DeFazio Wants 'Measured' 5.9 GHz Approach
House Infrastructure Committee Chairman Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., pressed the FCC to “take a more measured approach to the 5.9 GHz band” during President Joe Biden’s administration due to ongoing concerns about the commission’s November vote to reallocate the frequency for Wi-Fi and cellular vehicle-to-everything (see 2011180043). Some House Armed Services Committee members, meanwhile, emphasized during a Friday hearing the need for solutions to ensure DOD is able to maintain spectrum superiority over other nations for warfare purposes, while also allowing for telecom companies to gain access to more frequencies for commercial use.
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DeFazio told acting FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel that he remains strongly opposed to the commission’s 5.9 GHz decision, a feeling shared (see 2103040071) by Senate Commerce Committee member Gary Peters, D-Mich. “In its actions to date, the FCC appears more concerned with faster Wi-Fi than transportation safety,” DeFazio said in a letter released Friday. “The parameters in the FCC’s” order “will make V2X communications vulnerable to harmful interference and leave V2X with little dedicated spectrum. If the interference issues are not resolved, V2X may have no usable spectrum at all.” The FCC didn’t comment.
“The FCC’s decision ignored the safety concerns raised by DOT, bipartisan opposition from 38 Members of Congress, every state Department of Transportation in the nation, and the entire transportation stakeholder community,” DeFazio said. “I have discussed this issue with” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, noting that “one of the top transportation priorities of the Biden administration is improving safety.” Lobbyists we spoke with believe the matter will likely come up during a DeFazio-chaired hearing Thursday with Buttigieg on the Biden administration’s transportation infrastructure priorities.
“We need to find a solution to balance DOD’s need to access certain bands of spectrum with the private sector and rural communities’ critical need to develop spectrum for modern communications and 5G capabilities,” said House Armed Services Cyber Subcommittee ranking member Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., during the subpanel’s hearing. “Our nation’s private sector and civilian access to spectrum correlates directly with our economic competitiveness and, by extension, our national security as well.” China and other U.S. adversaries “recognize the inextricable link between spectrum development and national power,” she said. “We will have to determine how to most efficiently and effectively allocate spectrum to ensure both economic prosperity and military superiority.”
Other House Cyber members didn’t mention DOD’s sometimes-acrimonious relationship with the FCC recently on spectrum policy matters, particularly over the commission’s approval of the Ligado L-band plan (see 2101290058). GAO Defense Capabilities and Management Team Director Joseph Kirschbaum noted, in his testimony on the office’s December report urging DOD to do more to ensure it implements its 2020 spectrum strategy (see 2012100076), that department officials “have expressed concern that spectrum auctions and reallocations have limited the amount of spectrum available for military operation.”