Baker Floats 4G Plan, Starting with Repurposing MSS Bands

Repurposing the Mobile Satellite Services (MSS) bands should be a top priority of the FCC to promote the rollout of 4G services, FCC Commissioner Meredith Baker said Tuesday at the Law Seminars International Conference on Spectrum and Broadband. Baker listed three other “action items” the FCC should move on quickly to promote 4G service in the U.S. She also predicted that work on overhauling the Universal Service Fund will start in December and dominate the commission’s agenda next year.

"A quick look at our spectrum allocation table suggests that we have too much satellite spectrum and not enough terrestrial spectrum,” Baker said. Some MSS spectrum, “notably in the L-Band,” is used for mission-critical services and must be protected, she said. “Taken as a whole, however, the MSS bands have been significantly underused and represent the greatest 4G spectrum opportunity available to the Commission in the short term. The MSS bands are ready for action today."

Also on Baker’s list is encouraging the development of larger spectrum blocks through the secondary market. “We do not have the thriving secondary market or abundance of spectrum leases that could help aggregate larger spectrum blocks,” she said, adding that the FCC may not need to change its rules. “Instead, we can make more information about unused and underutilized spectrum available to more potential bidders.”

The FCC should also review its technical requirements and service rules for spectrum, Baker said. “Where possible, we must eliminate technical requirements that complicate network and end user equipment design,” she said. “A survey of commercial spectrum would be useful to see what rules should be modified, either on a permanent basis or through a waiver or exemption process, to support 4G deployments.” Baker also called for the release of a 4G plan for rural America. All the steps she called for can be taken within six months, she said.

All the issues raised by an USF revamp will be “really difficult” to work through, Baker predicted. “We're going to really address them starting in December, and it'll take us all of next year,” she said. Wireless “should be in the mix” for USF dollars, she added. “Obviously there are certain places where it just doesn’t make sense to build a wired network,” she said.

Asked whether wireless will be part of the Connect America fund as USF is reshaped to pay for broadband, Baker told us, “I don’t think we have any clarity on what that’s going to look like yet. … I think it’s important that it should be.” Baker also said that all of the steps she proposed are important. “I wouldn’t have put them in if they weren’t attainable,” she said.

Baker also said building a nationwide wireless network for public safety must be a priority, especially as the U.S. nears the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. “There has to be a path forward,” she said. “I think it’s very important to resolve it. … Our public safety really does need and deserve a fully functional, interoperable network.”

Long term planning for spectrum is difficult, said Charla Rath, Verizon Wireless vice president. “I'm not sure its possible to know what we're going to be doing in a decade,” Rath said. “In 2000, who could have anticipated 300 million users, hundreds of thousands of apps, smartphones.” In 2008, the year of the 700 MHz auction, “we really weren’t seeing even then the kind of explosive growth in data use that we see now,” she said. “Every year, ‘next year’ was going to be the year of data. It was sort of like a running joke. We finally reached ‘next year.'”

The National Broadband Plan is “a good first step,” Rath said. “We've talked about a lot of these ideas for a long time. … Now we need to roll up our sleeves and do some hard work."

"Spectrum is suddenly sexy, at least by Washington standards,” said Michael Calabrese, senior research fellow at the New America Foundation. Spectrum “isn’t suddenly sexy -- it’s suddenly sexy again,” Rath said.

Calabrese warned that much of the 500 MHz of new broadband spectrum proposed by the FCC over 10 years won’t be easy to find. The plan leans heavily on getting 120 MHz from TV, and an additional 220 MHz would have to come from federal users, he noted.

"It looks like there may be no more than 30 or 40 MHz that can be cleared and auctioned in the metro markets where it’s needed most and that’s years and years from now if everything goes right,” Calabrese said. He said the wireless industry faces what he called the “tragedy of the anti-commons” rather than of the commons. “Spectrum is an infinitely renewable resource, from second to second, and yet we have it locked up in warehouses,” he said.