U.S. Must Play Defense Headed Into WRC: Carr

The U.S. is handicapped headed into the World Radiocommunication Conference next week since it proposes only two bands for future studies, 3.1-3.3 and 13 GHz, while China has positions on all five bands proposed for study for international mobile telecommunications, FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr and other speakers said during an Atlantic Council webinar Wednesday. The WRC starts Monday in Dubai. Among the bands targeted by China for IMT is 6 GHz, where the U.S. is promoting an agreement supporting unlicensed use of the band (see 2310270047).

China’s growing influence on wireless is “one of the most important political issues that we’re facing right now,” Carr said. China “has a game plan for advancing their interests and advancing their values through standards and through various spectrum bands,” he said. “Right now, America is stalling out on its leadership,” particularly on mid-band spectrum, he said.

China enters the WRC with goals in five separate bands, Carr said. “The U.S. is only looking to advance its interest, affirmatively, in two spectrum bands, so we are going into this conference largely playing defense,” he said. There’s “an imbalance right now,” he said.

Carr said he was disappointed in the national spectrum strategy the administration released Monday (see 2311130048). The strategy doesn’t tee-up “any new spectrum, in the near term, for America’s wireless providers,” he said. “We needed to close the gap” with China “and we’re not doing that at all,” he said.

As President Joe Biden meets this week with China’s President Xi Jinping, competition between the two countries “continues apace,” said David Shullman, senior director of the council’s Global China Hub. “Nowhere is this more apparent than in emerging technologies,” he said: “Beijing is moving aggressively to bolster Chinese companies’ domestic and international advantages in 5G, 6G and in advanced tech more broadly.”

China wants to “set digital norms and standards” and strengthen its influence with countries building networks worldwide, Shullman said. “China is increasingly competing to shape spectrum policy worldwide as the benefits to doing so become more apparent,” he said. The decisions made at WRC “will have significant consequences on the U.S.’s ability to shape global spectrum policy,” he said.

If China moves forward with IMT in 6 GHz, as it’s set to propose at the WRC, it will have 700 MHz more licensed spectrum for 5G than is available in the U.S. “and then there will be other countries that will follow,” said Barbara Baffer, Ericsson vice president-government and policy advocacy. The telecom market “is all about scale and size,” she said. The U.S. “should really, really focus on spectrum below 10 GHz because that will give us what we really need in terms of deployment for 5G and for 6G,” she said.

The discussion isn’t only about the next generation of smartphones, said Clete Johnson, senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “5G is a totally different approach to connectivity, even before we get to 6G, which will take it to another level,” he said. 5G will “dramatically change the amount of data and awareness that societies can have about everything that everybody in that society is doing,” he said.

The vast increase in data “can lead to more innovation that solves more problems” and “more expression that brings out more individual and community benefits,” Johnson said. It can also “trend in the direction of totalitarian control,” he said. “This is not an academic issue anymore,” he said. Totalitarian nations like China, Russia, Iran and North Korea are aligned in a way not seen since the Cold War, and possibly the end of World War II, he said.

China shouldn’t be seen as a “monolith that’s unbeatable” since the U.S. and Europe still lead in 5G technology and research, said Hosuk Lee-Makiyama, director of the European Centre for International Political Economy. China beats the West in its share of the 5G radio access market, he said, but “that’s actually not by cheating,” it’s just that China spends more money on RAN deployment than the rest of the world “and that’s fundamentally the problem.”