Focus Now on 3.45-3.55 GHz, Possible 3.1-3.45 GHz Clearing, O'Rielly Says
With 3.5 GHz band commercial use rolling out nationwide, focus on clearing the 3.45-3.55 GHz band and studying possibly clearing at least some of 3.1-3.45 GHz or a sharing model like what's being used for the citizens broadband radio service (CBRS), FCC Commissioner Mike O'Rielly said Wednesday. At an event cheering that initial commercial deployment, O'Rielly hoped DOD follows through on the idea it floated of increasing the allowable power levels for the band. Pentagon spectrum chief Fred Moorefield said the department would be amenable to exploring that once it's "comfortable with the rollout. ... More spectrum sharing is the new normal."
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A parade of wireless industry speakers talked up the possibility of replicating the CBRS sharing regime. The significance of OnGo -- the brand name for services using the band -- isn't just the 150 MHz itself but the shared spectrum regime, said Charter Communications Senior Vice President-Wireless Technology Craig Cowden. "The world is watching us." He said Charter did some proof of concepts for using the spectrum for rural broadband and launched a commercial trial in North Carolina. He said the band could be useful for small-cell mobility offload for Charter's mobile service as the company tries to shift from a Wi-Fi-first mobile virtual network operator to a small-cell-first MVNO model. He said the spectrum's use in industrial IoT also has promise.
Verizon Senior Vice President-Technology Strategy and Planning Adam Koeppe said CBRS is a good solution for adding 4G LTE capacity. Vice President-Federal Regulatory Hank Hultquist said AT&T, which started using fixed wireless services in the 2.3 GHz band, will use 3.5 GHz for next-generation fixed wireless services. He said the company is starting with sites in Ohio and Tennessee and plans to expand to 11 states by early next year. Wireless ISP Association President Claude Aiken said such spectrum is part of solving the rural digital divide and wireless broadband could be rolled out rurally within months, at a fraction of the cost of fiber.
O'Rielly credited Chairman Ajit Pai, former Chairman Tom Wheeler and Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel for helping move through the shared use of the band. He said the pent-up demand for the spectrum is shown by handsets employing it becoming commercially available even before the testing was done.
O'Rielly told us that CBRS-esque sharing model could be used in the 37-39 GHz band. He said the first priority for the midband should be clearing, with sharing being "another tool in the toolbox." He said 3.1-3.45 GHz is more likely to need sharing, while 3.45-3.55 GHz could potentially be cleared. Demonstrating "success" for sharing is getting parties comfortable with it, which then could lead to tweaks of technical matters like protection zones and power levels, he said.
O'Rielly told us he expects an order this year for the C band, which bookends the CBRS band. The C-Band Alliance band-clearing plan "brought forward a very credible plan" and most if not all its attributes "will be more than seriously considered if not adopted," he said. America's Communications Association Senior Vice President-Government Relations Ross Lieberman at the Competitive Carriers Association conference Wednesday said that even if the CBA was able to free up as much as 300 MHz of the band for 5G, the FCC still might opt for a different approach (see 1909180061). The FCC is facing widely varying estimates about the cost of a fiber network to replace C-band distribution of video programming, as well as questions about how fast such a network could be rolled out (see 1909180027).