The U.S. scored an important win for Wi-Fi at the recent World Radiocommunication Conference, beating back a move to harmonize the upper 6 GHz band for 5G, speakers said during a CES discussion of unlicensed spectrum late Thursday. Officials said restoration of FCC auction authority is critical, but when Congress will act remains uncertain.

Wi-Fi Alliance Services representatives urged FCC Office of Engineering and Technology staff to let the company launch operations as an automated frequency coordination system provider in the 6 GHz band. They noted the company “has taken all the steps specified by the Commission to be recognized as a provider of 6 GHz AFC services, including submitting its Report on the public trial it conducted,” a filing posted Thursday in docket 21-352 said.

Expect to see Wi-Fi 6E and Wi-Fi 7 adopted this year, driven by increased demand for newer generation Wi-Fi networks, NCTA Chief Technology Officer Rikin Thakker said Wednesday. Also driving popularity of Wi-Fi 6E/7 will be their ability to use 6 GHz band spectrum, particularly as more countries open up the band, he said. Thakker said more cable operators will upgrade plants to DOCSIS 4.0 in 2024 as they move to multi-gig speeds. He expects some will deploy extended DOCSIS 3.1 as a precursor to end-to-end DOCSIS 4.0. He also said NTIA's National Spectrum Implementation Plan will set out strategies for bands of importance to cable -- 3.1-3.45 GHz, 7.125-8.4 GHz and 37-37.6 GHz.

FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez warned at the CES in Las Vegas that the U.S. could fall behind other nations unless the agency once again has authority to conduct spectrum auctions. The remarks were her first at a CES as an FCC member. Meanwhile, Commissioner Brendan Carr, also at the show, said the FCC is moving backward on spectrum. Carr slammed the administration’s national spectrum strategy for not opening any new spectrum (see 2401100032), which he called “a bit of a miss.” CTA officials said Carr and Gomez toured the CES show floor together Wednesday.

Congress is unlikely to follow up the 5G Spectrum Authority Licensing Enforcement Act (S-2787) with a near-term agreement on a broader spectrum legislative package, certainly not in time to factor into the upcoming debate over funding the federal government once an existing continuing resolution expires Feb. 2, lawmakers and lobbyists told us. President Joe Biden signed the 5G Sale Act last week (see 2312200061), giving the FCC temporary authority to issue 2.5 GHz band licenses that T-Mobile and others won in a 2022 auction. All sides view the measure as a stopgap, required after months of stalled talks on Capitol Hill for a broader legislative package that would renew the FCC’s lapsed general auction authority (see 2312040001).

Leaders of the 12 GHz for 5G Coalition told us they expect an order opening use of the lower 12 GHz band for fixed-wireless in Q1 2024. The group's leaders had hoped for action by the end of this year, after commissioners approved a Further NPRM in May examining the band's future (see 2309110061).

AT&T urged the FCC to proceed cautiously in approving the launch of 6 GHz automated frequency coordination (AFC) operators following public trials. “AT&T was an active participant in these public trials and AT&T appreciates the efforts of these AFC System applicants to work with AT&T to identify the source of discrepancies between AFC System calculated results for standard power device scenarios and the values calculated by AT&T,” said a filing posted Tuesday in docket 21-352: “AT&T does not believe the results of the public trials warrant deferring action on these applications, although AT&T does suggest that any grant of final AFC System authority be conditioned to ensure continued compliance with inter-industry agreements and to require some unresolved matters to be addressed within those inter-industry organizations.” AT&T noted that some of the tests “brought to light different practices and illustrated that reasonable engineers can differ with respect to how the same basic propagation calculations are implemented.”

Sony filed a report at the FCC on the public trial of its 6 GHz automated frequency coordination (AFC) system. Similar to other tests, the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) and AT&T Labs filed the largest number of objections, Sony reported Friday in docket 21-352. EPRI challenged 93 of 143 test cases submitted, but its challenges “may not be valid” because the institute relies on a different propagation model than allowed by the FCC, Sony said. AT&T challenged 24 test cases: the report said: “We analyzed the causes of the discrepancies …using detailed calculation results provided by AT&T Labs. As a result, the causes were identified and resolved.”

Activity at the recent World Radiocommunication Conference in Dubai points to the need for U.S. policymakers to make more spectrum available for 5G and 6G, blogged Umair Javed, CTIA senior vice president-spectrum. “WRC-23 made clear that the rest of the world is putting significant emphasis on making mid-band spectrum available for full-power 5G use,” he wrote. “Perhaps the most significant outcome of the conference is that the 6 GHz band -- which has been allocated for unlicensed access in the United States across the full 1200 megahertz -- is now earmarked to be the harmonized home for licensed mobile in the top half of the band for a majority of the world,” Javed wrote last week: “While some tried at the conference to set up a dynamic that suggested that countries would have to ‘choose’ between the U.S. vision for Wi-Fi or China’s vision for mobile, the reality was that some European countries were a major force for identifying the 6 GHz band for 5G and many countries sided with that view.” The lower 3 GHz is “truly a global 5G band now” with more than 50 nations using it “as the home for full-power 5G,” he said. “Now the WRC has harmonized this use across the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa,” he added. “This includes adding a new primary mobile allocation for the United States in the 3.3-3.4 GHz band and removing regulatory limitations on using 5G near the border in the 3.6-3.8 GHz band,” he said. Javed said the 7/8 GHz band “is now the global harmonization target for expanding mobile capacity for 5G and beyond.” The 4 GHz band “will be studied for future 5G use in the other two major ITU regions, but, unfortunately, not here in the Americas,” he said: “Agency opposition to study this band either domestically or internationally deprives the Administration of a promising option available to our key rivals.” Javed is a former top aide to FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel.

The Wireless Broadband Alliance filed a report at the FCC on public tests of its 6 GHz automated frequency coordination (AFC) system. “This report demonstrates that WBA successfully completed the public testing of its AFC system,” said a Friday filing in docket 21-352: “Only one challenge was a valid concern and WBA has since corrected that in its AFC.” WBA said other challenges were tied to differences in testing methodologies.