Policymakers Need Political Resolve to Push Forward on Clearing 1755 MHz Band, Pai Says

"Political will” is key to clearing the 1755-1780 MHz band, Pai said (http://fcc.us/1bS6jNB. “Some say that the days of clearing spectrum for exclusive commercial use are over,” he said at an event hosted by Smith Micro Software. “They say that we should settle for spectrum sharing, where government agencies and commercial operators coordinate and try to use the same spectrum. I don’t agree. For consumers, clearing spectrum is ultimately much better than sharing. So we shouldn’t wave the white flag. After all, we have sent men to the moon. We won the Cold War in the 1980s without firing a shot."

Asked by us about the difficulty of clearing the band, Pai cited the Defense Department’s recent letter offering an alternative approach on the larger 1755-1850 MHz band (CD July 23 p1). “There are certain systems that [they] anticipate will have to stay in the 1755 band, including satellite operations and electronic warfare,” Pai said in an interview. “I certainly am not under the illusion that clearing federal users out of the 1755 band, including those operations, is going to be easy. But nonetheless, I think it’s really important for us to maintain the focus on clearing rather than sharing.” There is a “clear statutory preference” for clearing over sharing, he said. “It’s going to be exceptionally difficult, I think, for commercial operators, especially the smaller competitive ones that we want to have enter the market in a bigger way, to establish sharing protocols with federal users, especially in cases [where] these are mission-critical services that might be classified."

Pai didn’t want to “characterize the proposal that DOD put on the table pejoratively or otherwise,” he told us. “The offer that they made was made in good faith and I think we should take it as such and work with them as best we can from the civilian side to make sure that spectrum policy, which affects commercial and federal users, serves both interests. ... Speaking for myself, I want to make sure that we have a rational, coherent spectrum policy that meets both those interests.”

Also in the speech, Pai stressed the importance of the FCC moving forward as quickly as possible on rules for the incentive auction. “We kicked off the rulemaking process last September,” Pai said in written remarks. “Since then, the Commission has started releasing details about the repacking algorithms and has held several workshops. My own office has hosted 10 deep dives with outside experts to understand the technical opportunities and limitations and to hammer out the auction’s details. And we've been doing all of this with a goal of conducting the broadcast incentive auction in 2014.” With only months left before the end of 2014, “now is the time for the Commission to establish a schedule for meeting our 2014 goal,” he said. “We need to figure out when we are going to finalize the band plan, auction design, and repacking methodology.” Many questions remain, said Pai. “Are we going to adopt final rules all at once? Or are we going to tackle each topic individually? What is our target date for opening the filing window for the auction? And when are we aiming to commence the auction?"

Pai told us the FCC should “stay focused on doing the nuts-and-bolts tasks that even a shorthanded commission can do,” while it only has three members. By many accounts, a full five-member commission is unlikely before the end of October (CD July 17 p1). “Whether it’s putting the repacking algorithms out for comment or holding workshops, whether it’s my office holding a number of deep dives with experts from a variety of different companies and fields, I think there’s certain things that we can do to lay the groundwork so that when the future chairman and commissioner come on board, we can really hit the ground running,” Pai said. “Time might not be on our side with respect to the confirmation process -- I'm not sure one way or another -- but there’s no reason why we can’t do the necessary legwork in advance."

Even a shorthanded FCC can “embrace the consensus that has emerged in the record thus far, to the extent it has, and take those issues off the table, then focus on the more difficult one,” Pai said. The agency should view consensus on the 600 MHz band plan “as a sign of success and take that issue off the table,” he said. On more complex issues, “everything from repacking to auction design, by necessity we might need to take more time and might need to have the input of two additional colleagues to make sure we get it right,” he said. Pai said he didn’t have a timeframe in mind for wrapping up work on a spectrum aggregation NPRM, which could determine whether any carriers face limits in bidding in the incentive auction. “That is going to be important, if we intend to hold the incentive auction within the near future, for us to allow carriers, and, by extension ... to make a rational, fully informed decision as to whether and to what extent they're going to participate in the auction,” he said. “For them to be able to do that, we need to set up some relatively clear rules of the road in terms of spectrum aggregation.”

The FCC should also move forward on rules opening 5.9 GHz spectrum for unlicensed use by year’s end, Pai said in the speech. “That spectrum is especially well-suited for unlicensed use,” he said. “Its short-range propagation characteristics enable localized reuse of the spectrum with minimal risk of interference. And wider channels will help us achieve faster speeds and higher throughputs. In fact, a super-wide channel would allow for throughputs as high as 1 gigabit per second. That’s 100 times faster Wi-Fi than you're likely to get in your local Starbucks.” Pai said “entrenched interests are already pushing back, saying that Congress only demanded 120 MHz. But we shouldn’t weaken our resolve."

The proposal has run into objections from the automotive industry, which plans to use part of the spectrum targeted by the FCC, the 5850-5925 MHz band, for a vehicle-to-vehicle warning system (CD May 31 p1). “I understand that there are going to be some objections,” Pai said in the interview. “But given the tremendous opportunity that we have to provide high-throughput, wireless connectivity to Americans, and give the tremendous impact that kind of connectivity could have ... it’s going to be critical for us to really think big and proactively on the 5 GHz band. I think the propagation characteristics there are so compelling that if we can solve the problem from a policy perspective then there’s no limit to what innovative, technological companies can do with it."

Pai also addressed the Internet Protocol transition in the speech. “While a few residents of the Pittsburgh metropolitan area -- about 14 percent -- still get plain old telephone service over copper, most of you don’t,” he said. “Instead, you get voice service from an interconnected Voice over Internet Protocol ... provider like Comcast, through a fiber-to-the-premises offering like Verizon’s FiOS, or by cutting the cord altogether and going wireless-only. The same is true across the nation.” But the FCC’s rules haven’t kept pace, he said. “We've been too slow in responding to this technological transformation,” he said. “Instead of maximizing the incentives for carriers to deploy next-generation networks, our regulations harken back to the days of Ma Bell and have too often deterred IP-based investments."

The FCC Technological Advisory Council set a target of 2018 for shutting off the public switched telephone network nationwide, Pai said, noting at the time it was chaired by Tom Wheeler, President Barack Obama’s nominee for agency chairman. “I'm confident that Tom has a forward-thinking vision on these issues, and I look forward to working with him,” Pai said. “That 2018 deadline is only five years away. It’s an ambitious goal, partly because when we turn off the PSTN, there may be problems that we can’t foresee right now. To borrow a phrase from Donald Rumsfeld, there will be “'unknown unknowns,’ things ‘we do not know we don’t know.'"