O'Rielly, Rosenworcel Back Action on 5.9, 6 GHz Bands, Say Nothing Will Happen Quickly
Commissioners Mike O’Rielly and Jessica Rosenworcel said there's strong interest in the 6 GHz and 5.9 GHz band for Wi-Fi, but neither band will come online overnight, a New America conference heard Monday. O’Rielly told reporters later the rules for the 6 GHz band are still taking shape. The New America focus was how a new standard for Wi-Fi, Wi-Fi 6, will support 5G.
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“I’m excited about what Wi-Fi 6 brings,” O’Rielly said. “I’m excited about 5G and the combination of those two together is going to be really beneficial for consumers.” “I agree with everything my colleague just said,” Rosenworcel said. “Demand for Wi-Fi is growing.”
But the two conceded that bringing any new bands online for Wi-Fi won’t be easy or fast. “We’re both here working together because we think speed matters,” Rosenworcel said: “We want to make sure that this happens sooner rather than later.” Congress directed the FCC to make another 100 MHz available for unlicensed, she said: "If we want to make that happen, we need to get moving right now.”
“Spectrum policy is hard and takes longer than you would like,” O’Rielly said. “Everything takes an extra two years [longer] than it should.”
Public interest and consumer groups and rural advocates hope the FCC will authorize low-power, indoor-only unlicensed use of the 6 GHz band without the cost and complexity of automated frequency control coordination (AFC). But 6 GHz incumbents raised concerns about harmful interference (see 1903180047). Commissioners launched a rulemaking on Wi-Fi in the 6 GHz band in October (see 1810230038)
“I’m sympathetic,” O’Rielly said of indoor deployment without AFC. “I want to get to the record, spend some time,” he said. “I think the commission is open.” AFC doesn’t come without costs, he said: “We want to try to reduce that [cost] as necessary. … That’s why we take comment. That’s why we put out proposals.”
Rosenworcel supports low-power indoor use, without AFC, throughout the band. “’If we have much greater economies of scale for devices, that would really make this band more vigorous,” she said. The record suggests 6 GHz incumbents will be adequately protected without AFC. “I hope that the agency takes another look at this,” she said.
Chairman Ajit Pai was expected to introduce a proposal to revisit the 5.9 GHz band, for a vote at Thursday’s commissioners’ meeting. But that didn’t happen after the Transportation Department asked for a delay (see 1905150053). The band is allocated to auto safety, specifically dedicated short-range communications that automakers haven’t deployed.
Taking a fresh look at the band is “appropriate and reasonable,” Rosenworcel said: “I sincerely hope that the agency hasn’t lost its nerve. We should move ahead.” The agency “should find a way to speed this up and not slow it down,” she said. “It has been a long time since we set aside these airwaves and it merits a fresh look.”
“The schedule is decided by the chairman,” O’Rielly said. “We’ll see what the chairman decides to do in this space in the very near future.” O’Rielly said he made his support for action clear and noted most auto safety innovations don’t use the 5.9 GHz band. Pai “talked about having a very broad examination,” O’Rielly said: “That’s thoughtful and we can examine all the different ideas that have been put forward.”
Most Comcast "customers equate Wi-Fi with broadband connectivity," said David Don, vice president-regulatory policy. More spectrum needs to be allocated to Wi-Fi “to ensure that it meets the capacity of our networks,” he said. “It’s important for us that Wi-Fi has the capacity and the capabilities to match the capability that we’re building in the network,” Don said. The 5.9 and 6 GHz bands are important to Comcast, he said.
The race to 5G has spilled into other wireless debates, said Michael Calabrese, director of the Wireless Future Program at New America. While 5G will offer much higher throughput and higher speeds with low latency and the ability to cover many devices in a small area, he said, “next-gen Wi-Fi networks will have all of these same 5G capabilities.” Wi-Fi is why “warnings of a spectrum crisis a decade ago never occurred,” he said.
“Next-gen Wi-Fi will make 5G services more rapidly available and far more affordable, not just to cities and suburbs, but every home and business nationwide,” Calabrese said. “Because mobile 5G networks are massively expensive to deploy they won’t be [deployed] outside urban and high-traffic areas for many years.” But Wi-Fi will be much more quickly available everywhere, he said. “There is a big if,” he warned: Without more spectrum, Wi-Fi can’t prosper.
Cisco predicts by 2022, there will be 49.7 exabytes of U.S. Wi-Fi traffic monthly, compared with 5.7 exabytes on carrier networks, said Mary Brown senior director-technology and spectrum policy. “Both ecosystems are going to grow,” she said. “The more power we have in the devices that we’re holding and the more powerful the networks … the more we’re all going to consume,” she said. Cisco sees 5G as predominantly an outdoor technology and Wi-Fi has mostly indoor, she said.