Thomas Urges FCC to Open 4.9 GHz Band to Commercial Use

"This proceeding started when I was chief engineer at the FCC,” Thomas said. “I'm delighted to see it be used in various venues, but I'm also very disappointed because it has in no way taken off.” Thomas said the cost of the equipment and poor propagation characteristics of the band are to blame. “So you need more infrastructure, which then comes back to costs,” he said. “The primary question to me is how … do I reduce the costs? How do I maintain reliability and how do I allow coordination to occur in a very simple fashion?"

One possible solution, Thomas said, would be to open up use of the band to utilities and companies offering critical infrastructure, but possibly other commercial interests as well, as “secondary” users of the spectrum. Doing so would add to the amount of equipment on the market and drive down costs, he said. “If I had said this five years ago, Chairman [Michael] Powell would have looked at me like I had horns and a tail, but we're doing this now in the [TV] white space arena,” he said.

Current OET Chief Julius Knapp noted that the 50 MHz of 4.9 GHz spectrum allocated to public safety was previously dedicated to federal use. “We have a particular obligation because when I meet with the federal folks they say, ‘Gee, what’s going on with the spectrum that you've transferred?'” he said. “We really have an obligation to make good use of it.”

The commission originally envisioned that the spectrum would be used for incident management by public safety agencies, Knapp noted. “One thing you learn in this business is that things don’t always turn out the way you planned.” Knapp said the “perception” is that the band isn’t “heavily used,” but the record shows it is being utilized in some jurisdictions, for everything from backhaul to video surveillance. While it’s mostly being used for fixed applications, it has potential for mobile as well, he said. “There’s plenty of room to grow here,” he said. “We've been focusing a lot here at the commission on jobs and innovation and so forth. It struck me here that we've got a lot of room for innovation and jobs in building these networks and most importantly meeting public safety requirements.”

The FCC wants advice on how to make the 4.9 GHz band more viable, said Jennifer Manner, deputy chief of the Public Safety Bureau. “This was foreseen as a band with great potential and one where I think the commission would very much like to see increased utilization."

Cost is a major issue limiting use of the band, said panelist David Buchanan, chairman of the National Public Safety Telecommunications Council’s Spectrum Committee. “As you increase volume obviously costs go down,” he said. “But I think the main cost driver … isn’t the cost of the infrastructure equipment. It’s the cost of the backhaul. You have so many sites to cover an area.” Use of 4.9 GHz for wide area networks only makes sense in small areas requiring limited infrastructure, Buchanan said. “It’s a tough problem."

"I love Ed’s comments, obviously,” said Brett Kilbourne, deputy general counsel of the Utilities Telecom Council. “I think the utility companies can help offset some of the costs just in terms of all the resources they can bring to bear.” Kilbourne also made a pitch for opening up the band for use by utilities.

Joe Ross, senior partner at Televate, and several other speakers complained about a lack of coordination in the use of the band. “I don’t want to beat a dead horse, but I will,” he said. “We have customers who were the only licensee for 4.9 GHz and their area and found the spectrum to be completely congested for a major event.”

Another major problem is that the spectrum doesn’t have the same good propagation characteristics as 700 MHz and other bands at lower frequencies, Ross said. “Despite the large amount of spectrum it is a limited resource,” he said. “4.9 GHz connectivity is severely limited in buildings. What can you rely on? Maybe 100 feet going through several walls. It requires many devices at the incident scene to support communications.” Ross advised the FCC to spread the word on how 4.9 GHz is already being used in some locations: “What’s been done well? What’s been effective? Get that information out.”

Pam Montanari, radio systems manager with Pinellas County, Fla., said 4.9 GHz may prove helpful in providing backhaul as public safety builds out systems using 700 MHz spectrum. “The throughputs could be significantly higher than what we have now and so we're going to need a significantly wider data pipe to push that information through,” she said. “To allow aggregation of channels in the 4.9 spectrum would actually increase the capabilities of that in conjunction with 700.” Montanari conceded that use of the 4.9 GHz band has been limited in her county and elsewhere. “There’s not a lot of equipment out there,” she said. “There’s not a lot of open systems in 4.9 GHz where you can just put it up.”

Public Safety Spectrum Trust Chairman Harlin McEwen said he was pleased to hear some testimony Friday that the 4.9 GHz band is being used in some areas from Los Angeles to Brookline, Mass. “There were a lot of us who worked hard to get that resource, and the fact that it’s being used increasingly is very good.” But McEwen said the band is no substitute for the 700 MHz band with the advantages it offers for mobile radios used inside buildings. The 4.9 GHz applications “are wonderful, but there are limitations,” he said.

The Department of Justice is looking at gaps in communications and how new technologies meet public safety’s needs, said Nancy Merritt, senior policy adviser. “What we're trying to do is get away from the idea of just listening to anecdotal evidence and actually gathering data and actually doing analysis,” she said. “We're working with the Department of Defense, we're working with FCC, with the Bureau of Prisons to see what kinds of technologies are effective out there and what the needs are."

T-Mobile encouraged the FCC to move forward with a “timely evaluation” of the 4.9 GHz band, it said in written comments filed at the commission. “As Congress contemplates how public safety broadband requirements may be satisfied, it is important for the Commission to ensure that public safety makes the maximum and most appropriate use of the spectrum already dedicated for broadband capacity."

NPSTC recently surveyed its members and found 71 who said they were making some use of the band, mostly for IP communications between ground-based stations, Buchanan said. Only 11 said they had used the band for communications management during an emergency. Point to multi-point communications has not been successful “due to the number of sites required for deployment and the lack of coordination for the frequencies and the susceptibility for interference,” as well as interference in high traffic areas, he said. Buchanan said that as the number of users grow in a single area, such as at a fire, “bandwidth decreases significantly to where streaming video is no longer viable.”