request for such
confidentiality will ensure expedited approval and will make it less burdensome for
manufacturers and distributors to comply with the marketing regulations in 47 CFR §2.803 and
the importation rules in 47 CFR §2.1204, while ensuring that business sensitive information
remains confidential until the actual marketing of newly authorized devices. Such
confidentiality will extend for 45 days from the date of the Grant of Equipment Authorization,
and, absent any other action, the subject exhibits will be automatically placed on the public
database at the end of this period. However, if prior to the expiration of the 45 day period, an
applicant engages in public marketing activities or otherwise publicizes a device for which
temporary confidential treatment has been granted, the applicant must coincidentally notify the
FCC or the TCB issuing the equipment authorization so that the subject exhibits may be placed
in the public database immediately.


This limited confidentiality will be granted for the following exhibit types when an
applicant requests and justifies such confidentiality in conjunction with the Form 731, or a TCB
submits such information and justification in conjunction with the TC Form 731: External
Photos, Test Setup Photos, Block Diagram, Schematics, User’s Manual, Internal Photos, Parts
List / Tune-up Procedures, and Operational Description. Exhibits containing certain types of
technical information (e.g. Block diagram, Schematics, Parts List / Tune up Procedures, and
Operational Description) that have heretofore been granted indefinite confidential treatment will
continue to be so treated upon request. The confidentiality fee described in 47 CFR §1.1103 must
be submitted with the Form 731; however, only one confidentiality fee per FCCID is charged
regardless of the length of the confidentiality request.

If an applicant requires more than the original grant of confidentiality of 45 days, the
applicant can request an extension of the limited confidentiality for an additional 45 days. To do
so, the applicant must notify the FCC, or the TCB that issued the grant, a minimum of 7 calendar
days prior to the expiration of the original 45 day grant of confidentiality.