TAC Recommends Industry Committee Look at More Use of Femtocells
The FCC Technological Advisory Committee (TAC) put heavy emphasis on recommendations for getting wireless and wireline for broadband built more quickly in its interim report released Monday. The report also stressed the role femtocells could play in more-efficient use of spectrum. TAC Chairman Tom Wheeler said members of the group continue to meet frequently and more recommendations, including several on the future of IPV6, are coming, likely this summer. The initial report made eight recommendations.
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"This is not a fire and forget activity for the TAC,” Wheeler said during a call with reporters Monday. “We're going to keep churning the pot ourselves.” Although the recommendations are listed one through eight, Wheeler said they're all equally important. “I think you start with all of them,” he said.
FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski participated in a call with TAC members last week and will meet with them again, said Josh Gottheimer, aide to the chairman. “We just received these recommendations today,” Gottheimer said during Monday’s media briefing. “We're going to consider them. … We will speak with the other commissioners as well and come back on a timeline … for action.”
TAC recommended the FCC convene an industry-led group to look at ways of accelerating the deployment of small-cell wireless devices, from femtocells to distributed antenna systems, in commercial and government buildings and other “high teledensity” locations. “Accelerating this deployment would meet growing market demand for mobile broadband in dense, urban areas and potentially create new employment for design, installation, and operation of wireless systems,” the report said.
"Obviously there are great efforts underway on how do you make more spectrum available,” Wheeler said. “What we were saying is, particularly as we go to a world of the Internet of things and Moore’s Law meets wireless distribution and you have tens of billions of devices out there, the ability to shrink cells becomes increasingly important. This ought to be something that starts with the commission promoting it.” TAC didn’t address whether more use of small-cell devices could ameliorate the need for more spectrum, Wheeler said. “It’s been my experience that you always have the ability to fill the amount of available spectrum,” he said.
Wheeler said TAC will offer recommendations in a future report on the migration to IPv6, a key topic of the group at its first meeting last year (CD Nov 5 p2). “You can take that to the bank,” he said. “IPv6 is a terribly important, terribly complex … and terribly distributed activity.” He said the IPv6 working group within TAC has broken into smaller groups to look at various aspects of the migration.
Many of the recommendations tie back to the states and local governments, which play a key role in approvals needed to get infrastructure built. TAC recommended the FCC establish a Municipal Race-to-the-Top program, to highlight cities with the “best practices” for broadband infrastructure deployment. TAC also urged the FCC to launch “a dialogue with states and municipalities about proven new technologies for efficiently deploying broadband (e.g., micro-trenching, DAS equipment on city light poles, directional boring).”
TAC urged the FCC to work with the states on an expedited shot clock for co-location of wireless and other infrastructure on existing structures or even “permit co-location ‘by right’ -- absent special circumstances.” In a fourth recommendation, TAC said the FCC should push forward a reverse “call before you dig” program of sorts so carriers have available better information on when other construction is under way in rights of way to minimize costs and disruption and speed broadband deployment.
TAC recommended the president issue an executive order on broadband infrastructure deployment on federal lands and in federal buildings, to reduce the amount of paperwork involved for carriers. TAC also advocated development of new metrics to measure broadband network quality.
The 45 members of TAC have been meeting in some cases on an almost weekly basis, with the support of key staff at the commission, Wheeler said. “Always when you're dealing with policy issues there is the inherent tendency to say, ‘Well, let’s have a rulemaking on this or let’s have an inquiry on this,'” he said. “What the TAC has been is saying: ‘What is it that we can recommend that the commission can do now’ … rather than have some long, drawn out administrative proceeding.”
"The Committee’s recommendations may help tower companies get more extensive placement of tower and antennas than they do today,” MF Global analyst Paul Gallant said in a research note. That would be “incrementally positive” for SBA Communications, Crown Castle and American Tower, he said.