Resolving C-Band Safety Concerns Could Require Replacing Gear: Starks
FCC Commissioner Geoffrey Starks expects a resolution of FAA concerns that C-band deployments will cause harmful interference to air safety systems (see 2111100068), but that could include replacing some equipment, he told a virtual New Street 5G conference Monday. Verizon agreed to a one-month delay as a show of “good faith” and still plans to turn on C-band sites in January, an executive said.
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C-band safety is “a serious matter for me, for a lot of us” and a “top priority” for the FCC and FAA, Starks said. “We take these issues very seriously,” he said. “There has been a lot of speculation about how this unfolds … from moving forward as planned, to further interference study, to a staggered rollout, to even equipment replacement programs,” he said. Starks declined to say what fixes are most likely.
“We need to do better” with “better coordination with our federal partners,” Starks said. There's continuing “fallout” from the last administration “where federal agencies continued to fight on spectrum decisions, even after NTIA and FCC had resolved, supposedly, issues,” he said. He welcomed Alan Davidson's nomination as NTIA administrator as a move toward better coordination on spectrum.
New Street’s Blair Levin, who interviewed Starks, predicted lots of questions on C band during Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel’s confirmation hearing Wednesday.
“Just to be completely clear, these claims from the FAA are not supported by facts,” said Adam Koeppe, Verizon senior vice president-technology strategy and planning. “Our delay here is really in the interest of getting” the FAA and FCC “to work together and solve this issue,” he said: “These claims were considered during the auction prep and all of that was answered by the FCC and their engineering staff.” Koeppe noted most deployments aren’t close to airports, which would raise the most concerns.
Koeppe said there won’t be the same delays there have been with Ligado. “C band is a global band” and is “deployed widely across tens of thousands of base stations in other countries,” he said: “There are really no comparisons to some of the challenges that Ligado has had.”
T-Mobile won’t face C-band issues for two years, when the licenses it bought in the auction are available, said Neville Ray, president-technology. T-Mobile is deploying “not just” 2.5 GHz capable radios but also using AWS-3 and PCS spectrum, he said. “As the network gets built and we migrate customers and traffic over to that network, we can free up more and more of the legacy Sprint spectrum … to leverage for 5G,” he said.
Ray said AT&T and Verizon are “a little gated” in their mid-band deployments by C-band issues. He’s “confident that they will get resolved over time” but it’s unclear how quickly. “Interference concerns can be addressed, they can be mitigated,” he said: “Maybe there’s some things that have to happen to enable a fast deployment. … We’ll see.”
Starks welcomed language in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act setting aside $50 million for a study of the 3.1-3.45 GHz band (see 2111120050). “We have run out of the very lowest hanging fruit, certainly in terms of the availability of future bands,” he said: “Congress has rightfully imposed on us the need to have further study.” Starks said he’s eager to see comments on future use of the 4.9 GHz band.
No other carrier has followed Dish Network’s software-focused path in building a 5G network, which makes it challenging for investors to find benchmarks as they evaluate the company, said Stephen Bye, Dish chief commercial officer. “We’re writing the playbook as we go,” he said. “What we’re doing is cloud native and that’s a simple statement to make, but it’s cloud native across the board,” he said: “That has implications at every layer … of our network.”
Dish is doing lots of measuring and testing using its beta launch in Las Vegas (see 2111040048), Bye said. “We’re not where we want to be,” he said: “We’re running a little behind where we were hoping to be, but we’re working our way towards launch.” Las Vegas is “just one market” and Dish is starting deployment in 42 markets nationwide, he said. Dish has started work on 30% of the sites it needs to hit its June target of covering 20% of the U.S. population, he said. Cost containment remains a focus, he said. “It’s always easy to do more with more money,” Bye said: “That’s just not the culture within Dish.”