U.S. Could Draw Many Lessons from Eventual Use of 3.5 GHz Band, Genachowski Says
Executives from T-Mobile and Nokia Siemens Networks said Wednesday in testimony at the FCC’s 3.5 GHz workshop a key to rapid deployment in the 3.5 GHz band is setting aside part of the spectrum for licensed use. The FCC launched a rulemaking in December aimed at opening the 3550-3650 MHz band for shared use and use by small cells (CD Jan 13 p6). FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski told attendees small cells are one way of helping address the “massive challenges around all of the demand for spectrum” caused by the spiraling use of tablets and smartphones.
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The comments at the workshop are to be incorporated into the FCC’s formal record. The agency delayed the deadline for reply comments in the 3.5 GHz proceeding from March 22 until April 5, with an eye on incorporating the testimony (http://fcc.us/Z2RZJB). Setting aside the band for small cells was one of the recommendations in the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology’s (PCAST) controversial spectrum sharing report (CD July 23 p1).
Under the FCC’s proposal, use of the band would be managed by a spectrum access system and include a dynamic database and possibly interference mitigation techniques. The rules propose a priority access tier for use by hospitals, utilities, first responders and other entities with critical needs, which would operate with some interference protections in parts of the band in designated areas. In a general access band, the public would be permitted to use the band on an “opportunistic basis,” though its use would be subject to interference.
Japan and various nations in Europe are looking at the band for licensed use, said Prakash Moorut, senior research specialist at Nokia Siemens. “Licensed should definitely be part of the equation here,” Moorut said. “If we just do unlicensed here we'll be probably the only one doing that and then getting the devices to support just the U.S. ecosystem might be tricky.”
"The thing that makes this band so great is that it’s a large swath of spectrum,” said Chris Wieczorek, senior counsel at T-Mobile USA. Using LTE “and trying to work within the CMRS process” would mean faster deployment in the band, he said. “When there’s no standards involved and no standardized technology you're going to slow things down. The reality is, if we're trying to see small cell adoption within five years, the only way to do that is using an existing LTE standard. You're not going to go from allocation [in an] NPRM to having anything manufactured within five years without using an existing LTE standard.”
"We feel like having these well-defined levels really makes the spectrum more usable,” said David Gurney, distinguished member of the technical staff at Motorola Solutions. “A lot of the users are really asking for some types of guarantees of access or QoS [quality of service]. We feel that having a priority access tier with well-defined priority levels helps you do that.” The 3.5 GHz band could provide spectrum for uses valued by carriers, such as commercial hotspots and femtocells for offloading, Gurney said. “Some QoS guarantees there would be very helpful and certainly increase the value of the spectrum.”
Promoting quality of service could be “really the attractive aspect of 3.5 GHz small cells,” said Jeffrey Reed, director of Wireless@VirginiaTech.
Auctions and today’s version of unlicensed spectrum can’t be “the last two big ideas we'll have in spectrum policy forever,” Genachowski said. Genachowski said since the start of the Obama administration “three big ideas” are “being pursued in a forward-leading aggressive way.” Genachowski cited incentive auctions, spectrum sharing and next-generation unlicensed. The 3.5 GHz proceeding “is a very important part of our process to advance all of this agenda,” he said. “The one thing I can tell you the FCC is committed to, is getting that 100 MHz in 3.5 [GHz] on the market and doing it in a way that reflects the best thinking and the best ideas and the most value that we can unlock.”
"The opportunities around mobile are really endless,” Genachowski said. “We see what’s happening in our own lives with smartphones and tablets. The data keeps coming in on the positive effect on our economy [with] the level of wireless [capital expenditures] that we're seeing in the U.S., very high in absolute terms, $35 billion this year.”
Office of Engineering and Technology Chief Julius Knapp opened the session saying the FCC had examined use of the band for more traditional licensed use, but found little interest. “Some of the comments that came back were that there was interest in the spectrum but not for ubiquitous wireless deployment, in part because the propagation losses here are so high that you have to put in more towers, which means greater costs.”
Tom Power, deputy U.S. chief technology officer, said sharing, as proposed by PCAST, has to be part of the spectrum equation. “Whether you're talking about sharing in the 3.5 [GHz] band or any other aspect of spectrum policy we need to keep growing and building on our leadership,” he said. “As the PCAST pointed out, at some point spectrum is a finite resource and we have to be pursuing every possible option.”
"The big opportunity in the 3.5 [GHz band] is for it not to be a one-off,” said Mark Gorenberg of Hummer Winblad Venture Partners, a member of the PCAST. “The big opportunity ... is that we think about it holistically as the start of many bands that will follow, and that in our work on the 3.5 that we think that way.”