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'On the Ground'

PCIA Not Taking Sides on Net Neutrality Debate

PCIA is not taking any position on net neutrality or whether the FCC should reclassify broadband as a Communications Act Title II service, PCIA President Jonathan Adelstein said Tuesday during a news conference. The former commissioner left before the agency took up the first set of rules in 2010. AT&T and Verizon executives have warned that reclassification will mean less investment in networks.

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Net neutrality is an issue “we think about a lot,” Adelstein said. “We try to stay focused on a very on-the-ground agenda. We focus on how do you move deployment forward inch-by-inch on the ground.” PCIA is not looking to make any enemies at the commission, he joked. “We have been really the darling of the FCC, to be honest,” he said. In the infrastructure order the agency approved in October (see 1410170048), “we were mentioned 185 times,” he said. “They love out efforts to promote deployment.”

The FCC should not delay the incentive auction because of the amount of time it takes to get spectrum online, Adelstein said. Even if the auction starts next year, it will take “many years” for the broadcast spectrum to be cleared and available for use, he said. “Beyond clearing, it also requires new infrastructure to be put up and it requires the technology to be in the handsets and the handsets to be swapped out.” Broadcasters also more interested in selling spectrum now that they've seen the numbers in the incentive auction, he said.

The results of the AWS-3 auction highlighted the importance of wireless infrastructure (see 1501300051), Adelstein said. “The amount of capital being allocated to spectrum is extraordinary when you consider that [carriers] are really thinking long term,” he said. “This isn’t going to provide a lot of infrastructure in the next few years.”

Adelstein said he expects Congress to soon take up legislation that will ease siting on federal lands. Recent numbers from Cisco on wireless growth should be a wake-up call for industry and policymakers (see 1502030041), said Adelstein. Expected wireless demand is “off the charts,” he said. “Under the most optimistic scenarios, the amount of new spectrum coming online in the next five years is nowhere near enough to accommodate the explosive growth rates that Cisco predicts.”

Adelstein said California is a particularly tough area for industry to build out wireless facilities, even though it's “the center of innovation” for wireless, he said. It's the only state that allows conditional-use permits in which a tower can be constructed but may have to be torn down after five or 10 years if it's not reauthorized, he said. “There is something that nobody else does.” Californians “can’t even use their own applications sometimes because there’s not enough bandwidth because it’s so difficult to get sited there,” he said. “California throws up roadblock after roadblock to deployment of wireless infrastructure.”

New PCIA member Jake MacLeod, president of Texas-based Gray Beards Consulting, joined Adelstein at the session and stressed the importance of fiber to backhaul and other facilities carriers need to offer service. “The bottom line is that fiber … will be required for proper operation of 4G and 5G technologies,” he said. “Any transmission medium that provides latency, capacity and speed specs that are less than that of the fiber facilities will reduce the potential for realization of the 4G and 5G feature and function sets.”