Pai Expected to Propose 5.9 GHz Sharing for Vote at December Meeting
FCC Chairman Ajit Pai is expected to announce Wednesday the FCC will tackle sharing in the 5.9 GHz band between safety systems and Wi-Fi at the Dec. 12 FCC meeting. Pai is to speak Wednesday at a WifiForward event in Washington on a smart spectrum future. It's unclear whether the FCC has worked out a deal with the Department of Transportation, industry officials said Tuesday. Pai is expected to propose reallocating 45 MHz of the 75 MHz band to unlicensed use, officials told us.
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Pai told the Wi-Fi World Congress in May the commission would soon take another look at the spectrum (see 1905140050). Pai was expected to circulate a Further NPRM that month but pulled it after Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao objected (see 1906180072). The band is allocated to dedicated short-range communications.
Career staffers at DOT have fought to preserve the band for dedicated short-range communications and are now calling 5.9 GHz the “safety” band (see 1909160018). Most foes and proponents of 5.9 GHz sharing declined comment Tuesday, saying they will wait until they see a concrete proposal from Pai. The FCC didn’t comment.
"Making the effectively unused 5.9 GHz band available for unlicensed use would be a boon for rural broadband -- an instant, low- or no-cost upgrade for millions of rural consumers,” said Claude Aiken, president of the Wireless ISP Association: “WISPA applauds the goal of efficient use of this spectrum and looks forward to working with the commission to transform this band from a safety dud to a rural speed-boost."
In the most recent filing on the band in docket 13-49, Charter Communications last week backed sharing the 5.9 and 6 GHz bands with Wi-Fi. “The 5.9 GHz band represents the quickest path to opening an almost immediately usable 160 MHz channel, the necessary bridge to Gigabit and faster Wi-Fi,” Charter said: “The 6 GHz band represents the runway for the next wave of unlicensed innovation given its wide-bandwidth 160 MHz channels and 1200 MHz of spectrum.”