WISPA, Google Say Sharing C Band Would Help Digital Divide as Rival Plan Filed
The Wireless ISP Association, backed up by Google, made a case for sharing with repacked satellite earth stations C band spectrum that's not reallocated for licensed use The two unveiled a new study at an event Tuesday by Virginia Tech professor Jeff Reed on a methodology for sharing the band while protecting earth stations. FCC officials told us the sharing plan may not get much traction there, where a C-band plan is taking shape.
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“We all know what the problem is,” said WISPA President Claude Aiken. “There are tens of millions of Americans who have no or slow broadband here in the United States.” WISPs “have been filling in that gap as best they can, but they often are constrained by a lack of adequate spectrum even in rural areas,” he said. If WISPs could share the C band, they could provide gigabyte or near gigabyte broadband service to most of rural America “nearly overnight,” Aiken said.
“We expect that fans of efficient spectrum use and better rural broadband will find a lot to like in this report,” Aiken told us. “We were grateful the FCC included our sharing proposal in the NPRM. This report builds upon those earlier filings and clearly shows that successful sharing of the C band could bring better broadband to over 80 million.”
Andrew Clegg, spectrum engineering lead at Google, introduced Reed by citing a recent comment by Commissioner Mike O’Rielly at a Wi-Fi Alliance event. “We no longer have the luxury of over-protecting incumbents via technical rules, enormous guard bands, or super-sized protection zones,” O’Rielly says: “Every megahertz must be used as efficiently as possible.”
“Fixed satellite service earth stations could be considered the poster child for super-sized exclusion zones and protection zones,” Clegg said. The current protection zone is a 150-kilometer radius, or 70,000 square kilometers, he said: The exclusion zone for one earth station is larger than 10 U.S. states. “It gives you an idea of an impact that an earth station has on spectrum management and it’s based on rules that were put in place decades ago and haven’t been revisited since,” he said.
Reed said his study shows exclusion zones closer to 10 kilometers are sufficient to protect earth stations from co-channel interference. “That’s probably a conservative number,” he said. The report hasn't been filed, WISPA said.
Alternative Plan
The Competitive Carriers Association, America's Communications Association and Charter Communications, meanwhile, filed a plan they say would provide at least 370 MHz for 5G.
“The minimum to be refarmed under our plan would be significantly more than the amount that the CBA [C-Band Alliance] promises to clear,” said a filing posted Tuesday in docket 18-122. “We further propose that the refarmed spectrum be made available for flexible terrestrial wireless use through an FCC-led auction. Critically, our proposal provides for making all of the reallocated C-band spectrum available at the same time in a single FCC-led auction. This approach best serves the public interest by ensuring that the benefits of 5G services and applications are made available to consumers as quickly and as widely as possible.”
NTCA raised questions about the CBA proposal. “As parties submit proposals in anticipation of FCC action soon on C-Band reallocation, NTCA urges consideration of alternatives to the C-Band Alliance misguided proposal for this mid-band spectrum,” the group announced: “The Commission has a responsibility to decide spectrum policy according to law and to ensure that the public interest is served as it makes licensing decisions. The FCC should not abdicate that responsibility to private parties in its rush to make spectrum available.”
The industry proposal for a public auction should be welcomed by the FCC "since, unlike CBA’s proposal for a private auction, it is within the commission’s legal authority and could result in a more transparent and fair auction process,” emailed Michael Calabrese, director of the Wireless Future Program at New America: “Requiring winning bidders to compensate incumbent users for the cost of clearing the lower portion of the band, as the cable industry proposes, is entirely consistent with FCC precedent and the Communications Act, whereas a private auction windfall to foreign satellite operators surely is not.”
Numerous companies have gone on record as opposing fixed wireless in remaining C-band spectrum, a CBA spokesperson emailed. “The FCC should maintain its longstanding and successful full-band, full-arc licensing policy, and not allow shared use of a reduced C-band by fixed point-to-multipoint operations.” The Satellite Industry Association didn't comment.
A CBA spokesperson questioned claims by Charter, ACA and CCA that they could clear spectrum in cities in just 18 months based on building out fiber networks. “Any proposal that relies on building fiber simultaneously in cities across the country would delay up to five years the availability of C-band spectrum for a meaningful, nationwide, 5G service deployment,” the spokesperson said. “We continue to believe that the CBA proposal is the fastest way to safely clear spectrum to enable nationwide 5G service deployment.”
The agency should hold a public auction in the C band "as opposed to an unconstrained private sale mechanism,” US Cellular told an aide to Chairman Ajit Pai. “We stressed the need to clear as much of C Band as is feasible as quickly as possible in order to maximize the delivery of 5G services in rural America.”