Spectrum

With T-Mobile’s mid-band 5G buildout at 275 million points of presence (POPs) and a year-end target of 300 million POPs, the question is: How easy or difficult is it to cover that last 25 million people? “It gets harder and harder. And as a rule of thumb, I would say that it’s about 3 times harder for every 10 million that you add.

Americans increasingly rely on the radio spectrum for much of their daily lives. From texting friends to car navigation these airwaves play an invisible but central role. Much like other important resources, spectrum access is finite. Demand continues to grow.

The Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) band at 3550–3700 MHz was authorized for shared commercial use in the US (established June 23, 2015) through the efforts of the Federal Communications Commission, Department of Defense (DoD), and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA).

The Federal Communications Commission is poised to reject a proposal it has been considering for several years that would have made spectrum between 12.2-12.7 GHz available for mobile use.

The Federal Communications Commission’s May open meeting will be headlined by a pair of spectrum policy changes to both pave the way for future wireless technologies and also unlock new wireless services right now. Here’s everything we have lined up for our May open meeting:

We are gathered at this summit because someday soon someone will make the very first 6G connection. And we need to prepare now for the wireless world it will bring. Much like in the early days of 5G, the scrum for 6G is already intensifying.

The Federal Communications Commission adopted the following spectrum management principles.

Interference Realities

Everybody in the wireless ecosystem is clamoring for Congress to reinstate the spectrum auction authority of the Federal Communications Commission. One former deputy at the FCC speculates that the delay may be related to the Department of Defense (DoD) wanting to wait for a spectrum report that the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) is working on. NTIA is doing an assessment of the use of the 3.1-3.45 GHz spectrum.

I look forward to discussing 6G and how we can work with our partners to promote open, interoperable, secure, and reliable approaches to this technology. 6G will be the next step in the evolution and revolution of mobile data. To start, 6G will be deployed at a time when mobile connectivity has become centrally important in our daily lives.

The Federal Communications Commission took a fresh look at spectrum management and established a set of high-level principles on how the FCC intends to manage spectrum going forward. The Policy Statement is part of the FCC’s effort to reorient its spectrum management framework to a holistic consideration of both transmitter and receiver components of wireless systems.