T-Mobile Goes Further Than Other Carriers in Seeking Changes to 3.5 GHz Rules
The fight over the future of the 3.5 GHz band is heating up, with T-Mobile breaking with other carriers to propose its own version of rule changes. CTIA recently also proposed revised rules (see 1706190067). A coalition of companies and groups concerned about protecting unlicensed use of the band asked the FCC to not make major changes to the rules, which took years to develop. The filings come as Commissioner Mike O’Rielly takes the lead on changing the rules to better assure the band will be a success (see 1704190056).
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The T-Mobile filing follows a disagreement within the carrier community, industry officials said Tuesday. The company pressed CTIA to submit a version of its proposal, but was opposed by Verizon, industry officials said. “We believe it’s important that the FCC hear all voices and encourage our members to share their perspectives as we work to implement the most effective rollout of 3.5,” a CTIA spokesman said. T-Mobile and Verizon didn’t comment.
O’Rielly has signaled his concerns center on whether the licensing plan creates sufficient investment incentives and he has no intention of revisiting the basic 3-tier framework of the Citizens Band Radio Service (CBRS) spectrum, industry officials said. A carrier official said T-Mobile isn’t breaking with CTIA and other carriers per se, but thinks the FCC should go further in revamping the band to be consistent with international standards. If the 3.5 GHz band is left untouched, "it will create a challenge down the road to converting those channels to support 5G," the official said.
T-Mobile proposes the FCC auction all 150 MHz of spectrum in the 3.5 GHz band as priority access licenses (PALs), while allowing general authorized access use opportunistically throughout the band. PALs would be authorized “on a standard, ten-year license term with renewal expectancy,” under the T-Mobile proposal. The FCC should also make all PALs available at auction, “regardless of the number of applications received,” T-Mobile said: The agency also should permit bidding on specific PAL blocks and use partial economic areas to license PALs rather than the census blocks now in the rules.
“By making these changes, the Commission will facilitate investment in the 3.5 GHz band and ensure that the United States retains its leadership position in the development of 5G technologies across all spectrum bands,” T-Mobile filed in docket 12-354.
CBRS advocates urged the FCC to avoid major changes to the rules, especially enlarging the size of the PALs. “Auctioning licenses with coverage areas larger than census tracts would undermine the purpose of this small cell innovation band,” the coalition wrote commissioners Monday. Traditional licensing “based on exclusive access to very large geographic areas for inherently small cell deployments would not allow the largest possible number of businesses, individuals, nonprofit institutions and other entities the ability to self-provision capacity for mobile data offload, for neutral host LTE networks, or to customize highly-localized networks for machine-to-machine, smart city and other connectivity needs,” they said.
“CTIA is once again trying to ensure that licenses are too large and too expensive for anyone but the big incumbent cellular carriers,” said Michael Calabrese, director of the Wireless Future Project at New America’s Open Technology Institute. “With consumers and so many other companies poised to benefit, it is deeply disappointing that the FCC might even consider such a fundamental change so obviously aimed at stifling wireless competition and innovation.”
“Developing new models of licensing is important and there's always resistance to doing this kind of experimentation,” said Harold Feld, senior vice president at Public Knowledge. “It is a problem when you have an administration which sees its job as catering to incumbents to ensure their deployment rather than having some willingness to experiment with regulatory models.” Feld questioned whether DOD -- Navy incumbents also use the spectrum -- would be willing to go along with major changes for the band.
CTIA defended its petition in a Monday blog post: “These reforms are important because if we get our spectrum and wireless infrastructure policy right, 5G is forecast to be a $500 billion shot in the arm to America’s economy, creating three million jobs and enabling smart city solutions that could produce $160 billion in benefits and savings for communities across the country.”