A big auction is the latest in America’s race to 5G

A brief Q&A with Federal Communications Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel. 

The FCC is trying to open up bandwidth by auctioning off little-used parts of publicly owned airwaves, portions that may not have been useful for 3G or 4G, but are now in high demand for 5G. Commissioner Rosenworcel said, "[O]ne of the things that I think we have to be mindful of is that we can't just set aside our wireless airwaves for licensed uses sold at auction. We also have to keep some airwaves unlicensed. And most people don't know what unlicensed airwaves are. They might sound illicit or illegal. But, in fact, those are the airwaves where Wi-Fi takes place. So we all use them every day. They're kind of a public property in the skies. And we've got to make sure that as we push more of our wireless airwaves to market we keep some for unlicensed and Wi-Fi as well."