Wi-Fi's Future Spectrum Needs Raise Questions
The 5.9 GHz band likely is the best near-term opportunity for additional Wi-Fi spectrum, said speakers at WiFi Forward discussions Monday. A benefit of the band is lack of significant deployed incumbents there, as opposed to the C-band, said NCTA Associate General Counsel Danielle Pineres, noting that, paired with the 6 GHz band, it could represent a wide swath of spectrum. Public Knowledge Senior Vice President Harold Feld said the change in administration at the Transportation Department could move things along since the Republican administration brings a suspicion of technology mandates and there are LTE options in the market.
With Verizon having thousands of microwave links in the 6 GHz hand, it needs to see more from the unlicensed community in terms of mitigation techniques, said Vice President-Wireless Policy Development Charla Rath, saying the company still believes it could be a good band for unlicensed operations. Pineres said the FCC may move on parts of that spectrum faster than others and subdivide the band.
The Wi-Fi industry “has done an absolutely lousy job” advocating for its spectrum needs compared with the licensed spectrum community, Feld said. As wireless demand increases, more users will be raising red flags about an unlicensed spectrum crunch, Feld said.
Cellular hit the point where it needed to turn to frequency reuse "a long time ago," but Wi-Fi isn't there yet, which is why 5G infrastructure deployment is garnering larger amounts of regulatory and policy attention than Wi-Fi, said Broadcom Director-Wireless Connectivity Gabriel Desjardins. Comcast Vice President-Xfinity WiFi Cole Reinwand said Wi-Fi also is in a different boat because of the sheer amount of spectrum available, with 5 GHz relatively lightly used and discussions underway about adding adjacent spectrum like 5.9 GHz that could be easily attached to Wi-Fi use.
New America Foundation Wireless Future Project Director Michael Calabrese said unlicensed “is being sort of shoehorned in,” causing some conflicts about sharing. He said the 2.4 GHz band is saturated, but there are signs of potential of Wi-Fi sharing the 5.9 GHz band and above that. Such Wi-Fi access might require use of databases and other tools to prevent interference, Calabrese said, but it's an opportunity to extend wide channels for gigabit Wi-Fi.
Verizon's Rath said the issue for high-band spectrum isn't jostling between licensed and unlicensed but between terrestrial and satellite interests. She said last year's FCC spectrum frontiers order didn't need changes like allowing more satellite sharing in the millimeter wave bands. She said the agency "needs to think long and hard" about how much additional spectrum needs to go to satellite operators, given their revenue and customer numbers compared to the wireless industry.
Numerous incumbents are in the Citizens Broadband Radio Service, like the Navy, but they use very little, Calabrese said. He said a geolocation database approach like what's to be used in that band could unlock "so much spectrum" in, for example, the 37-37.6 GHz band. He said a spectrum access system could open up mid-band spectrum like the 3.7-4.2 GHz band for fixed wireless use by working around the thousands of deployed fixed satellite service earth stations. He said such approaches are more realistic than clearing bands, which could take years.
A challenge of unlicensed getting more shared access to federal spectrum is the difficulty in doing cost/benefit analysis, said Mercatus Center Technology Policy Research Fellow Brent Skorup. But he said "there is a lot of low-hanging fruit" of converting legacy uses to flexible commercial use.