TAC Finds Potential FCC Role in Encouraging New Investment Standards, Global Harmonization
The FCC has a role to play in encouraging the development of mobile broadband standards and harmonization of spectrum usage, and in pushing for multistakeholder groups to investigate interference limits, members of the Technological Advisory Council said Monday. Small cell applications -- such as the ability to track user positioning by monitoring the location of his cellphone -- isn’t going to happen anytime soon, the “Spectrum Frontiers” Working Group found.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Export Compliance Daily combines U.S. export control news, foreign border import regulation and policy developments into a single daily information service that reliably informs its trade professional readers about important current issues affecting their operations.
In the 30-40 GHz band, the Spectrum Frontiers Working Group had three main recommendations: The FCC should issue a notice of inquiry to evaluate mobile broadband feasibility and adoption of appropriate service rules to encourage further investment. It should hold a workshop to discuss enabling technologies for mobile broadband, and examine potential global harmonization of spectrum usage. And the FCC should continue its leadership role in ITU discussions on these bands, without compromising other key U.S. positions.
In the 95-275 GHz band, the physics leads to beam shaping and steering requirements, the group said. There’s also the potential for “spatial diversity” there, and altitude sharing of the same frequency, with a street-level mobile broadband application for pedestrians, and having rooftop links for other applications. The group plans to discuss commercialization timeframes with industry players.
Terahertz applications have some interesting potential but “we're quite a ways away from small cell application,” said Brian Markwalter, senior vice president-research and standards for the CEA, and chair of the working group. Tracking user position by pointing a beam at a cellphone is akin to “magic” right now, he said. “At this point they're just trying to point two antennas [at] each other and move bits."
But when it’s ready, there would be some interesting commercial potential, Markwalter said. Potential applications include wireless kiosks where a cellphone user could download 10 GB in less than a minute -- useful for loading a movie onto a tablet before boarding a plane -- or switched P2P data distribution of up to 100 Gbps inside a data center. Going forward, the group plans to “get our head around” passive services, and how future commercialization and allocation would work, Markwalter said.
The Spectrum and Receivers Working Group encouraged the FCC to push for the formation of a multistakeholder group to investigate interference limits and the use of harm claim thresholds in the 3.5 GHz band. A harm claim threshold is the in- and out-of-band interference signal that must be exceeded before a system can claim it’s experiencing harmful interference. The Department of Defense’s reluctance to discuss its spectrum holdings in that band could lead to difficulty, but it’s important to have the discussion and a multistakeholder process is the best vehicle, said Lynn Claudy, NAB senior vice president-technology.
The FCC should take a monitoring role, the working group said. “It’s amazing how much progress” engineers and scientists can make “if the political and policy stuff is checked at the door,” Claudy said.
Julius Knapp, chief of the FCC’s Office of Engineering and Technology, said he anticipates the work a multistakeholder group could do on the 3.5 GHz band would be “complementary” to what the FCC is doing there. New equipment currently under design has to come into an environment that’s “quite complex,” he said. It’s important to give equipment manufacturers an idea of “what to shoot for” when they design equipment, he said.
The Expanding Wireless Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) Working Group recommended a formalized FCC definition of COTS for technologies and services. It will require a “common understanding of what it means” to bring all the disparate services and industries together, said Shahid Ahmed, a managing director at Accenture and chair of the working group. There’s also a need to identify spectrum sharing opportunities in under-built commercial areas, he said. An industry-wide workshop could be helpful given the trend of utilities all wanting to build their own wireless networks, he said.