GCI: FCC Should Quicken Pace of Updating 5G Strategy For Alaska Plan

Representatives of Alaska’s GCI asked the FCC not to wait until the end of Alaska Plan commitments in 2026 before revising the commission’s approach to 5G in the 49th state. “New requirements to deploy 5G technology cannot simply be appended to the current Alaska Plan commitments,” said a filing posted Friday in docket 23-328. 5G deployments have “different engineering and core network requirements” than older technology, GCI said: Hitting higher throughput speeds anticipated for 5G “results in a smaller coverage area than the lower throughput speeds for 4G, meaning that a provider may need to construct more towers to provide 5G service to the number of population reflected in its existing Alaska Plan commitments -- construction that has not been planned and was not considered in negotiating the original Alaska Plan commitments.” The GCI representatives met with staff from the Wireless and Wireline bureaus and Office of Economics and Analytics.