Concerns about the 5.9 GHz band came up again during a hearing of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, where Department of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg gave testimony. But that wasn’t all. Committee Chairman Peter DeFazio (D-OR) reiterated his concerns about potential interference from 5G in the C-band – the very band where the likes of Verizon and AT&T just pledged over $80 billion for access to airwaves for 5G.
Facebook is laying fiber across the width of Indiana to connect a couple of its own data centers, and it will lease excess capacity on the fiber to telcos or other providers that are interested. Facebook has completed the first phase of the build, laying over 77 miles of fiber to connect the I-70 corridor from the Indiana/Ohio border to downtown Indianapolis. Phase One was 100% funded by Facebook via its wholly-owned subsidiary Middle Mile Infrastructure.
This report updates and expands on a paper the author presented nearly a decade ago at the Research Conference on Communication, Information and Internet Policy (TPRC), which predated the Federal Communications Commission’s adoption of a use-it-or-share-it approach in several underutilized bands. These use-it-or-share-it precedents should pave the way to an authorization of opportunistic access as the default policy for a growing number of underutilized and newly allocated or auctioned bands, both federal and commercial.
The Universal Service Fund (USF) is currently on an unsustainable financial path, funded by a regressive surcharge on a shrinking base of telephone customers. If it isn’t fixed, and fixed quickly, the fund won’t be able to meet its mandate and fulfill its connectivity promise – not just to the next generation, but to the current one. So how do we fix USF?
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