Carriers, Satellite Operators Nearing Agreement on Sharing Rules for 28 GHz Band

SIA is open to having a “robust discussion” about “their concerns, about our concerns and our plans and how to best utilize this band,” Marsh said. Working with satellite operators, both sides have developed “what we hope will be a very productive proposal” for the 28 GHz band, she said. “What we are talking about, at least from our perspective, is a fairly easy lift on coordination, particularly compared to some of the things that we have done in other bands.”

The fixed base stations with which carriers will have to coordinate “number in the tens, not the hundreds,” Marsh said. “That’s something that we can manage.” Any carrier that wants to use the 28 GHz band would have to understand there are fixed stations that need to be protected and steps that might have to be taken to address interference, she said.

“What we’ve discovered is you can determine theoretical, potential interference, but if you coordinate very often that interference itself can be mitigated,” Marsh said. “We’re going need to need more conversations to determine exactly what that perimeter is. I don’t think it will be big.” For fixed stations, it may be as small as two football fields, she said. There are also mobile fixed satellite service stations that are more difficult to address but, like fixed stations, there aren't many nationwide and the size of protection zones isn't large, she said.

Marsh said a similar approach would likely work in the 38 GHz band, another band looked at by the NPRM.

Carriers and satellite operators have a “long history” of sharing, said Jennifer Manner, EchoStar vice president-regulatory affairs. Satellite has shared the 28 GHz band for almost 20 years, she said. Any solution must ensure existing fixed satellite service gateways are protected and are able to grow, Manner said.

Carriers appear to be most focused at using high-frequency spectrum for 5G in the urban cores, Manner said. In the 28 GHz band, “From an FSS gateway perspective, that’s not an area that we’re intending to be in,” she said: EchoStar would probably be willing to accept secondary status in urban areas. Outside those areas, EchoStar wants co-primary status with carriers, she said. “It’s still something that has to be fleshed out a good bit more.” A similar agreement might work in the 38 GHz band, she said.

Numerous precedents demonstrate sharing can work, said John Hunter, T-Mobile director-spectrum policy. But Hunter questioned FCC proposals to look at the use of a spectrum access system in the high-frequency spectrum similar to that to be used in the 3.5 GHz band. “The SAS was really intended for radars,” he said. The FSS operations in the 3.5 GHz band are “known locations” and will just be added to the database, he said. “There’s really no need for a SAS in millimeter wave bands."

Michael Daum, Microsoft technology policy strategist, said if the FCC imposes use-or-share rules, it will need an SAS. “If you believe there’s a need for some sort of regime … just to make sure spectrum doesn’t lie fallow or to be a persistent incentive for licensees to build out,” there is some need for a SAS, he said.

Harold Feld, senior vice president at Public Knowledge, supported industry cooperation. But Feld warned the use case may change: “You’ve got stakeholders that haven’t even been born yet. Whenever we're looking at a new technology, the first thing people do is assume it's going to be like the present, but pumped up more on steroids and we'll do more with it than we were doing before.” Feld encouraged the FCC not to impose rules on some high-frequency bands until the agency sees how the rules play out in 28 GHz and a few other bands.

“We don’t think that the proposal we’re looking at in any way would undermine flexibility and the ability to innovate and bring new technologies,” Marsh said in reply to Feld. “There certainly are other solutions we can look at.”

5G Benefits To Be Seen

Another panel focused on what the 5G world will look like. Five G is a “socioeconomic revolution that is going to impact everything in the way we live, in the way we relate to each other,” said Asha Keddy, Intel general manager. Billions of devices connected to each other will fundamentally change agriculture and industry, leading to new smart cities and changes in healthcare, she said.

“There are a lot of usages that we have not envisioned because when we provide technologies … there are things that people will do with them that we cannot imagine today,” Keddy said. Getting more spectrum is key, she said. “We need every bit of spectrum we can get in whatever frequencies we can get to make this happen.”

The starting point for connectivity is real estate, power and backhaul, said Dave Parish, Google manager-wireless systems. “You can envision all the cool modulation schemes you want and technologies you’ve got to have somewhere to put your radio,” he said. “We’re going to have to broaden the horizon, not narrow the horizon.” That means people wearing base stations, cars with base stations, “everything you can think of,” said Parish. Use cases are harder to predict, Parish said. “I have to ask my kids what’s going on in the Internet now,” he joked. “I thought about asking my granddaughter where we’re going to be in 10 years, but she’s not talking yet.”

Parish predicted the high end of connection speeds will increase. “We’re going to go to gigabytes, tens of gigabytes,” he said. The low end will get lower as more IoT devices hit the market with a need for very low bandwidths, long battery life and low power consumption, he said. Seamlessness will be critical, Parish said. “What users are not going to be comfortable with is if we’ve got 10 different systems and 10 different technologies.” More base stations will be in use, and maybe multiple Wi-Fi hot spots in most homes, but densifying the network is expensive, Parish said. Spectrum in many ways is cheaper, he said. “Capacity scales with spectrum,” he said. “If you have more spectrum, you can push through more bytes, it’s that simple.” High-frequency spectrum is critical because that’s where the spectrum is, said Parish.

Verizon and its vendors are already doing “meaningful field testing” of 5G, said Sanyogita Shamsunder, Verizon Wireless director-wireless technology. 5G offers a “rainbow of opportunities,” Shamsunder said. “For some people, the low latency aspect of 5G seems very attractive.” Others are attracted to the promise of connecting billions “or maybe zetta billions” of devices," she said. “The promise of bringing gigabytes of connectivity is one of the most important aspects of 5G.” Latency is one of the biggest problems for the growing IoT, as is battery life and performance, she said. “We can certainly improve on what 4G is doing today” but the IoT will need the wide bandwidth offered by high-frequency spectrum and 5G, she said.