Carr Says FCC Will Continue to Look at Ways to Cut Infrastructure Red Tape

Carr said in his two years on the FCC, he has visited 33 states and met with numerous local elected officials. “To a person, they tell me they want 5G,” he said: “They want economic opportunity. They want the jobs that come from it.” “Every single community” in the U.S. should have a “fair shot” and opportunity that will come through 5G, Carr said. Big cities will get 5G “almost regardless” of what policymakers do, he said. “There are thousands of other communities around the country where the regulatory structure makes a difference. It literally can flip the business case” for buildout, he said: “We know the script. We know the game plan. … We have to update and modernize our infrastructure rules.”

The U.S. is seeing a “really dramatic” jump in small cells, with 13,000 in place in 2017 and 60,000 last year, Carr said. By the end of this year, the number is expected to climb to 200,000. The U.S. will compete with China on 5G, but China won’t back down, he said. “Overnight, Beijing could direct that thousands of new cellsites go up and soon I’m sure that will happen,” he said. China is making the mistake of not placing any focus on high-band spectrum, while the U.S. is focused on low-, mid- and high-band spectrum, he said: “They’re not seeing the same fiber-like high speeds that we’re seeing in the U.S.”

“Today for millions of Americans they feel like they have one or no choice for high-speed home internet service,” Carr said: “With 5G, they’ll be able to get wirelessly the same fiber-like speeds that so many consumers before could only get through a wired connection.” The new generation of wireless will also mean a “whole wave of interesting innovations” we can only guess at today, he said.

The least interesting feature of 5G is speed -- downloading a movie may take six minutes today, but six seconds with 5G, Carr said: “Everything that you can do wirelessly today will be better and be faster.”

Getting wireless regulation right is “key to our ability to expand our coverage, densify our networks,” said CTIA Senior Vice President-Regulatory Affairs Scott Bergmann, “Just as importantly, it’s key to our economic growth as a country,” he said. Bergmann urged approval of CTIA’s petition seeking further revisions to siting rules. Last year, after 30 years of building out wireless networks, about 150,000 cell towers were in use in the U.S., Bergmann said. “We’re on track” to deploy 450,000 small cells by 2022 and 800,000 by 2026, he said. “It’s an enormous investment, an enormous undertaking,” he said.

Local and state government groups have made clear they have concerns about further changes to siting rules (see 1909240061).

Nicholas Oros, spectrum chief in the FCC Office of Engineering and Technology, said spectrum above 95 GHz doesn’t penetrate buildings or trees as well as spectrum below 6 GHz. But its propagation characteristics aren’t that different from other bands being used for 5G, Oros said: “It’s foreseeable that there is going to be use of this spectrum sometime in the future.”

Brett Tarnutzer, head of spectrum at GSMA, said 5G should be for everyone. A lot of people think about the consumer impact in terms of enhanced broadband, but 5G also “represents exciting new opportunities,” he said. “Access to millimeter wave spectrum is going to drive that.” The new generation of wireless “isn’t it just for the urban areas,” Tarnutzer said: “We see millimeter-wave 5G as a way to increase productivity and lower costs” in the mining and other industries. Mining will become “safer and more productive.”

Harmonization Important

“We’re reaching this point where global harmonization is particularly important, especially when you talk about satellite operators who are not limited by national boundaries,” said Eric Graham who oversees regulatory affairs for satellite company OneWeb. Satellite and wireless “can certainly coexist in millimeter-wave spectrum,” he said: “We have to share it and it requires coordination and harmonization.”

Canada held its first for high-band spectrum auction 20 years ago, said Michael Christensen, ISED Canada director-coordination and terrestrial engineering. The regulator will release spectrum that overlaps with the 28 GHz band in the U.S., he said. It hasn’t made a decision on the 24 GHz and a few other bands. In the 38 GHz band, Canada and the U.S. share a band plan, he said.

A big conference focus was on getting better broadband in rural markets. “There’s still much more to be done” to address the digital divide, said Dan Ball, Senate Commerce Committee deputy policy director. “This is an issue of great importance” to the committee and “enjoys rare, broad bipartisan support,” he said. There's also broad support for better broadband mapping, one of the few issues that “rivals” blocking robocalls in raising concerns at the committee, he said.

There are some 2,000 wireless ISPs in the U.S., providing service to more than 4 million customers, said Louis Peraertz, vice president-policy at the Wireless ISP Association. Seventy percent have fewer than 10 employees and serve fewer than 2,000 subscribers, he said. WISPs need the FCC to keep its focus on unlicensed spectrum, he said. WISPs are very interested in the 80 MHz provided for general authorized access in the 3.5 GHz band, he said. WISPs hope to be able to share part of the C band, a proposal which seems to have support from the FCC, Peraertz said. WISPA members received more than half the $1.5 billion offered in the recent Connect America Fund II auction and “a number of our members are very attracted” to the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) auctions proposed by the FCC, he said,