API Says FCC Needs to Provide Lots of Small Licenses in CBRS Band
The American Petroleum Institute can't support a proposal last week by the Wireless ISP Association and others on the 3.5 GHz citizens broadband radio service band because it would allow only two census-tract-sized priority access licenses (PALs) in each market…
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(see 1805100062). The better proposal would provide four census-tract licenses in each market and four wide-area licenses, API said. “This would not only achieve a fair compromise with the large wireless carriers, but would allow at least 40 megahertz of CBRS spectrum for oil and gas industry entities and other industrial and critical-infrastructure operators to self-provision their own geographically-targeted private wireless … networks at their facilities throughout the United States,” API said Monday in docket 17-258. Meanwhile, Key Bridge Wireless and Fairspectrum, two prospective spectrum access system (SAS) administrators in the band, said census-tract PALs shouldn't be a concern. “Large mobile carriers now complain that licensing PALs according to census tracts is unworkable,” the two said. “While others have forcefully corrected these claims, we write to emphasize that no SAS administrator has claimed that incorporating census tracts into the SAS is too difficult and no SAS administrator has asked the Commission to change the size of PAL areas.”