Wi-Fi Allies, 6 GHz Incumbents at Odds on FCC Client-to-Client Plan
6 GHz incumbents and Wi-Fi advocates clashed about a January notice from the Office of Engineering and Technology on whether the FCC should allow client-to-client device communications (see 2101110031), in comments posted through Tuesday in docket 18-295. The agency is considering more sweeping changes, based on a Further NPRM approved 5-0 in April. Shortly before the end of the Trump administration, OET sought comment on one additional change.
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“Client-to-client operations will increase the potential for interference to licensed microwave systems,” said APCO, the International Association of Fire Chiefs, Utilities Technology Council, Edison Electric Institute, American Public Power Association and others. Using an enabling signal from the access point won't "effectively mitigate the interference potential from client-to-client operations, particularly if the signal strength need only be -99 dBm/MHz to permit client devices to communicate directly with each other,” they said: The change would “expand the effective range over which client devices will be able to support broadband traffic, thereby increasing the radiated power of each unlicensed 6 GHz system.”
Unless automated frequency coordination is required for all devices in the 6 GHz band, “the Commission should not authorize client-to-client device communications,” said AT&T: Client-to-client communications would “likely aggravate the significant interference threat to 6 GHz incumbents.”
Don’t expand the rules “before the current unlicensed operations in the 6 GHz band are rigorously tested and demonstrated not to cause harmful interference,” the Fixed Wireless Communications Coalition commented: “The Commission only recently adopted rules permitting unlicensed use in the band, and those rules explicitly prohibit client-to-client connections among unlicensed 6 GHz devices.” NAB raised concerns about the lack of real-world experience with the 6 GHz band.
Client-to-client communications “will support a range of innovative" uses, said Apple, Broadcom, Commscope, Facebook, Google, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Intel, Microsoft and Qualcomm. "Numerous parties have supported their authorization.”
The Wi-Fi Alliance said the change is important to the future of unlicensed. “Indoor client-to-client transmissions are an important and growing segment of the Wi-Fi ecosystem,” the alliance said: Because characteristics of enabling signals will vary, "broadly define an enabling signal as a signal from an indoor access point that the client device can detect and decode.”
CableLabs, meanwhile, defended the FCC’s April decision to allow unlicensed use of the 6 GHz band, in a brief posted Tuesday at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit (in Pacer) in docket 20-1190: “The FCC carefully examined the record, including numerous technical studies, and appropriately determined that low-power indoor Wi-Fi operations in the 6 GHz band will not cause harmful interference.”