CTIA/CCA Proposal Seen by Some as Possible Starting Point for O'Rielly Proposal on CBRS Band

With a proposal on the 3.5 GHz band from FCC Commissioner Mike O’Rielly on revised rules for the 3.5 GHz citizens broadband radio service (CBRS) band seen imminent, industry officials said one by the Competitive Carriers Association and CTIA could be critical. The joint plan will face opposition from many groups that want the FCC to stick with current rules, which would license priority access licenses on census-tract basis everywhere.

CCA and CTIA's compromise Monday (see 1804230064) proposed using “Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) in the top 306 Cellular Market Areas (CMAs) and … county-based geographic area licenses in the remaining 428 CMAs.” The Wireless Internet Service Provider Association immediately slammed the plan. Industry and FCC officials told us the CTIA/CCA proposal could be the starting point of further negotiations, and more compromise is likely.

The agreement likely will get lots of traction at the FCC, said a former spectrum official. “Most often the staff cannot help themselves and feel the need to ‘improve’ an arm’s length compromise, but Commissioner O’Rielly is in the driver’s seat here.” It’s a “spectrum grab,” countered a former official who now represents companies that want the FCC to stick with census tracts.

“The joint proposal represents a path forward for the FCC to spur innovation, investment and economic opportunities in communities across the country, both urban and rural alike,” said Scott Bergmann, CTIA senior vice president-regulatory affairs. “We look forward to working with the commission to finalize this proceeding so that consumers and businesses can benefit from next-generation wireless connectivity.” CCA and the FCC didn’t comment.

“This development shows real compromise from the larger carriers, with the significant reduction in size of PALs from the [partial economic area licenses] they had previously supported,” said former Commissioner Robert McDowell, who represents Mobile Future. “The agreement of CCA shows that this compromise can also work for smaller carriers, and there’s no reason it couldn’t work for [wireless ISPs].”

The CTIA/CCA filing “represents a single stakeholder, mobile carriers, pretending to ‘compromise’ among themselves,” said Michael Calabrese, director of the Wireless Future Program at New America. “That national and regional mobile carriers reached a so-called compromise should carry no weight at the commission. The fact that mobile carriers agree licenses should be so large and permanent that they exclude every other current and potential wireless use case is irrelevant to the sort of compromise the commission is seeking.”

“It's unclear whether this is something the carriers are doing to try to move the needle or if they were asked by someone at the commission to file this as a means of creating a record for a compromise by the Republican commissioners,” said Harold Feld, Public Knowledge senior vice president. “I actually think this is being pushed by the industry.” Feld said the “glue” connecting CCA and CTIA is T-Mobile. “As one of the largest members of CCA, T-Mobile is in a strong position to push CCA toward a compromise with CTIA,” he said. “For the carriers, this has turned out not to be the cakewalk they expected but a hard slog where they could easily end up with the status quo.” Feld said the big wild card is companies like General Electric pushing for census tracts as part of the development of the industrial IoT.

Smaller license sizes “make the most sense in the CBRS band,” said WISPA President Claude Aiken at a New America event Tuesday (see 1804240070). “Smaller license areas mean more broadband for rural America and more competition everywhere.”

WISPs need spectrum beyond the 3.65 and 5 GHz bands they commonly use, said Elizabeth Bowles, chair of Arkansas WISP Aristotle and of the FCC Broadband Advisory Committee. Bowles said changing the size of the PALs is “such a bad idea.” The 5 GHz band is still viable in rural America but not in cities because of interference, she said. “There really is no beating having dedicated spectrum as far as throughput is concerned,” she said. “What is attractive about CBRS is that it would give us … sharable spectrum where we would have some dedicated areas.” CBRS is “adjacent to what we’re already deploying and functions from a propagation standpoint very similarly to what we’re used to working with,” she said. “It’s just a nice place to move.”

Charter Communications said this week in docket 17-258 that smaller geographic licenses are key to making CBRS work. It sought opening up the top 10 percent of MSA markets to competition by similarly reducing these license areas to counties.

T-Mobile defended the CCA/CTIA proposal. “There are some entities that may wish to use 3.5 GHz band spectrum in more limited areas,” the carrier said in a filing posted Tuesday. But the unlicensed tier of the 3.5 GHz plan “can be used to meet those needs,” the company said. “For others, that require the certainty that licensed spectrum provides, market transactions with licensees will enable consistent availability of capacity.”