C-Band Alliance Plan Not Necessarily First FCC Choice, ACA Official Says

“It has been well-received,” Lieberman said: “It has been understood that it does more than the CBA plan in terms of more spectrum. It has a fiber deployment component” and returns money to the Treasury. There’s now a “horse race,” he said. CBA will look "aggressively" at ways to make more than 200 MHz of 3.7-4.2 GHz spectrum available over a three-year span, the group says (see 1909130051).

Lieberman told us his group would look closely at any new CBA plan. “We just have to see the details,” he said: “Increasing from 200 to 300 MHz raises new issues that will have to be addressed in terms of the current users and how they will be accommodated and will that be acceptable.” Lieberman noted a New Street estimate that a C-band auction could return $38 billion to satellite operators (see 1909160013). “No one has told me that a decision has been made,” he said. ACA is particularly interested in the proceeding because about 170 MHz of the band is used for cable programming transport, he said.

The alternate plan is “unrealistic and unworkable,” a CBA spokesperson emailed. "Speed, certainty, and accountability for clearing are essential for success, and that is exactly where the ACA Connects proposal falls woefully short. It fails to account for the significant complexity of installing fiber all over the U.S., particularly in rural areas. It fails to involve those who are actually operating within the spectrum. It fails to assign accountability for a successful transition. And it fails to protect the content companies who serve nearly 120 million US households and who have said on the record that fiber is not a viable replacement for satellite.”

Commissioner Mike O'Rielly told us Wednesday CBA has "a very credible plan." Most if not all its attributes "will be more than seriously considered if not adopted," he said in Washington (see 1909180020). The FCC is facing scattered estimates about the cost of a fiber network to replace C-band distribution of video programming, as well as questions about how fast such a network could be rolled out (see 1909180027).

Hurdles

But a legal challenge is likely regardless of what the FCC does “given the scope and scale of the amount of spectrum we’re talking about,” Lieberman said at CCA.

John Hunter, senior director-engineering and technology policy at T-Mobile said the 200 MHz proposed by CBA is too little. T-Mobile’s recommendation is an incentive auction “and let the marketplace decide,” he said. “We really need 300-plus more spectrum to get out there to feed the marketplace,” he said: “There’s a deficit of [U.S.] mid-band.” Countries in Europe and Asia have done much more for 5G, he said: ACA proposes a “credible plan” that's “certainly better” than CBA's. His company believes 370 MHz should be a minimum.

The 3.5 GHz citizens broadband radio service band isn’t the answer, Hunter said. “It’s limited in power. It’s limited in bandwidth and it’s certainly going to be a challenge to deploy that as mid-band for 5G offerings.”

Different plans are getting closer, said Will Adams, aide to Commissioner Brendan Carr. For more than a year, CBA’s first plan called for clearing 100 MHz, with no money for the Treasury and “a quick and nontransparent sale to unknown wireless parties,” he said. CBA is now at 180 MHz with some money going to taxpayers and a more-transparent sale, he said. “They’ve moved quite a bit.” The ACA suggestions have similarities to CBA, Adams said, noting it’s important the parties even reached agreement. It’s never “effortless” to find consensus “especially on a plan that affects many lines of business,” he said. It could mean fiber builds to rural America, he said: “Wouldn’t that kill two birds with one stone?”

Rural 5G

During a second panel, industry officials said there are many questions about 5G and how it will look in rural markets.

“In rural areas, it still does remain to be seen what 5G is going to look like,” said Kara Azocar, GCI regulatory counsel-federal affairs. “We're going to have look outside the box to figure out what solutions that we’re not currently thinking of are going to work in a lot of these markets.” GCI is deploying 5G, but just using macrocells, though others in Alaska are deploying small cells, she said: “What that 5G is really going to look like depends on how our build goes.”

“Alaska presents a variety of challenges and there is a diversity of markets that we have to consider for 5G and other services,” Azocar said. Eighty percent of the state's unserved by the electric grid or road network. “We have to be innovative,” she said. Years ago, GCI had similar questions about what 4G would look like in rural areas, she said.

“Will 5G exacerbate an urban-rural divide on connectivity and are we going to end up with a second tier internet once you get out of the cities?” asked David Goldman, SpaceX director-satellite policy. “It doesn’t have to be that way.” Service in rural areas “will take work,” he said. “It’s going to take solutions that haven’t necessarily been the ones that you had thought of for previous generations.”

ACA member GCI exists because it wants to bring the same services as in urban areas, said Rob Shema, the association's executive vice president-member services and finance. Rural providers haven’t “quite figured out” 5G in rural places, “but they will,” he said. “When folks say that 5G is not going to exist in rural America, that’s completely false,” Shema said: “It may look different and feel different.”

At the low end, the industrial IoT will have as much combined value as the entire communications industry today, Tod Sizer, Nokia Bell Labs vice president-smart optical fabric and device research, said in a Wednesday keynote. In Germany, wireless robots are transforming manufacturing, Sizer said. “They found that the wired robots were just getting in the way.” Industrial IoT will have lots of opportunity in the mining industry, he said, where “there’s a lot of need for advanced safety" and autonomous movement of people and machines.” In agriculture, the IoT will mean more precise fertilizing and seeding, he said. Early tests found precision agriculture requires 23 percent less fertilizer and 15 percent less seed, with production increases of 27 percent, he said. ISPs are also targeting rural agriculture (see 1908150057).