WISPA Sees Signs FCC Will Make Technical Tweaks to TVWS Order

The Wireless ISP Association is grateful the FCC plans to allow higher power in the TV white spaces band and increase the height of towers, but asked the agency to allow use of the Longley-Rice irregular terrain model for looking at TVWS interference, said Louis Peraertz, WISPA vice president-policy. WISPA holds out hope the order will change before an Oct. 27 commissioner vote (see 2010060060), he told the group’s fall conference Tuesday streamed from Las Vegas. WISPA is meeting in person, with limited attendance, unlike most industry groups that are having only online meetings because of the pandemic (see 2010080031).

The draft order doesn’t make some technical changes WISPA sought, Peraertz said. The FCC won’t allow higher-power levels on adjacent channels, relax out-of-band emissions limits or have the database consider antenna directivity, he said. Peraertz said he had others from WISPA meet with all five commissioner offices last week through Monday. WISPA stressed the importance of the Longley-Rice model for power levels on adjacent channels, he said.

“We’re pushing all the commissioner offices” to make the technical changes or seek comment in a Further NPRM, Peraertz said. “We’re making progress,” he said: “It’s going to be really difficult to get some of these rules into the order, but we are very hopeful we’re doing a pretty good job of persuading some of the offices to consider moving to including these issues and seeking further comment.”

Instead of the Longley-Rice model, the FCC plans to use separation tables, Peraertz said in response to our question. Using the terrain model “will actually take into consideration clutter and variability of terrain,” he said. It would allow white space use “to get closer to the broadcast TV transmitters and receivers,” he said: “It will give WISPs more areas to cover.”

WISPA President Claude Aiken said few WISPs are using TVWS. “It’s a tough one because of the broadcasters, but we are continuing to make progress,” he said.

The group expects a 2.5 GHz auction in mid-2021 but believes the FCC’s proposal for the band will be revisited if Democrat Joe Biden wins the presidency, Aiken said, noting commission Democrats dissented to most of the order in July (see 1907100054). “We expect auction procedures to be released soon.” Rules may not follow the standard simultaneous multiple-round auction format, he said. “Now is the time to begin preparing for this auction,” he said: “The FCC has thrown out a lot of spectrum as of yet into the commercial market, and it’s difficult to get your arms around it.”

Members should put the 4.9 GHz band on their “radar,” especially since some 5 GHz equipment will work there, Aiken advised the association. Public safety groups are objecting, and “the jury is still out on whether we’ll see significant enough pushback to change the course here,” he said. Aiken doesn’t expect changes to the rules for over-the-air reception devices this year. WISPA sought an update, and the FCC took comment last year (see 1904150035).

“Our technology is still far superior, can be deployed a lot faster and is a lot cheaper,” said Rory Conaway, managing partner at Triad Wireless. Conaway gets calls all the time, he said: “Somebody is putting fiber in, somebody got some money to compete with us, I’m going to be out of business in six weeks.” WISPs are positioned to compete, he said. “Given the technology we have, there’s nothing to worry about today.”

WISPs can get 1 Gbps throughput over a quarter-mile from multiple vendors, Conaway said. Range varies on IEEE 802.11ac, a common networking standard for long-range connections, he said. If you can’t get a 100 Mbps connections over 5 miles, “you need to go back and look at your engineering,” he said. For LTE or citizens broadband service connections, “the cost goes up,” he said.

Getting the right backhaul is critical, said Ken Ruppel, wireless backhaul specialist at Aviat Networks. It’s important “not just to be delivering bandwidth but also to be strengthening and hardening the network, because if you don’t do it, your competitor will, and somebody who goes down all the time is going to lose their customers,” he said.

WISPs are relying more on high-band for backhaul, not because it’s better, but because spectrum is limited, Ruppel said. “More of your links are going to be shorter and shorter distance and higher and higher capacity,” he said: “I just see much more millimeter-wave at even higher frequencies than where we’re at today.”