Satellite, 5G Proponents Remain Divided on 12 GHz Use

Satellite interests and proponents of using the 12 GHz band for 5G clashed during a Federal Communications Bar Association webinar Thursday. FCC members approved a neutral NPRM 5-0 in January (see 2101130067). A final decision could take 18 months or longer (see 2102080067).

“I would love to know what other band you think we could use,” said Ruth Pritchard-Kelly, OneWeb vice president-regulatory affairs. “That is one of the biggest questions that the satellite industry has.” OneWeb’s business model is to provide last-mile connections for network operators and is “ramping up quickly,” she said. Pritchard-Kelly hopes engineers will find a way to share the band, but it’s “opening position” is that’s impossible.

Companies like OneWeb have a role in addressing the digital divide, said Noah Campbell, CEO of RS Access, which owns 12 GHz licenses: “We’re not against them at all.” Campbell’s company is doing “really intensive engineering analysis” of the band. The preliminary view is that “sharing is eminently feasible,” he said. The C-band auction showed demand for midband, and “this spectrum behaves very much like midband,” he said.

Dish Network hopes the swath will be opened for 5G, said Alison Minea, director and senior counsel-regulatory affairs. “Dish believes there is a path forward for sharing between [direct broadcast satellite] and terrestrial, flexible use,” she said. “This is 500 MHz of contiguous spectrum that’s far better in terms of propagation” than higher bands, with no government incumbents, she said. Sharing there should be easier than in some other bands, she said.

DBS is “our bread and butter -- this is how Dish began,” Minea said: “It’s a very efficient way to deliver video everywhere in the country. It’s a business that we believe in, a business that we hope to grow.” Dish engineering studies show sharing is viable, she said.

The NPRM doesn’t propose anything and was characterized as a “vanilla item, a neutral item,” said Raquel Noriega, director-federal regulatory at AT&T, which is selling a stake DirecTV. “It will be an interesting proceeding, no doubt,” she said. DirecTV is the biggest DBS user of 12 GHz and uses the entire band, she said. DBS “needs the space to grow,” she said. “We certainly do not see an engineering path forward.”

Campbell noted DBS doesn’t rely only on 12 GHz. That's “just 500 MHz of the 2,000 MHz” in the Ku band. DBS also uses the Ka band, he said: “It’s very difficult to create services that are in demand with the restrictions” in the 12 GHz band. Current technology “offers lots of solutions for frequency sharing and access to terrestrial services that coexist with DBS,” he said.

“We can’t just switch from Ku to Ka,” Pritchard-Kelly responded: “The satellite is in the sky for its lifetime, which is 15 to 20 years.” Even small satellites are “up there for years and years, and you can’t switch from one band to another, at least not quickly,” she said: “This is the kind of discussion that has to go for many years.” Satellite operators have three bands. The C band “has just been sold off,” she said: “Ka has already been cut into by another want-to-be 5G service.” Ku “is a highly used band that at this time has no alternative,” she said: OneWeb has 100 satellites in use that rely on Ku.

“You seem a little worked up about it,” Campbell said. “I am paid to be worked up,” Pritchard-Kelly said. RS engineering studies “show that we won’t interfere with the OneWeb … services anyway,” Campbell said: “We’ll file what we file. You file what you file. … Have your engineers call our engineers.”