U.S. Scored Wins at WRC, but Fight Continues: Lang

The U.S. attained generally positive results at the World Radiocommunication Conference, but 6 GHz band issues remain, Steve Lang, the State Department official who headed the U.S. WRC delegation, told an American Enterprise Institute event Monday. In contrast, other speakers argued WRC wasn’t a clean U.S. win.

WRC is important as a “treaty-level” conference, where the world decides what bands are used for which purposes, Lang said, adding the allocations “create economies of scale” for manufacturers producing communications gear. WRC decisions drive "billions of dollars of investment and there’s very large industry interest in the event,” he said. Work has already started on preparations for the next WRC, in four years, he said.

“We’re going to see the same things that we saw at this conference” at the next WRC, “but more of it,” Lang said. Interest in spectrum for 6G will continue, “but it’s going to be harder and harder to find that spectrum because it’s a finite resource and there are so many applications competing,” he said. Lang said the release of the national spectrum strategy prior to the conference was helpful for U.S. negotiators (see 2311130048). He declined comment on the effect of Congress' failure to renew FCC spectrum authority. “We were able to do what we needed to do,” he said.

One top U.S. objective was to ensure that the 6 GHz band remains available for unlicensed use and “we had some good successes -- we were able to ensure no change” for the Americas region, Lang said. “Across the board, we felt like we had good results,” he added. But the U.S. must continue watching and working on 6 GHz issues, he said.

In region 3, which covers most of Asia and Oceania, the 6 GHz band's top 100 MHz was allocated for international mobile telecommunications (IMT) but the rest wasn’t, Lang said. China tried unsuccessfully to add a footnote that would have created an IMT allocation for the rest of the band in China, Lang said. Chinese companies have bet "heavily” on developing gear that uses 6 GHz for 6G and IMT, he said. Region 2, which includes Europe, Africa and the former Soviet countries, went with an IMT allocation for 6.425-7.125 GHz, but a footnote made clear that the band would also be available “for other mobile services” including Wi-Fi, he said.

Lang stressed the importance of the WRC identifying the 3.3-3.4 and 3.6-3.8 GHz bands for IMT in the Americas region. “That created 500 contiguous MHz of spectrum for 5G, which creates those economies of scale” and “gives governments the flexibility to choose where they want to allocate spectrum for 5G,” he said. The U.S. also was able to add a footnote to the radio regulations providing protection for radio-location services in 3-3-3.4 GHz, he said.

The WRC also saw conflict on satellite issues, especially on new non-geostationary orbit (NGSO) satellite systems, Lang said. “We saw a lot of resistance, and in fact I would even say an unfortunate bias against these NGSO systems and some of the proposals that we had,” he said. The bias is tied to nations' different economic priorities, as well as attempts to boost national security interests and technological leadership, he said.

Some countries are concerned about the risks large satellite constellations pose to radioastronomy or about the future availability of spectrum for different systems, Lang said. The U.S. is “leading in many ways in the development” of NGSO systems and in the unlicensed area, he said. Satellite issues will just get more complicated at future WRCs, he predicted.

Concerns Raised

Many countries came to the WRC seeking high-power spectrum so that they can reach people lacking broadband, said Umair Javed, CTIA senior vice president-spectrum, a former aide to FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel. The U.S. “did not have answers for these countries about where they should go to find that spectrum, but other countries did,” he said: “That dynamic has consequences not only for our global competitiveness, but also for our national security.”

Domestic U.S. disputes “really sidelined” the country in conversations at the WRC about what the world should be doing on spectrum, said Javed, who attended parts of the conference. “That meant that the United States wasn’t as forceful in these conversations as it has been in the past,” he said. The U.S. ended the conference “falling further behind on mid-band spectrum” for IMT and “other countries are filling the gap,” he said. “We saw the ability of other countries to shape spectrum policy independently of U.S. priorities … in a way that I don’t think we’ve ever seen before,” he said.

Members of Congress followed the WRC closely, said Kate O'Connor, chief counsel of the House Communications Subcommittee. O’Connor slammed the DOD study on the lower 3 GHz band, which is not yet released publicly. The way DOD handled the study was “pretty disappointing” and members were concerned about “some of the results and the testing and the technical parameters that were used,” she said.

DOD was given $50 million to create the report and it "studied only sharing opportunities in the current environment that we’re operating in,” O’Connor said. The report should have looked at what clearing could take place if systems could be relocated, especially because the band has been harmonized for IMT, she said.

The U.S. leads the world in unlicensed and shared use, but its top priority, according to Lang, was “preserving its unlicensed decisions,” Javed said. The U.S. also needs to lead on licensed spectrum, he said. With 6 GHz allocated to Wi-Fi, the 7 and 8 GHz bands are “uniquely important” here, he said.

“Overall, people are happy where things ended” at the WRC on satellite issues, said former FCC Commissioner Mike O’Rielly. The industry is still watching future technical studies, “but overall things are trending in the right direction,” he said.

The U.S. needs to make DOD upgrade its systems in the lower 3 GHz band and shrink the department’s spectrum “footprint,” O’Rielly said. “That is not always a popular belief, and it is very hard lifting,” he said. The U.S. also needs to fix its approach to WRC before the next conference in 2027, he said.

Lang was appointed head of the delegation a few months before the conference (see 2309290059) and wasn’t “the first choice,” O’Rielly said. It also took the U.S. too long to pick his predecessor, now-FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez, to lead U.S. efforts, he said. “Other countries don’t do that” and that’s why China, Russia, Iran and France are often able to dominate the discussions, he said.