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WRC Showed That the Rest of the World Understands Importance of Mid-Band for 5G: CTIA's Javed

Activity at the recent World Radiocommunication Conference in Dubai points to the need for U.S. policymakers to make more spectrum available for 5G and 6G, blogged Umair Javed, CTIA senior vice president-spectrum. “WRC-23 made clear that the rest of the…

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world is putting significant emphasis on making mid-band spectrum available for full-power 5G use,” he wrote. “Perhaps the most significant outcome of the conference is that the 6 GHz band -- which has been allocated for unlicensed access in the United States across the full 1200 megahertz -- is now earmarked to be the harmonized home for licensed mobile in the top half of the band for a majority of the world,” Javed wrote last week: “While some tried at the conference to set up a dynamic that suggested that countries would have to ‘choose’ between the U.S. vision for Wi-Fi or China’s vision for mobile, the reality was that some European countries were a major force for identifying the 6 GHz band for 5G and many countries sided with that view.” The lower 3 GHz is “truly a global 5G band now” with more than 50 nations using it “as the home for full-power 5G,” he said. “Now the WRC has harmonized this use across the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa,” he added. “This includes adding a new primary mobile allocation for the United States in the 3.3-3.4 GHz band and removing regulatory limitations on using 5G near the border in the 3.6-3.8 GHz band,” he said. Javed said the 7/8 GHz band “is now the global harmonization target for expanding mobile capacity for 5G and beyond.” The 4 GHz band “will be studied for future 5G use in the other two major ITU regions, but, unfortunately, not here in the Americas,” he said: “Agency opposition to study this band either domestically or internationally deprives the Administration of a promising option available to our key rivals.” Javed is a former top aide to FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel.