With both mmWave and midband 5G auctions concluded and development and/or deployment underway for existing spectrum releases, one of the biggest spectrum question now is: What’s next?
Conversations on spectrum policy are shifting focus to renewing the pipeline of airwaves under consideration for future use, both for 5G and as-yet-unstandardized 6G systems. Federal agencies are also reconsidering their roles and relationships in shaping that pipeline, and where innovation or spectrum sharing may help to bolster commercial spectrum access while not interfering with the ability of agencies as diverse as NASA, the Department of Defense, the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to do their daily work.
“There are not a lot of easy bands left, if any, and we need better tools to be able to innovate our way through it,” said Phil Murphy, senior advisor at the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, during a panel discussion at the recent Spectrum Policy Symposium in Washington, D.C., between representatives of NTIA, the FCC, FAA and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.
Meanwhile, the telecom industry’s appetite for exclusive-use, licensed spectrum is as bottomless as the mobile data demand that it is trying to meet. A July 2021 report from Coleago Consulting, commissioned by industry group GSMA, estimated that across 36 cities around the world, the average midband (which it considered between 1.5-7.125 GHz) spectrum needs would be more than 2,000 megahertz in the 2025-2030 timeframe—and in high-income cities, midband needs could be as high as 3,690 megahertz to achieve the performance levels expected of 5G.
More recently, an Analysys Mason report commissioned by CTIA found that while the U.S. leads 15 global markets in licensed low-band and unlicensed midband spectrum availability (primarily due to the FCC’s decision to make a large swath of 6 GHz spectrum available for unlicensed use), the country is 11th out of 15 in licensed midband spectrum availability. (Midband spectrum here was considered 3-7 GHz and low-band was considered below 3 GHz.)
“The FCC made great progress with recent midband spectrum auctions, but this study shows there is more work to be done. We need Congress, the [FCC] and the [Biden] administration to develop a meaningful pipeline plan to build upon our recent success,” said Meredith Attwell Baker, CTIA president and CEO.
Meanwhile, related spectrum developments include:
-The FCC is currently considering whether to open up 500 megahertz of spectrum at 12 GHz for terrestrial 5G operations.
-A newly formed Coordinated Sharing Coalition, which includes the Wireless Internet Service Providers Assocation and Cambium Networks, is asking the FCC to allow spectrum-sharing in 500 megahertz of spectrum at 10.0-10.5 GHz, proposing that the swath of spectrum be used for wireless point-to-point broadband systems and should be governed by an Automated Frequency Coordination (AFC) system.
-A separate, CTIA-commissioned Accenture study suggested that the federal government consider opening up 350 megahertz of airwaves adjacent to existing cellular midband allocations, down to 3.1 GHz (which is already under consideration and study); another 400 megahertz from 4.4-4.94 GHz; and another chunk of 400 megahertz at 7-8.4 GHz.
-The Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) is following up its three-year Spectrum Collaboration Challenge, which focused on developing RF systems that could autonomously and dynamically share spectrum, with a new program called Processor Reconfiguration for Wideband Sensor Systems (PROWESS) aimed at developing new classes of receiver processors that are capable of high-throughput, streaming-data processing and reconfiguration in real time to detect and characterize RF signals.
At the recent D.C. spectrum policy event, the general consensus was that exclusive licensing will have to continue to be part of spectrum allocations, but that the success of the CBRS auction (in number of participants, if not overall proceeds) showed that there is appetite for shared spectrum, and that the complexity and expense of moving incumbent systems will tilt the balance toward more sharing.
Source: https://www.rcrwireless.com/20221010/spectrum/what-does-the-future-of-spectrum-look-like
