New Approaches to Broadband -- Wireline, Licensed, and Unlicensed

The Federal Communications Commission approved two items that use innovative approaches to free up spectrum for broadband.

One order utilizes spectrum sharing in the AWS-3 band to make airwaves currently used by government available for flexible, commercial use. Another order is taking 100 MHz of unlicensed spectrum in the 5 GHz band that was barely usable -- and not usable at all outdoors -- and transforming it into space that is fully usable for Wi-Fi.

Building on this work, the theme of the Commission’s April 23rd open meeting agenda will be “.” As evidenced by the AWS-3 order, spectrum sharing is a potentially revolutionary new approach that will allow us to derive greater value from the finite spectrum resource.

For consideration at our April open meeting, I am circulating proposed rules that are designed to make the 3.5 GHz band a test-bed for spectrum-sharing innovation. The proposal includes three tiers of prioritization: federal and non-federal incumbents, priority access licensees, and general authorized access users. It includes a single, highly flexible band plan, avoiding the analog trap of Balkanizing spectrum into sub-bands, each with its own sets of rules. The proposal also anticipates a wide range of flexible uses. Small cells will undoubtedly be a core use case, but we would not limit the band to such use. Finally, the proposal reflects economic incentives. The proposal would set up a flexible auction and licensing scheme that leverages the technical capabilities of a Spectrum Access System (SAS) database, which will function like a traffic cop for spectrum by assessing available spectrum so that it can be accessed by prioritized users. Phase I of the Connect America Fund has already provided more than $430 million to leverage tens of millions in additional private investment to deploy broadband to more than 1.6 million unserved Americans in 45 states. To put this into perspective, this reduces by about 10 percent the number of Americans without access to broadband. We must continue to move forward with the implementation of the CAF Phase II process, even as we reexamine our approach in light of marketplace and technological developments.