Unlicensed

A broad-based coalition of nonprofit groups [including the Benton Foundation] filed a letter calling on the Federal Communications Commission to reject a proposal from the cellular industry, filed by CTIA on June 16, to re-open and revise the rules finalized more than a year ago for a new Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) that opens a large frequency band of unused Navy spectrum for small area, high-capacity broadband innovation. The coalition represents consumers, public institutions and small business users of broadband, and includes the Schools, Health & Libraries Broadband Coalition, Next Century Cities, Engine, the R Street Institute, the American Library Association and the National Hispanic Media Coalition. The coalition asks the FCC to instead move rapidly to complete implementation of this historic innovation in spectrum policy, which opens unused military spectrum for sharing with Priority Access Licenses that are available for small areas (census tracts) and short terms, thereby making them more useful and affordable to smaller operators and to venues for indoor use.

What’s the next Wi-Fi frontier? And how can we tap into it for public good? A key band of airwaves that companies are seeking is the unused spectrum in lower frequencies that sit between TV channels. The spectrum in the gaps between bands of airwaves reserved for broadcast television offers prime real estate for companies seeking to bolster connectivity. Those unused bands of airwaves, known as “TV white spaces” (TVWS), are a target for Microsoft in particular. The company recently introduced a program to bring free Internet access to rural families to help bridge the “homework gap” in Charlotte and Halifax counties in southern Virginia.

In 2016, New America’s Open Technology Institute also urged the Federal Communications Commission to allow schools to leverage TVWS to give students lacking broadband at home remote access to the school’s high-capacity broadband, which would be subsidized by the federal E-Rate program.