O'Rielly Said Moving Closer to Proposal on Rule Changes for 3.5 GHz Shared Band

Changes to rules for the 3.5 GHz shared band appear to be on a fast track at the FCC, with Commissioner Mike O’Rielly driving the process, industry and agency officials said. O’Rielly asked the industry about potential changes to the rules, the officials said. But he's expected to push only limited changes. Wi-Fi advocates warn that more sweeping changes could mean a slowdown in the launch of the band, a multiple-year focus for the FCC.

A year ago the FCC approved 5-0 an order finalizing rules for the band. The order established a three-tiered access and sharing model between federal and nonfederal incumbents, priority access licensees (PALs) in the 3550-3650 GHz part of the band and general authorized access users (see 1504170055). Commissioners Ajit Pai and O’Rielly voted for the plan, but with some reservations. Carrier officials told us they need to be able to aggregate the PALs to get the wider channels needed for 5G.

O'Rielly said last month now-Chairman Pai tasked him with reviewing and restructuring the band plan (see 1703160029). O’Rielly said repeatedly that the rules for the PALs, the licensed component, didn’t offer wireless companies enough certainty to ensure a successful PAL auction.

Since the FCC already approved final rules for the 3.5 GHz band under former Chairman Tom Wheeler, the agency would need to launch another rulemaking to devise revised rules. O’Rielly believes a rulemaking could be wrapped up in about four months, as long as it makes only discrete changes to the rules, industry officials said.

O’Rielly appears to be focused on revising the rules to provide longer licensing terms for the PALs and making them more easily transferred, officials said. O’Rielly is also concerned about renewability of the licenses and wants to take a fresh look at power-spectrum density rules and whether they need to be rejiggered to allow carriers to aggregate licenses for wider channels.

Wi-Fi advocates say there's growing momentum behind use of the 3.5 GHz band. Verizon and T-Mobile, in particular, have been active and hope for changes to allow for wider channels, industry officials said. Verizon and T-Mobile are “very interested and curious about this spectrum and making that loud and clear to the FCC,” Wells Fargo analyst Jennifer Fritzsche said in a recent report.

The Wireless ISP Association reported on a recent meeting with O’Rielly and an aide to Pai on the band's significance to its members. “We cited the importance of the band for deploying fixed broadband service to rural and underserved areas,” WISPA said, according to a filing in docket 12-354. "The WISPA representatives made clear that consideration of any potential rule changes must not inject uncertainty or delay into the ongoing standard development and deployment.”

“WISPA is amenable to modest changes to the PAL rules but does not want to see any delay injected into the process or the loss of any significant momentum that has gained,” said WISPA counsel Stephen Coran of Lerman Senter.

"Reconsidering the rules for this band yet again would be a huge setback for wireless innovation and consumers,” said Michael Calabrese, director of the Wireless Future Program at New America. “At the FCC's urging, dozens of companies have spent thousands of hours in a successful multistakeholder process that included the dominant mobile carriers.” Deployment could start next year, Calabrese said. “The last thing the commission should do is derail this innovative platform simply to make it more like the traditional cellular licenses that are most useful to a few carriers, but not to rural broadband providers, indoor uses, or thousands of other innovators,” he said.

Lee Pucker, CEO of the Wireless Innovation Forum, which is devising technical rules for the Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) spectrum, told us there's momentum. WInnForum members continue to work toward a goal of having the spectrum access systems that will manage the band and devices certified and deployed this year, with a PAL auction next year, he said.

“This work is being done under the current rules,” Pucker said. “I can also say that, in my personal experience, introducing regulatory uncertainty into any activity will often cause industry to cutback or freeze investment in that activity until that uncertainty is resolved. That is not the official position of the WInnForum, but rather my personal opinion based on over 30 years of experience.”

“The scope and timing of any review should be communicated to the public as soon as possible,” said Dave Wright, director-regulatory affairs and network standards at Ruckus Wireless, which is focused on the band. “The reports of a review without the scope and timing creates uncertainty, potentially slowing the tremendous momentum we are seeing towards commercializing CBRS.”

“It is more important to get the right rules than rules that are not optimal right now,” countered Roger Entner, analyst at Recon Analytics. “If we have suboptimal use valuable spectrum will not be used as much as it should be. If you want faster data throughputs, larger channel sizes are indispensable regardless of who uses it.”