Hello and welcome to Forward Path! After over 14 years as “Spectrum Omega,” we are thrilled to announce an exciting transformation. Our spectrum maps have evolved to include licensed footprint areas, marking a significant milestone after three years of dedicated development.
To better serve our users, we are changing our licensing model to better enforce our “Freemium” model launched back in 2020. While FCC Licensed Area maps will continue to be available for free for non-commercial users, commercial users will need to sign up through a subscription to access these maps.
This shift allows us to invest in the necessary cloud data processing tools and resources to generate high-quality datasets every week.
New Features & Improvements
As mentioned above, the system now generates License Footprint areas – the geographic boundaries of each license is computed based on data from the FCC each week.
This also includes computing the effective available geographic boundary for BRS/EBS “Overlay” licenses – as the FCC has licensed this spectrum in such a way that licenses overlap with each other, but licenses that were issued first (P35 GSA, BTA) in the 1990s and 2000s take precedence over more recently issued licenses (county, tribal area).
License Applications are now included in the system as well, showing which licenses have applications pending for transfer/leases.
Subscription Options
There are four levels of subscriptions to the data here at Forward Path.
Tier 1 – Free for personal use (hobbyists) only, licenses are aggregated into FCC Licensed Areas (BTA, CMA, etc.) and displayed visually on the map, along with the Depth Chart that shows the full spectrum depth chart of a particular county. Usage of this tier is monitored for violations of the personal use limitations, and the maps and depth chart are watermarked.
Tier 2 – For commercial or government use, licenses are aggregated into FCC Licensed Areas (BTA, CMA, etc.) and displayed visually on the map, along with the Depth Chart that shows the full spectrum depth chart of a particular county. This is the entry-level commercial option.
Tier 3 – Licenses are displayed at the County (or County-equivalent) level, along with Depth Charts and FCC Licensed Areas.
Tier 4 – Licenses are displayed based on their actual geographic boundary as provided by the FCC. This includes the computation of the BRS/EBS effective license areas. This tier also includes County, Depth Chart, and FCC Licensed Area maps as well.
Subscriptions are managed through Memberful.
The old website will be winding down shortly, so if you are ready to explore the new platform, click here to view pricing and choose your tier!