All EBS licenses have a circular coverage area with a radius of 35 miles from the transmitter site specified in the license application. All EBS licenses were applied for under now obsolete rules for one-way analog wireless cable television with high powered signals transmitted from a single tall tower. The FCC has changed the Rules for educational broadcast spectrum and now permits two-way digital data networks using low power cellular transmissions. The licensed coverage is referred to as a “Geographic Service Area” (GSA) or “Protected Service Area” (PSA). The terms GSA and PSA are used interchangeably.

The coverage area requested in an EBS license application may be partitioned by the FCC, if it intersects an adjacent coverage area applied for by another institution. The colloquial term for the partitioning process is “splitting the football.” The conflicting license areas for applications with overlapping coverage that are filed at the same time are resolved by drawing a line between the intersection points. The image below shows the intersection of 3 EBS license areas.

The geographic paradigm for GSA/PSA licenses was selected when the 2.5 GHz band was being used for high power transmissions of analog video signals from a single antenna. The coverage area is meant to conform to the typical propagation pattern for an omnidirectional single (non-cellular) high power antenna on a high site tower.
The GSA/PSA was a rational coverage model for educational use or subscription television service, since the licensee could designate its facility as the center of the circular coverage area. The institution’s students or wireless cable operator’s subscribers would most likely live within the 35 mile radius of the coverage area.