Shared Spectrum Band Advances; Industry Fears FCC Chief Engineer's Departure

The seven SASs approved by the FCC are Amdocs​, Comsearch, CTIA, Federated Wireless, Google, Key Bridge and Sony Electronics, said an order by the Wireless Bureau and Office of Engineering and Technology. The approval is "an important step toward making this spectrum available for wireless broadband and other innovative uses,” the FCC said.

Industry officials, including former OET staffers, told us Knapp is expected to leave the agency early in the Trump administration, after more than four decades at the FCC. Unlike many top FCC staffers under Chairman Tom Wheeler, Knapp isn't a political appointee so his departure wasn't expected, as others leave in coming weeks or already have departed. The FCC didn’t comment. The industry officials said it's unclear who would succeed Knapp, who has held the job for a decade, initially in an acting capacity.

The FCC rules for the band set up an experimental three-tiered access and sharing model made up of federal and nonfederal incumbents, priority access licenses (PALs), to be sold in an FCC auction, and general authorized access (GAA) users (see 1605110015). FCC Republicans Ajit Pai and Mike O’Rielly questioned parts of the rules for the band (see 1611180037). O’Rielly, in particular, complained the PAL rules don’t offer carriers enough certainty to make them viable.

The Wireless Innovation Forum (WinnForum) has been coordinating industry work on the band at the urging of the FCC and a top official reported progress. “Interest in CBRS among WinnForum members continues to be very strong and we continue to enjoy full interest and participation in the standardization process,” WinnForum CEO Lee Pucker told us. Currently, 280 member representatives and observers from 57 organizations are taking part in the development of standards, he said.

“We anticipate readiness to begin certification testing in the first half" of the new year, Pucker said. “We expect any open issues, be they standards and other technical items, to be resolved over the course of the certification test period.”

“There is a lot of interest among carriers who are unhappy with the PALs rules to deploy in the GAA portions of the spectrum, so I expect we will see at least some preliminary equipment out there in a year to 18 months,” said Harold Feld, senior vice president at Public Knowledge. “I would hope and expect, especially in light of the express interest by a wide variety of stakeholders in deploying in the 3.5 GHz space, that the Republicans will respect the market and the need for certainty.” It would “an unfortunate regulatory overreach” for the FCC to change plans on the band “for the sole purpose of pursuing a vendetta against the Obama administration,” Feld said.

If the rumors are true and Knapp leaves it would be a big loss for spectrum policy, Feld said. “But it is important to keep in mind that even if there is no obvious successor within OET, that other chairmen have brought in OET chiefs from outside the agency, just as they do for other offices and bureaus,” he said. “I am sure that Julie has structured his office so that his departure will not disrupt the regular operation of OET.”

“There’s a lot more interest in the role of SAS than in building the networks controlled by the SAS,” said Richard Bennett, network architect and free-market blogger. “Without much greater certainty on the part of actual networking companies, the 3.5 GHz band isn’t going to take off. Appropriate rule changes can help to make this happen, but the notionof using government spectrum on an occasional basis remains dubious.”

Bennett also said if Knapp leaves it will be a huge loss for the FCC. Knapp is “a national treasure who’s going to be hard to replace,” Bennett said. “The younger generation of FCC engineers don’t have his understanding of the analog side of the job and the older ones are more narrowly specialized. It may be necessary to redefine the chief engineer’s job so that it can be done by a committee of three.”

"It's unthinkable that Julie Knapp could ever retire," emailed former FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell, now at Cooley. "Congress should pass a bill of attainder making that illegal. Otherwise, what will happen to the IoT?"

"The surprising number of SAS operators, including CTIA, reflects the increasing enthusiasm for this small cell-band among both large carriers and companies known for championing Wi-Fi,” said Michael Calabrese, director of the Wireless Future Program at New America. “In its unanimous order adopting the Citizen Broadband Service, the FCC struck the right balance between nonrenewable PALs and open, dynamically shared access. In a band with coverage areas akin to Wi-Fi, very large and long-term licenses would discourage innovation, customization and competition."

“An SAS will have to authorize very large numbers of users while ensuring they do not interfere with each other or with higher-priority users,” Fletcher Heald lawyer Mitchell Lazarus said in a Thursday blog post. “This will entail keeping close track of each individual user’s location, elevation, frequency, priority status, and possibly direction and speed of motion, type of equipment, and other factors, all processed through a mathematical model of how radio waves propagate. As the technology has not yet been publicly demonstrated, its ultimate feasibility is still an open question.”