DOD 5G Network Illegal, CTIA Says; White House Sees 3.45-3.55 GHz as New Way of Sharing

A nationalized 5G network is a nonstarter and would be illegal, CTIA General Counsel Tom Power said at the Americas Spectrum Management Conference Thursday. Power welcomed comments by a DOD official Tuesday that the department doesn’t plan to compete with the wireless industry (see 2010130033). A White House official said Thursday the administration’s work on the 3.45-3.55 GHz band was an important new way of looking at spectrum.

The 3.1-3.4 GHz band, just below the 3.45-3.55 GHz the FCC is reallocating for proposed auction next year, is “a challenging band,” Power said. The spectrum was the subject of a recent DOD request for information on spectrum sharing (see 2009210056). “To the extent the RFI represents DOD’s intent to roll up its sleeves and work with industry to see how some of that spectrum can be made commercially available, that’s great,” Power said: “We’ve done that before to great success.”

Industry found “a little odd” a question in the RFI on whether the Pentagon could operate a 5G network in that band, Power said. “It’s not clear exactly what they were thinking,” he said. “DOD’s use of spectrum, with or without 5G, is limited to fulfilling its military missions” as provided in its spectrum assignments from NTIA, he said. “DOD does not have a commercial mission, of course, and DOD spectrum cannot be used by anyone for commercial purposes,” he said: “Neither NTIA nor DOD has the legal authority to make that happen.”

DOD managing or leasing spectrum for commercial use is “a nonstarter under the law,” Power said: “Nationalizing spectrum does not make sense for anyone.”

There is a 50% chance Defense would get the go-ahead to launch a network if President Donald Trump is re-elected, and it's about half as likely if Democratic nominee Joe Biden wins, Cowen’s Paul Gallant told investors Thursday. Rivada Networks appears to be “encouraging President Trump to support DOD’s plan as a way of delivering 5G to Trump voters in rural America,” he said: “If Trump is reelected, DOD's plan could well move forward, though we do believe it would face serious risk of court rejection.” Gallant is also watching to what extent Google will contribute support with comments due on the RFI next week. Rivada and Google didn’t comment.

The Trump administration recognizes that the industries of the future, including artificial intelligence, quantum information sciences, biotechnology and advanced manufacturing, “all require vast amounts of data and interconnection, with many, many more wireless devices than legacy wireless networks can support,” said Eric Burger, assistant director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. He spoke at a virtual Silicon Flatirons conference Thursday.

The administration’s America’s Mid-Band Initiative Team process, which made sharing in the 3.45-3.55 GHz band possible, emphasized cooperation and teamwork, Burger said. “This was an example of the federal government at its best,” he said, calling it the fastest process ever of identifying and reallocating a band. The problem is that operations in the band “are generally matters of national security, and disclosure could compromise those operations," he said. OSTP worked with a team of radar academics and former military radar system designers, he said.

The AWS-3 band took four years to bring to auction, but almost six years later, federal agencies are still clearing assets, Burger said. “What could we do better?” The dynamic sharing in the citizens broadband radio service band provides an example of how sophisticated sharing can help, Burger said. The band is a success “even if it means low-power operation that might be shut off with literally one minute’s notice,” he said.

Burger said the approach on 3.5 GHz is a new way of looking at spectrum. The question the administration asked was “if federal users could not fully vacate the band,” how can they “change their operations to get out of the way of commercial users?” he said. “We were exploring a third way,” he said: “Instead of either forcing federal users to vacate the band or putting a squeeze on federal users, could we make the spectrum effectively available without a total move of federal users?”

In some areas, DOD will still need exclusive access to the spectrum, Burger said: “For the most part, we are talking about once a month for a few minutes at 3 a.m. or semiannual exercises that DOD plans more than a year in advance.”