CTIA urged the FCC to act “quickly” to modify the priority access license rules for the 3.5 GHz citizens broadband radio service band. The most important changes are auctioning PALs for a 10-year term with an expectation of renewal and in sizes larger than census tracts, CTIA said in meetings with aides to Commissioners Mike O’Rielly and Brendan Carr. Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile officials were also there. The changes would give licensees “greater certainty and encourage investment,” CTIA said in docket 17-258. “Making these targeted reforms to the CBRS framework will help unlock the benefits that 5G will bring to the U.S. economy -- benefits that were not foreseen when this proceeding was originally undertaken -- by providing faster speeds and additional bandwidth needed to support the Internet of Things.”
Representatives of Panasonic, the Safety Spectrum Coalition and state departments of transportation held meetings at the FCC, including with aides to the five commissioners, on the importance of the 5.9 GHz band. Panasonic and the others don’t say in a filing whether the band should be set aside for dedicated short-range communications (DSRC) or cellular vehicle-to-everything (C-V2X) technology proposed by Qualcomm and others. They stressed the importance of the band to automotive safety. “V2X technology dramatically increases roadway safety, with the potential to eliminate 89 percent of Light Vehicle to Light Vehicle crashes and 85 percent of their associated economic costs,” said the filing in docket 13-49. “The state representatives each talked about current and planned deployment of V2X roadway safety technology and how the full allotment of 5.9 GHz spectrum must be preserved for V2X to avoid stranding significant investment.” An official from the Utah Department of Transportation (UDOT) cited the Utah Smart Transit Signal Priority project, using V2X to give transit vehicles priority at traffic signals. “The project is the first of several connected vehicle projects undertaken by UDOT and is intended to pave the way for other uses of V2V technology for transportation management and highway safety,” the filing said. An official from the Michigan DOT said the state has deployed or plans to deploy 400 DSRC roadside units before the end of 2019. “MDOT enacted a policy to add DSRC technology at every signal location statewide as it is being modernized,” the filing said.
The recently concluded Mobile World Congress raised some troubling questions for the wireless industry, ABI Research said Tuesday. The MWC “left many of us deeply concerned about the future health of the mobile ecosystem and the Mobile Service Provider (MSP) community in particular,” wrote Stuart Carlaw, ABI chief research officer. “With some notable exceptions, MSPs look set to be relegated to a marginalized position in the next industrial revolution.” Many see the carriers as “simple pipe providers,” he said. “There is a growing chasm between what MSPs should be doing versus what they are doing and can do.” Any belief that 5G will be the “savior” for the industry and cellular “the only connectivity for IoT is fundamentally flawed,” he said. Providers also have “an unnatural fixation with killer apps and business models,” Carlaw wrote. “The mobile community continues to peddle technology rather than offer holistic solutions. Enterprises want solutions, not an alphabet soup of three letter abbreviations. MSPs are not simplifying the decision tree for potential customers, but rather complicating it and slowing down market momentum.”
NTIA's Institute for Telecommunications Sciences recommends future spectrum efficiency (SE) studies zero in on receiver efficiency. The report looks at the history of SE studies back to 1964, saying much work has been done on terrestrial fixed and mobile wireless radio, but systems in other services received less attention. “Technical features that have barely been considered in many past studies, because they have only recently become widely available, should be significantly included in future SE studies and metrical developments,” ITS said. “These include [software-defined control] of transmitters and receivers that can take advantage of intelligence about local environments; smart or intelligent antenna designs including electronic beam steering and gain control; and dynamically controlled frequency agility.” Receiver selectivity "characteristics are just as important as transmitter [out of band emissions] and spurious characteristics,” the lab said. Director Keith Gremban said “spectrum efficiency will only grow more important as spectrum sharing increases and network operators look to utilize ultra-dense networks to build capacity.” Gremban noted this year’s International Symposium on Advanced Radio Technologies meeting will focus on “technical, economic and regulatory challenges associated with network densification.”
