Dish Network’s proposal for a mobile telephone network would destroy the value of airwaves the government plans to auction for commercial use,the Federal Communications Commission said today.
Dish wants to use all the MSS frequencies it purchased from defunct satellite operators for nationwide terrestrial LTE service. But the FCC wants to auction the H block, which is adjacent to the Dish spectrum. That could cause mutual interference.
Dish calls the draft “significantly flawed”; adding years of delay and eliminating competition. Ericsson can deliver 223 Mbps on 40MHz of spectrum.
AT&T and Verizon can’t touch it. They don’t have the greenfield spectrum.
Sprint’s filing with the FCC called for the FCC to shift Dish Network’s AWS-4 band up 5 MHz from 2000-2020 MHz to 2005-2025 MHz so their planned adjacent “H block” of PCS spectrum can be used for LTE. Sprint wants to use the entire 1990-2000 MHz block (two 5 MHz chunks). But that would adjoin Dish’s spectrum and cause mutual interference.
Sprint-Nextel claims that if the FCC were to limit their proposed “H Block” to only small cell use, it would not likely bid on the spectrum. Dish has argued that a “full power” H Block would cause at least 25 percent of its uplink frequencies (2000-2020 MHz) to become unusable, a claim Sprint has said is erroneous. Sprint says it is open to hosting Dish with their Network Vision architecture – but only if Dish were bumped up 5 MHz (2005-2025 MHz).
“In arguing that the commission should destroy the value of the H block, Dish is seeking to take a public asset potentially worth billions of dollars and turn it into a private windfall,” Justin Cole, an FCC spokesman, reports Bloomberg.
“This is not windfall; it’s a venture where success is by no means assured,” said Bob Toevs, a Dish spokesman. “While we remain ready to work with the commission, we urge it to consider the sacrifices its current approach to the H block means for spectrum, jobs and investment.”
Genachowski’s proposal awaits a vote by the five-member FCC.
Congress directed the FCC to auction the H block (Greg Walden loves to micro-manage), and by limiting Dish, the FCC can generate more revenue to help pay for a planned nationwide radio network for emergency workers, FirstNet.
In other news, the Commission will consider a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to broaden its initiatives in unleashing broadband spectrum, promoting technological innovation, and encouraging investment via the creation of a shared access broadband service in the 3550-3650 MHz band for small cell use.
According to the President’s Council of Advisers on Science and Technology, some 1000 MHz of federal spectrum, especially in bands above 2.7 GHz, may be shared using White Space interrogation technology.
The Whitehouse PCAST spectrum report (pdf) promotes expanded spectrum-sharing technologies, originally developed for unused “white space” tv frequencies.
The 3550-3650 MHz band is mostly used by Navy radar. Using the techniques pioneered by White Space receivers, devices will be able to share the frequencies with the government if they incorporate geographic location information and interrogate data bases before they transmit.
The Wireless Innovation Alliance made a noble defense for unlicensed use of the band (like WiFi), saying, “We agree with PCAST that expanding on the TV White Space database approach holds immediate promise for opening the underutilized 3550-3650 MHz band for unlicensed devices and encourage the FCC and NTIA to make implementation a priority.”
According to the Wireless Innovation Alliance, one quarter of the world’s households and tens of millions of businesses have deployed Wi-Fi networks to deliver broadband Internet access. Wi-fi increases the economic value of fixed broadband connections by $99 billion a year.
The Wireless Internet Service Providers Association (WISPA) says the FCC should make the 3550-3650 megahertz band available through the same “licensed-light” regime as it did the 3650-3700 MHz band, which would allow wireless Internet service providers (WISPs) to use the frequencies.
Commercial carriers are not big on sharing. On AT&T’s Public Policy Blog, Joan Marsh, the operator’s vice president of federal regulatory, said, “While we should be considering all options to meet the country’s spectrum goals, including the sharing of federal spectrum with government users, it is imperative that we clear and reallocate government spectrum where practical.”
CTIA, the cellular industry association, said “the gold standard” for deployment of ubiquitous mobile broadband networks is cleared spectrum.
For them.
Source: http://www.dailywireless.org/
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