Deep Divisions Remain Over Future of C Band

“The devil is in the Coalition’s complete lack of details. It fails to articulate a plan for designing, testing, implementing, and managing the individual fiber networks contemplated by its proposal, or to appreciate that each of those steps takes time, particularly when every programmer has its own unique network requirements,” CBA said of the ACA-led plan. CBA also saw little to like in the Reed study "As a technical matter, the new study fails to account for aggregate interference from all terrestrial sources (i.e., terrestrial mobile and P2MP) to incumbent earth stations,” CBA said: “As a practical matter, overwhelming record evidence from diverse industries agree that allowing new, standalone P2MP service in the C-Band would encumber future terrestrial mobile deployments and unnecessarily complicate and impede the repacking of satellite services.”

“Overall, the record continues to demonstrate that the C-Band Alliance proposal best achieves the FCC’s objective of expeditiously clearing spectrum for 5G while also protecting the critical incumbent services in the C-band,” emailed Peter Pitsch, CBA head-advocacy and government relations.

CTIA liked the ACA plan to move C-band transmissions to fiber but not the sharing proposal. Carriers need more licensed mid-band spectrum, CTIA said. “Mid-band frequencies provide an ideal mix of coverage and capacity that will facilitate the key attributes that make 5G a break-through enabler of innovation -- speeds up to 100 times faster than 4G networks and single digit latency, which are fueled by wider channels of contiguous spectrum,” CTIA said.

The Reed study was written at the behest of the Wireless ISP Association, Google and Microsoft. “By authorizing such sharing now, the Commission can maximize the use of the entire C band in the near term while maintaining full flexibility for additional clearing in the long run,” Google said: “A requirement for P2MP systems to be frequency-agile would allow the systems to adjust to future expansion of an exclusive, flexible use allocation in current C-band spectrum, if such expansion came to be.”

“Coordinated sharing among receive-only earth stations and fixed wireless point-to-multipoint is entirely feasible, would maximize spectral efficiency, and would provide millions of Americans, especially in rural areas, access to broadband services at gigabit and near gigabit speeds,” WISPA said.

The Broadband Connects America coalition backed sharing by fixed wireless. “Americans living in rural, Tribal and small town communities currently have lower rates of broadband access, few competitive choices, and often pay more money for worse service despite earning less on average than Americans in well-connected urban and suburban areas,” the group commented: “The grossly underutilized” band can “provide critical spectrum both for 5G (to enhance mobile network capacity) and for more immediate efforts to bridge the rural digital divide with high-speed and affordable fixed wireless broadband.”

“The directional nature of fixed wireless P2MP permits the local coordination of sectors even where earth stations are in the area, but located outside the beam of the base station and the client device return path,” the Public Interest Spectrum Coalition said.

Frontier and Windstream jointly endorsed the Reed study. They “strongly support the Commission’s further exploration of the conclusions in the Reed Study to speed rural broadband expansion and further consideration of enabling fixed wireless use cases in rural areas,” they said. They backed a more traditional auction rather than the private sale proposed by CBA.

The Dynamic Spectrum Alliance also endorsed sharing. “Allowing point-to-multipoint sharing of the band can expeditiously help close the digital divide by providing wireless broadband connectivity to the unserved and underserved communities in the U.S., and we applaud the Commission’s recent Public Notice asking for additional commentary on P2MP sharing,” DSA said.