TV white spaces have untapped potential and Wi-Fi, LTE and other technology could increase robustness of TVWS radios, Microsoft executives told FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr and an aide to Commissioner Mignon Clyburn. White spaces devices can bond two contiguous channels, resulting in delivered speeds up to 23 Mbps, Microsoft said in docket 16-56. Better antenna technologies, more efficient higher modulation and “the ability to bond and/or aggregate pieces of spectrum together,” have great potential, Microsoft said. “Radios utilizing TV white space spectrum will add these capabilities over time,” it said. “TVWS radios that can bond up to 4 contiguous channels are being trialed under FCC experimental licenses. These radios are delivering throughput of up to 50 Mbps.” Microsoft said it's working with Adaptrum “and another major US technology company on a baseband chip which leverages the published IEEE 802.11af standard.”
Amazon executives said they met with Commissioners Mike O’Rielly and Jessica Rosenworcel at the Mobile World Congress to talk spectrum. Amazon discussed “how additional spectrum resources, especially in the 3.5 GHz and 6 GHz bands, can benefit consumers by making more spectrum available for unlicensed and shared uses,” said a filing in docket 14-177. “The Amazon representatives commended the Commission for maintaining unlicensed use in the 64-71 GHz band and for examining bands above 95 GHz. Lastly, the parties urged the Commission to move forward on its spectrum agenda.”
Arris' Ruckus President Dan Rabinovitsj and Chief Technology Officer Steve Martin met with Commissioner Mike O’Rielly at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona to encourage the FCC to act on the 3.5 GHz citizens broadband radio service band. The executives are encouraged by FCC steps, including recent conditional approval of four environmental sensing capability operators (see 1802210053) and the Office of Engineering and Technology’s release of knowledge database guidance on device certification. In a filing in docket 17-258, Arris supported unlicensed operations in the 5925-7125 MHz frequency range "on the condition that the existing incumbent operations are appropriately protected." Verizon said it met with Rachael Bender, aide to Chairman Ajit Pai, on the band. “We expressed support for targeted changes to the licensing regime for Priority Access Licenses,” the carrier said. License renewability and longer license terms are important, as are larger geographic licenses, it said. “While we recognized that there is no optimal geographic size for all bidders, we explained that it is generally easier to disaggregate down in a secondary market than to aggregate up to a desired size at auction.”
Two-thirds of the world’s mobile connections will be 4G or 5G by 2025, GSMA reported Monday at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, predicting 35 billion IoT connections in 2025. It forecasts 4G will cover 53 percent of mobile connections worldwide by then, up from 29 percent in 2017. Only 14 percent will be 5G. “We are at the dawn of a new era in mobile with the imminent launch of the first 5G networks and the Internet of Things poised to further transform the way we live and work,” said Mats Granryd, GSMA director general. “Operators continue to expand and upgrade their 4G networks in order to provide an evolutionary path into the 5G era.”
Ligado's planned terrestrial low-power service provides "ample" GPS protection, CEO Doug Smith told Commissioners Brendan Carr and Jessica Rosenworcel in meetings Tuesday, said an FCC docket 11-109 filing posted Wednesday. Ligado said it cut transmit power in all of its bands to levels low enough to protect certified aviation devices and allow most other GPS devices to operate unimpeded. It said if some underperforming high-precision GPS devices need more protection, they can be filtered to coexist with Ligado or replaced. The company said its base station emissions into the global navigation satellite system band are much lower than base station emissions from other band users and well below regulatory requirements.
The rollout of 5G in the U.S. could mean as many as 3 million jobs, including 50,000 construction jobs per year while deployment is in progress, said FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr in remarks Monday at a Jackson State University workforce development roundtable, hosted by Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss. Carr said the U.S. needs to get policies right. “This technology is not just about faster download speeds,” he said. Fifth generation “has the potential to increase competition in the broadband market, expand Internet access -- including through new, fixed wireless offerings -- and connect billions of devices. 5G networks could also transform entire industries -- with use cases ranging from self-driving vehicles to new telehealth applications,” he said. Unemployment is low in Mississippi but more could be done, Carr told a Mississippi radio station, and broadband buildout is the top issue facing the FCC. “A tremendous amount of rural communities” have been “left behind,” he said. USF is going to be important in many parts of rural America, he said: “There’s not going to be a private sector business for deploying broadband in a lot of these communities.” Carr said he was in Colorado last week (see 1802150018) and spoke to a broadband provider with more buffalo than people in his service territory.