HWG’s Paul Margie, who represents tech companies on 6 GHz issues, spoke with an aide to FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel and a staffer from the Office of Engineering and Technology to urge further FCC action on the band. Margie discussed “the importance of adopting rules to permit portable operations in the 6 GHz band that both protect incumbent microwave links and permit commercially viable unlicensed operations, including considerations of product design and power consumption,” said a filing posted Wednesday in docket 18-295: “Any consideration of potential interference should account for propagation loss, polarization loss, feeder loss, far-field/body loss, antenna mismatch loss, transmit power control, and terrain.” Margie represents Apple, Broadcom, Google, Meta Platforms and Microsoft, and was joined on the OET call by a Qualcomm representative.

Tech companies told the FCC a new study by utility FirstEnergy warning of interference risks to utilities and other incumbents in the 6 GHz band as more Wi-Fi users take advantage of the spectrum (see 2305100047), suffers from the same flaws as a report the utility filed last year (see 2210130051). “Rather than conducting a large-scale probability analysis to test whether [radio local access networks] present a significant risk of harmful interference, FirstEnergy instead (1) cherry-picked a single [fixed service] site with two receivers, (2) purposefully selected only a set of consumer homes in the main beam of the link that it apparently believed would maximize the chance of producing its desired results, (3) placed RLAN access points in unrealistic locations within those homes, and (4) then forced multiple APs to operate constantly co-channel with the FS link rather than on any other available channels, as would be the case in the real world,” said a filing posted Monday in docket 18-295. The filing was signed by Amazon.com Services, Apple, Broadcom, Cisco Systems, Google, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Intel, Meta Platforms, Microsoft and Qualcomm.

Michael Calabrese, director of the Wireless Future Program at New America, told an aide to FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel the FCC was right in its approach proposing sharing in the 42 GHz band, approved by commissioners 4-0 in June (see 2306080042). Calabrese had been an early advocate of the approach (see 2305300055). Most of the licensed “Spectrum Frontier” spectrum “sits mostly idle in mobile carrier warehouses awaiting an economically viable use case,” said a filing posted Monday in docket 23-258: “In contrast, … this band, particularly in combination with the lower 37 GHz band, could facilitate very high-capacity point-to-multipoint fixed access wireless deployments where they are needed most in both less densely populated areas, as well as in multi-tenant environments.” Calabrese also asked about remaining unresolved issues in the 2020 Further NPRM on the 6 GHz band (see 2306230046). Public interest groups find it “very discouraging that some staff seem to want to take the Commission backwards to focusing on corner cases based on hypothetical measures of ‘interference’ … that are unrelated to actual harmful interference (i.e., to link availability),” Calabrese said.

CTIA raised concerns Wednesday as China announced it was allocating the top half of the 6 GHz band to 5G. In the U.S., the FCC assigned the entire band to Wi-Fi and other unlicensed use in 2020 (see 2004230059). “BREAKING NEWS: China announces plans to free up far more #5G spectrum than the United States,” CTIA tweeted: “Congress must restore @FCC auction authority and identify new spectrum to secure our leadership of the industries and innovations of the future.” The 6 GHz band “is the largest remaining single block of mid-band spectrum that can be assigned to licensed mobile in the foreseeable future,” Luciana Camargos, GSMA head-spectrum, blogged Wednesday, noting the latest from China. “It can help 5G to play a central role in sustainable social and industrial development,” Camargos said: “As enhanced broadband, IoT, data, analytics, and insight permeate every aspect of society, mobile networks require a long-term vision of each nation’s future.” The development is “a big step” toward a “commercial 6 GHz 5G ecosystem,” she said. Comargos noted China is deploying the world’s largest 5G network, with more than 2.7 million base stations by the end of April, “on track to become the first country to reach 1 billion 5G connections in 2025.” Future use of the band is likely to be an issue at the World Radiocommunication Conference in November (see 2302060052).

