Rosenworcel Calls for 2.5 GHz Band Auction With Proceeds Used to Fix Homework Gap
Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel called on the FCC to move forward as quickly as possible on auction of unused 2.5 GHz band licenses, using spectrum once set aside for school use. Since it was educational spectrum, money raised should be used to address the homework gap, she said Thursday at a Silicon Flatirons spectrum conference streamed from Boulder, Colorado.
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In May, commissioners approved 4-0 an NPRM on ways to spark interest in the band (see 1805100053). The FCC is looking at possibilities including an incentive auction like the one for broadcast TV.
“This spectrum is now considered prime,” Rosenworcel said. “It was Siberia at the point that the Kennedy administration set it aside.” The 2.5 GHz band has the “choice mix” of good propagation characteristics and capacity capabilities to make it well suited for 5G, she said. The FCC “asks lots and lots of questions” about the band, but needs a more focused approach, she said.
This band could help the 12 million U.S. students without residential broadband, Rosenworcel said. “To have a shot at digital-age success, every student needs online access not just at school but at home.” Money raised through a 2.5 GHz auction could be used to get more students online, through library loans of Wi-Fi hot spots “and any other creative ideas we can come up with,” she said.
Rosenworcel also said it's time for the FCC to make decisions on the use of the 5.9 GHz band for Wi-Fi. It's set aside for dedicated short-range communications and has been an FCC focus since 2013. “We have just a few thousand vehicles on the road with DSRC capability and that’s out of the roughly 260 million cars in the United States,” she said. "Our bet on DSRC didn’t pan out the way we thought it would.”
The National Transportation Safety Board says it could take up to three decades for the majority of vehicles on the road to have DSRC capability, Rosenworcel said. In the world of spectrum, 50 years from “start to finish is a long time,” she said. The FCC needs to support automotive safety, but the agency’s policies also need to be up to date, she said. “Other countries are doing this using far less spectrum than the 75 MHz” set aside for DSRC, she said.
Julius Knapp, chief of the Office of Engineering and Technology, said some view spectrum policy as a success when products hit the market. “It’s about creating opportunities and not having the government decide whether your idea is going to be successful,” Knapp said. “Let the market decide.”
Another principle is the FCC should “do no harm,” Knapp said. There’s often “discussion about disastrous consequences if we take an action,” he said. “I would venture that instances where there have been any harms have been rare.” The FCC has an obligation to protect incumbent services, he said. “There’s a lot of debate over what constitutes protection,” he said. “Some might criticize sometimes that we’ve been too conservative.”
There are “a lot of failures on the road to success,” Knapp said. Lessons learned from failed initiatives lead to successful ones, he said. Thomas Edison “didn’t get the light bulb on the first try,” he said. The problems are “really hard and they’re getting harder,” he said.