The launch of 5G services will be highly reliant on spectrum, but has poor planning by the FCC undercut crucial low-band support?
Hello! And welcome to our Friday column, Worst of the Week. There’s a lot of nutty stuff that goes on in this industry, so this column is a chance for us at RCRWireless.com to rant and rave about whatever rubs us the wrong way. We hope you enjoy it!
For those of you with no interest in wireless spectrum – you know, the stuff that makes all of this wireless stuff actually work – you may be unaware that the Federal Communications Commission is somewhat in charge of handing out access to these assets, and is currently in the progress of doing just that.
Well, at least I think that’s what’s happening as part of the FCC’s ongoing 600 MHz incentive auction proceedings.
You see, unlike past FCC auctions, the incentive auction is somewhat different. Some might say it’s exceedingly complex, but that’s mostly due to the fact it’s so much different from past auctions, which were really more like something you would find on eBay … if something on eBay was getting 10-digit bids.
But, instead of the FCC acting as a seller with a questionable seller rating and just pocketing the proceeds, the incentive auction has the FCC acting more like eBay in that it’s sort of the middle-man between television broadcasters looking to score some quick cash for items they don’t need and the telecom industry looking to score some sweet beachfront property. (I guess that beachfront analogy should really be termed beach-beachfront as the 700 MHz auction already coopted the beachfront tag.)
Highlighting just how complex of a process the incentive auction is, this week witnessed the closing of the auction’s third stage, a process that took just one bidding round and it was apparent those bidding for licenses had no interest in giving up the more than $40 billon television broadcasters wanted for the 80 megahertz of clean, low-band spectrum up for bid.
This is now the second stage in a row in which the forward auction process closed within one round of opening, though it should be noted there are very complex reasons for this to have happened and those that understand the complexity assure me that what happened is really not much of a surprise.
I do think it’s very noble of the FCC to even attempt the incentive auction process, even though it has stated such a process is likely to be the template for all auctions moving forward, thus … you know … no pressure.
However, the mechanics of the auction are such that the FCC is basically attempting to force an agreement between two sides in terms of the value of spectrum, which with the egos of the players involved looks to be adding some undue stress to the proceedings.
While I do want to applaud the FCC for taking on such a Herculean task, the agency must also be taken to task for also submarining its efforts.
Over the past two years, the FCC has pushed three different spectrum initiatives, all of which I think are hampering the 600 MHz inventive auction proceedings.
There is the ongoing citizen broadband radio service initiative that is looking to open up 150 megahertz of spectrum in the 3.5 GHz band; the recently introduced Spectrum Frontiers proposal looking to introduce gigahertz of new spectrum across various high-band blocks; and the FCC’s wildly successful AWS-3 auction that generated more than $40 billion in total bids for 50 megahertz of licensed spectrum in the 1.7/2.1 GHz band.
All three of those taken separately are pretty awesome, but all three of those coming just ahead of the FCC’s attempt to get telecom operators to pony up tens of billions of dollars for slices of low-band spectrum shows a lack of planning.
While the FCC has made some links between the 600 MHz band spectrum and support for “5G” services, most of the hype today around 5G is in connection with higher spectrum bands. This is mostly due to the larger swaths of spectrum available in those bands, which are seen as a requirement to meet the speed expectations of 5G services.
However, most recent commentary from the engineers tasked with actually trying to commercialize services using those high-bands has been somewhat comical. I have heard repeated references to the challenging propagation characteristics of these bands, with comments about the impact foliage, weather and misplaced appendages are having on transmission stability.
For years we have heard about the financial and logistical challenges associated with attempting to offer commercial wireless services using higher-band spectrum. Whether it’s the significantly larger number of cell sites required to cover a specific area when moving from a sub-1 GHz band deployment to something in the 2 GHz range; or the challenges already being encountered in terms of deploying enough infrastructure to support services using conventional wireless telecommunications spectrum, let alone how the industry is going to find ways to deploy an order of magnitude greater number of transmission points.
This all leads back to the fact that while high-band spectrum is where all the hype is, I still think the real meat-and-potatoes of 5G deployments will rely heavily on low-band spectrum. And, thus the FCC’s ongoing attempts to free up the 600 MHz spectrum band for that support is sort of important.
I know the FCC is working under some pressure to get a lot of new spectrum out in the market by 2020, and probably even more now that we are set for an administration change, but the agency has done itself no favor in stacking so many spectrum initiatives on top of each other.
The 600 MHz incentive auction is now set to move to stage four, which will include 70 megahertz of clean spectrum, and more importantly a lower clearing overhead that should make it more appealing to telecom operators. This should result in the first real chance for the auction proceedings to come to a conclusion and thus begin the process of getting those spectrum licenses cleaned up and ready to support 5G technology.
And, should that happen, there will likely be much rejoicing over that outcome. But, it’s hard to shake the thought that with a bit more planning, the process could have been a bit smoother for all involved.
Thanks for checking out this week’s column. Here’s a couple of quick extras to get you through the weekend:
–If someone can explain to me the revolutionary aspect of T-Mobile US’ Digits program launched this week, please give me a call on my Google Voice number.
–SoftBank Chairman Masayoshi Son’s announcement this week that he planned to invest $50 billion and create 50,000 jobs in the U.S. reinforced by belief that hyperbole is the best kind of “bole.”
I welcome your comments. Please send me an e-mail at dmeyer@rcrwireless.com.
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