Free-Marketers Support FCC 6 GHz Sharing NPRM; WISPA Criticizes CTIA Licensing Push
The Center for Individual Freedom, Taxpayers Protection Alliance and eight other free-market groups wrote the FCC Friday in support of the NPRM to allow sharing the 6 GHz band for Wi-Fi and other unlicensed uses (see 1810230038). The proposal “would…
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
If your job depends on informed compliance, you need International Trade Today. Delivered every business day and available any time online, only International Trade Today helps you stay current on the increasingly complex international trade regulatory environment.
enable massive technological innovation by designating a highly underutilized portion of radio spectrum for wider and more efficient use,” the groups said in a letter to Chairman Ajit Pai. Utilities and some others are “claiming that shared use of the spectrum will lead to harmful interference, and are conjuring up extreme hypothetical examples,” but “there are too many benefits to opening up this valuable spectrum to take these extreme warnings at face value.” Also signing were Consumer Action for a Strong Economy, Discovery Institute, Innovation Defense Foundation, Innovation Economy Institute, Institute for Liberty, Institute for Policy Innovation, Less Government and the Market Institute. “More unlicensed spectrum for next-generation Wi-Fi would deliver faster speeds … and be a bridge to the next generation” of IoT, augmented reality and virtual reality devices for consumers, the groups said. It “can help break down digital divides.” Though “some incumbent users of the 6 GHz spectrum paint a bleak and fearsome picture of sharing this spectrum, technology already successfully in use can enable coexistence,” the groups said. Reps. Jerry McNerney, D-Calif., and Morgan Griffith, R-Va., supported the NPRM last week, as did tech companies (see 2002120055). The Wireless ISP Association opposed CTIA’s continued push for the FCC to allocate the band's upper part for exclusive-use licenses (see 2002100039). CTIA “is attempting to resurrect study of licensed spectrum in this band well after the Commission has made clear that the exclusive focus of this proceeding is to enable unlicensed services,” said WISPA Vice President-Policy Louis Peraertz in its filing to docket 18-295. CTIA “ignores the benefit to rural Americans of use of this spectrum for point-to-point backhaul and Internet connectivity, and waves away the significant practical difficulty of clearing extensive incumbent fixed point-to-point microwave use. ... It provides no specifics as to where operations would be located, or even any general assessment of the impact on incumbents." CTIA didn't comment.