Questions Remain on Future of the Lower 3 GHz Band

Panelists clashed during a Federalist Society webinar Thursday over the future of the lower 3 GHz band, a top target of carriers for 5G and 6G. They also disagreed on some details of how federal bands should be studied for sharing or licensed use.

Even China, which has more national controls on spectrum use than the U.S., has restricted the lower 3 GHz band to primarily indoor use, said Jennifer Warren, Lockheed Martin vice president-regulatory affairs and public policy.

“It’s a great" example "that people try to use" when ranking the U.S. against other nations on spectrum, Warren said. However, what's not discussed, she said, is “the context for how that spectrum is actually used." Warren added, “Let’s face it, spectrum is arcane and nobody likes to really get into the weeds.”

China “absolutely has restricted" use of the lower 3 GHz band, but that’s not “harmonized” with other countries, responded Umair Javed, CTIA general counsel and a former top adviser to FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel. The band from 3-3.45 GHz is harmonized for mobile telecom in much of the world, including the Americas, and is used in more than 30 countries for high-power 5G, Javed said.

Javed warned that the lack of U.S. leadership on spectrum hurts the country globally. For instance, at the World Radiocommunication Conference last year, some countries “had a genuine interest” in finding spectrum for broadband and are still struggling with mobile penetration, he said: “They were looking for spectrum to help them do that and what I saw in Dubai was that the U.S. did not have an answer,” he said: “Other countries did and … that has real consequences for our global competitiveness.”

If you “surrender” economic security to protect national security, then “you damage national security,” said John Kneuer, president of JKC Consulting and former NTIA administrator. “Innovation and growth in the private sector gives the Defense Department, and the national security community, capabilities that they otherwise wouldn’t have had,” he said.

When Kneuer was at NTIA, the administration was debating use of the 5 GHz band for Wi-Fi. DOD's position was that if the frequencies could be shared by military radar and for communications, then that benefited the military, he said. The process was lengthy, but the administration freed 254 MHz in the band, which became “the foundation of 5G Wi-Fi.”

“This isn’t zero-sum,” Kneuer said: “Innovation addresses scarcity.”

“We can’t," Javed said, "give up our commercial technology leadership and hope to maintain our military advantage -- these things are extremely intertwined.”

“We’re a good decade behind” on spectrum, said Cooley’s Robert McDowell. The Trump administration never released a national spectrum strategy, though one was apparently drafted, and the Biden administration released a strategy, but it relies on further studies, said McDowell, a former FCC commissioner.

A recent E&Y report found that China has built 245 5G base stations per 100,000 POPs. The E.U. has 103 and the U.S. only 51, McDowell said. “In part, that’s because of a lack of spectrum,” he said. “The hope is sooner, rather than later, everyone can agree” on a path forward for the U.S. on spectrum. “A lot of pause buttons have been hit” ahead of the November election, “but Congress could fix this with executive branch leadership.”

Javed agreed that Congress restoring FCC auction authority is critical. “We need to put that tool back into the toolbox,” he said. The U.S. also needs to reaffirm the importance of experts in science-based decision-making, he said: Putting federal incumbents, “who have a vested interest in the outcome, in charge of spectrum studies goes against every principle of scientific study.” NTIA should be lead agency on all studies, he said.

Warren agrees on the importance of science-based decisions. The problem is “finding that disinterested party,” she said. When we have national strategies with specific goals, “all of a sudden you have staff that has a mindset as to what must be achieved.”

In the lower 3 GHz and 7/8 GHz bands, the Biden administration is “leaning into” a multistakeholder process for studying the future of spectrum, Warren said. Federal incumbents must play a big role as bands are evaluated, she said. “They actually know how all the parts work” and understand their systems and capabilities. Warren also said the U.S. had a clear goal at the last WRC -- to protect the 6 GHz band for unlicensed use.

“There are experts in the government," Kneuer said, "who can point the way to certain things, can identify certain realities.” But government officials can also be “misinformed.”

When the administration was considering clearing AWS spectrum, government agencies estimated they had three times the links they actually had in the band, and it would cost $8 billion and take four years to move them, Kneuer said. The federal record proved to be outdated, he said. After further study, federal incumbents found that most of the radios could be retuned, and the band could be cleared for $900 million in just 18 months, he said.