Wi-Fi Alliance representatives updated an aide to FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel on a submission the group made with the Wireless Innovation Forum containing specifications and test plans for evaluating 6 GHz automated frequency coordination systems (see 2306230046). “We expressed our hope that the delivery and availability of this package will support the Commission’s goal to approve the AFC systems for full commercial operations, beginning with an announcement of the initiation of the next phase of the approval process -- laboratory and field testing,” said a filing posted Monday in docket 18-295.

More than three years after a 6 GHz Further NPRM was approved in April 2020 (see 2004230059), the FCC hasn't acted. Speculation in 2020 was that the agency could act before the end of the Trump administration (see 2012180057). The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit largely upheld the 2020 6 GHz order 18 months ago (see 2112280047).

Representatives of the Wi-Fi Alliance and the Wireless Innovation Forum met with Chief Ron Repasi and others from the FCC Office of Engineering Technology to present “a complete package” of specifications and test plans for evaluating 6 GHz automated frequency coordination systems. The documents “represent a consensus of 6 GHz stakeholders including component and equipment manufacturers, AFC system applicants, network operators, incumbent and unlicensed operators, system integrators, software companies, and many others,” said a filing posted Thursday in docket 18-295. The groups expressed hope “that the delivery and availability of this package will support the Commission’s effort to approve the AFC systems for full commercial operations.”

Electric utility representatives, led by the Edison Electric Institute, discussed a recent Pacific Gas & Electric study on the interference threat to band incumbents from unlicensed operations in the 6 GHz band (see 2304260037), meeting with an aide to FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel. The study said 47 of the PG&E links studied would have to be moved within five years, four links “showed such severe risk for interference that PG&E is already moving them to 11 GHz channels at significant cost to the company” and only five “will be able to operate effectively in five years," the utilities said in a filing posted Thursday in docket 18-295.

The FCC is extending the deadlines for filings made in the universal licensing system and antenna structure registration system (ASR) and warned that, like those systems, the tower construction notification system (TCNS) and E-106 System also went down last Friday at about 6:30 p.m. EDT, said a notice in Wednesday’s Daily Digest.

Use of the 6 GHz band will make Wi-Fi more efficient and means Wi-Fi devices won’t have to also work in legacy bands, said Rolf De Vegt, Qualcomm Technologies vice president-technical standards, on a Qualcomm webinar Tuesday. De Vegt said 6 GHz is the right band to meet today's needs. Wi-Fi started out with only about 90 MHz of spectrum in the 4.2 GHz band before the 5 GHz and then 6 GHz bands were added, he said. The addition of 6 GHz in 2020 (see 2004240011) more than doubled the amount of spectrum available for unlicensed, he said. “When devices operate in 6 GHz there is no need to support all the legacy modes,” which are “slower modes and less efficient,” De Vegt said. “What we can really focus on when we deploy networks in the 6 GHz band” is using “the most modern and the latest techniques for those particular Wi-Fi networks,” he said. The opening of 6 GHz is “extremely timely” as fiber is built out worldwide, he said. Without the 6 GHz band, Wi-Fi would become “the bottleneck” in the network, he said. The amount of the band opened for Wi-Fi varies around the world, but “leading tech nations” like the U.S., South Korea, Canada and Brazil are making the full band available, and not just the lower 500 MHz, recognizing “this is going to spur a lot of growth and innovation in all kinds of industries,” De Vegt said. “Wi-Fi connects the world” and now carries most wireless data network traffic, he said. Currently, an estimated 19 billion Wi-Fi devices are in use worldwide, he said. Wi-Fi networks are growing in every home, “it’s not just about your laptop or phone,” said Alap Modi, principal solutions architect at Wi-Fi equipment company Eero. The types of use cases that are growing require fast speed and low latency and that’s what 6 GHz offers, he said. ISPs are offering faster and faster connections to the home, but “inside your home you are still relying on Wi-Fi,” he said. Eero offers devices that use 160 MHz channels, and that offer multi-GB speeds in the home, he said.