Wireless Spectrum Auctions

In what he said will likely be his final speech as a commissioner, Mike O’Rielly told a GSMA/CTIA conference FCC should focus on the 7 GHz and other bands in the months ahead and that some, if not all 7 Ghz, should be repurposed for 5G. Beyond making the 3.45-3.55 GHz band available for 5G, and potentially spectrum below 3.45, the next vein of spectrum to tap for 5G isn't clear and warrants a discussion, said AT&T Vice President-Federal Regulatory Hank Hultquist.

Verizon is betting big on dynamic spectrum sharing technology, which allows 5G to run simultaneously with 4G on multiple spectrum bands, Chief Technology Officer Kyle Malady said at the GSMA/CTIA Thrive virtual conference Wednesday. Malady also stressed the importance of the new 5G iPhone.

Challengers of the C-band clearing order (see 2007220003) and a panel of federal judges discussed whether the FCC did enough by ensuring 200 remaining megahertz are enough for incumbent satellite operators' future needs, in oral argument Wednesday. With the FCC auction in December, there's a hope and expectation that the expedited argument will mean the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit will rule by then, though the court hasn't signaled any specific timing, a lawyer involved in the legal challenge told us.

There’s likely to be bipartisan interest in fixing the dysfunctional relationship between the FCC and other federal agencies on spectrum management no matter who wins the Nov. 3 presidential election and control of Congress, telecom officials and others said in interviews. Lawmakers we spoke with expressed interest in ending the brawling, which has hounded President Donald Trump’s administration in recent years. Observers see the issue as an outlier and expect no major shifts in other aspects of U.S. spectrum policy after the election.

The C-band auction and compensating satellite operators for leaving the spectrum are things the FCC could come to regret as a negative template for future spectrum auctions, said Philip Murphy, legislative director to House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Mike Doyle, D-Pa. The auction starts Dec. 8.

The Wireless ISP Association is grateful the FCC plans to allow higher power in the TV white spaces band and increase the height of towers, but asked the agency to allow use of the Longley-Rice irregular terrain model for looking at TVWS interference, said Louis Peraertz, WISPA vice president-policy. WISPA holds out hope the order will change before an Oct. 27 commissioner vote (see 2010060060), he told the group’s fall conference Tuesday streamed from Las Vegas. WISPA is meeting in person, with limited attendance, unlike most industry groups that are having only online meetings because of the pandemic (see 2010080031).

5G should be built by industry, not government, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said at the 6G Symposium Tuesday. The agency may need to consider a 2G sunset, he said. The world is in early stages of 5G, but it will mean rising competition for carriers, Pai said. Others looked beyond fifth-generation to a decade or longer away, with even faster speeds and lower latency.

NTIA, working with DOD, is pushing ahead on a spectrum sharing system going beyond what's possible in the nascent citizens broadband radio service, said Charles Cooper, associate administrator of the NTIA Office of Spectrum Management, at the Americas Spectrum Management Conference Friday. NTIA is tentatively calling it “incumbent informing capability,” or ICC, and it’s being developed in coordination with the Defense Information Systems Agency, he said.

The citizens broadband radio service offers “bandwidth abundance,” said Preston Marshall, principal wireless architect for Google Wireless, during an Enterprise Wireless Alliance virtual conference Thursday. He's surprised about how fast the band's use has grown despite the pandemic and the amount of interest in private LTE. “It was developed, supported by the cellular industry,” he said: “It’s available to you” and you can buy equipment off the shelf. You can deploy “very rapidly” without “having to develop your own unique, proprietary hardware,” he said. Marshall predicted CBRS will be widely used by startups. “You can start small and you can grow,” he said. The cost of spectrum has “been an obstacle” because it was expensive, he said. Obstacles remain, he said. “We still need to work on how we create seamless roaming and authentication between operators,” he said. “The business models are still evolving -- who pays for what, how much do they pay, what are the methods of managing these transactions," he said. Further work remains on coexistence in a shared band, he said. Equipment makers also need to include the band in more handsets, he said. Mark Gibson, Commscope senior director-business development and spectrum policy, said the biggest surprise was the $4.6 billion raised in the CBRS auction, with more bidders than any previous FCC auctions. Big players like Verizon and Dish Network dominated the auction (see 2009020057), but the cheapest licenses went for as little as $1,100, he noted. It’s “the people’s band” with wireless ISPs and electric utilities bidding in their first spectrum auction, he said.

A nationalized 5G network is a nonstarter and would be illegal, CTIA General Counsel Tom Power said at the Americas Spectrum Management Conference Thursday. Power welcomed comments by a DOD official Tuesday that the department doesn’t plan to compete with the wireless industry (see 2010130033). A White House official said Thursday the administration’s work on the 3.45-3.55 GHz band was an important new way of looking at spectrum.