Clyburn Sees CBRS as Top Policy Issue, Aide Says; GE Says Band Critical to Industrial IoT

FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn remains strongly opposed to any changes to the rules for the 3.5 GHz citizens broadband radio services band, which would lead to larger license sizes for priority access licenses (PALs), said Louis Peraertz, her wireless aide, at a panel hosted by General Electric Wednesday. A GE executive said the band is critical to U.S. leadership of the industrial IoT. Tuesday, advocates of larger license sizes spoke at an AT&T-sponsored event (see 1802130041).

In October, Clyburn concurred on an NPRM on changes to the CBRS rules, saying she would prefer to keep current rules (see 1710240050). Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel dissented. The NPRM asks in its most-debated question whether the FCC should mandate some other geographic size than census tracts for the PALs, including much larger partial economic areas (PEAs).

The CBRS band “means a lot” to GE and his company is “fighting hard” to preserve the 2015 rules, said Michael Fitzpatrick, head-regulatory advocacy. “Our customers are essentially the critical infrastructure industry” and “the world is changing fast,” he said. The machines GE makes “are actually large computers,” Fitzpatrick said. They throw off huge amounts of data, he said. “The use of that data to optimize the performance of those machines, to make them safer, is what the industrial IoT is all about.” The industrial IoT will depend on the availability of spectrum in manageable chunks, like those offered under the initial 3.5 GHz rules, Fitzpatrick said. “We and our customers can now have an opportunity to secure appropriate-size spectrum that allows for resilient, certain, secure and high-capacity operations."

The CBRS proceeding is a “top policy priority” for Clyburn, Peraertz said. Clyburn wants to help communities who, “despite reforms to our Universal Service program and Lifeline program still find themselves on the wrong side of the digital opportunities divide,” he said. Some 34 million Americans can’t get or can’t afford broadband, he said. The FCC doesn’t require wireless carriers to serve 100 percent of their licensed area, he said: “This ultimately results in what Commissioner Clyburn refers to as donut holes.”

The 3.5 GHz band would help connect unconnected Americans if the rules are right, Peraertz said. In current rules, the FCC determined that rather than traditional licensing rules, census tracts -- which serve about 4,000 people -- short-license terms and no expectation of renewability would be the appropriate rules for PALs, he said. Clyburn “remains a strong support of those 2015 rules,” he said. Clyburn isn’t convinced PEAs, or countywide licenses advocated by cable operators are a better solution than census tracts, he said.

Peraertz noted Section 309(j) of the Communications Act instructs the FCC to design auctions that promote economic opportunity and competition, ensure that new and innovative technologies are readily accessible and disseminate licenses among a wide variety of applicants. Clyburn believes the current rules would lead to an auction that complies with this directive better than any other auction held while she was a commissioner, he said. Carriers can aggregate smaller licenses but smaller players can’t afford PEAs, Peraertz said. The remarks also are here. Auction staff originally recommended census tracts, he said. “They have successfully conducted more than 80 auctions,” he said. “If they did not think census-tract PALs were practical, they would not have recommended them.”

Wireless ISPs need access to the 3.5 GHz band in chunks they can afford, said Jeff Kohler, chief development officer at Rise Broadband. WISPs use 3.65-3.7 GHz to provide up to 100 MBs in rural areas, he said. Since the 3.5 GHz band is immediately adjacent “the equipment is already out there, it’s already affordable, it’s proven,” Kohler said. What WISPs like most about the 3.5 GHz band is the current rules, he said. There are about 74,000 U.S. census tracts, so “we would only have to pay for spectrum that we’re actually going to use,” employing equipment that could be deployed quickly, Kohler said. “It was very disturbing that this was even revisited just this last fall at the FCC to what sounds like something that would accommodate mobile carriers for their typical licensing regime.”

Jason Davila, general counsel at Wave Wireless, said the CBRS band would also see broad deployment in urban areas if license sizes stay small. Many building owners are frustrated by limitations of traditional cellular indoor coverage and Wi-Fi, he said. “We just view CBRS as a framework to solve a lot of these issues currently plaguing the indoor wireless industry.” CBRS would be a “game changer for the wireless infrastructure industry that’s very ripe for disruption,” he said.