Life Without Unlicensed Wireless Devices ‘Almost Unimaginable,’ Says CEA Report
Unlicensed spectrum “powers the devices we now take for granted,” but also “catalyzes innovation” because it allows entrepreneurs to “harness” radio spectrum “to connect people” and devices wirelessly, says a CEA report on “Unlicensed Spectrum and the U.S. Economy.” CEA “intended” the report (http://bit.ly/1sR0zde), which was filed at the FCC Aug. 4 and posted two days later in three separate dockets (12-268, 13-49, 12-354), to “inform” the commission “as it continues its important work in the upcoming TV broadcast spectrum incentive auction and other proceedings that impact unlicensed spectrum allocation and use,” it said. CEA originally publicized the report in a news release mid-June (CD June 17 p11), but last week was the first time it posted the full document at the commission.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Timely, relevant coverage of court proceedings and agency rulings involving tariffs, classification, valuation, origin and antidumping and countervailing duties. Each day, Trade Law Daily subscribers receive a daily headline email, in-depth PDF edition and access to all relevant documents via our trade law source document library and website.
Life without unlicensed wireless devices “is almost unimaginable,” considering the garage door openers, key fobs, baby monitors, hands-free attachments, cordless phones and Wi-Fi devices that have “diffused into our daily routines so completely that they are practically invisible,” the report said. “We know intuitively that their impact is enormous, but has never been thoroughly quantified,” in terms of dollar volume, but also their contribution to the U.S. economy, it said.
CEA estimates that unlicensed spectrum generates $62 billion a year in “incremental retail sales value” (IRSV), the report said. And growth in the number of devices that rely on unlicensed spectrum is “extremely strong,” it said. Between 2011 and 2016, the IRSV contributed by Bluetooth, near field communication, IEEE 802.15.4 personal area networks and RFID technologies has a cumulative annual growth rate of about 30 percent, it said.
The report defines ISRV as the annual value of retail sales attributable to including an unlicensed spectrum feature in a product, it said. “For some products, this is an incremental portion of a retail sale,” such as the Wi-Fi feature in a smartphone, it said. The phone has “utility” without the Wi-Fi feature engaged, but including Wi-Fi in the handset “increases the price consumers are willing to pay for the device,” it said. “In such cases, the incremental value of an unlicensed spectrum feature may vary from a small fraction to as high as half the value of the product."
CEA believes the “contribution of standards to the success of Wi-Fi devices -— indeed, unlicensed devices as a whole -— should not be overlooked,” the report says. When widely adopted, “standards lay the groundwork for much larger numbers of devices to be connected than would be possible if those devices were using disparate communications technologies,” it said. “In the ecosystem of unlicensed devices, Wi-Fi is the prime example of the positive effect a standard can have, because it’s incorporated into smartphones, tablets, TVs, PCs, wearables, sensors, among many other devices, “and allows them to interconnect seamlessly,” it said.