Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., said FCC commissioners should consider Progeny’s...

Commerce Committee hearing Cantwell emphasized the importance of reserving unlicensed spectrum at different frequencies for innovators and asked commissioners what they thought about the matter. FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said he agreed with Cantwell that there is a need to pursue dedicated spectrum bands for unlicensed use. “We need to free up more spectrum for Wi-Fi … and we need to pursue a new generation of unlicensed [spectrum] which we can do as part of the incentive auction process,” he said. But Commissioner Robert McDowell said he wants to make sure policymakers do not reserve a large block of nationwide spectrum for unlicensed use. “I think that would undermine funds for the [FirstNet] initiative … we can still have robust unlicensed use below 1 GHz just as we are looking at above 5 GHz,” he said. “But we need to be very careful to not artificially create something that lends itself better to auctioning for licensed purposes than unlicensed purposes.” Cantwell said she hoped the FCC would have a “broader discussion” about it instead of “having some of these waivers given and then having preclusions, basically, or conflicts like on E-911 when we need to have a broad discussion on how we are going to have this unlicensed spectrum really be a robust space for all these applications,” she said. The commission is reviewing the results of field tests completed in 2011 and 2012 to ensure that Progeny’s services don’t cause unacceptable levels of interference to other users in the band.