I haven’t seen it talked about a lot, but the FCC has set aside millimeter wave spectrum that can be used by anybody to provide broadband. That means that entities will be able to use the spectrum in rural America in areas that the big cellphone companies are likely to ignore.

The FCC set aside the V band (60 GHz) as unlicensed spectrum. This band provides 14 GHz of contiguous spectrum available for anybody to use. This is an interesting spectrum because it has a few drawbacks. This particular spectrum shares a natural harmonic with oxygen and thus is more likely to be absorbed in an open environment than other bands of millimeter wave spectrum. In practice, this will shorten bandwidth delivery distances a bit for the V band.

The FCC also established the E band (70/80 GHz) for public use. This spectrum will have a few more rules than the 60 GHz spectrum and there are light licensing requirements for the spectrum. These licenses are fairly easy to get for carriers, but it’s not so obvious that anybody else can get the spectrum. The FCC will get involved with interference issues with the spectrum – but the short carriage distances of the spectrum make interference somewhat theoretical.

There are several possible uses for the millimeter wave spectrum. First, it can be focused in a beam and used to deliver 1-2 gigabits of broadband for up to a few miles. There have been 60 GHz radios on the market for several years that operate for point-to-point connections. These are mostly used to beam gigabit broadband in places where that’s cheaper than building fiber, like on college campuses or in downtown highrises.

This spectrum can also be used as hotspots, as is being done by Verizon in cities. In the Verizon application, the millimeter wave spectrum is put on pole-mounted transmitters in downtown areas to deliver data to cellphones as fast as 1 Gbps. This can also be deployed in more traditional hot spots like coffee shops. The problem of using 60 GHz spectrum for this use is that there are almost no devices yet that can receive the signal. This isn’t going to get widespread acceptance until somebody builds this into laptops or develops a cheap dongle. My guess is that cellphone makers will ignore 60 GHz in favor or the licensed bands owned by the cellular providers.

The spectrum could also be used to create wireless fiber-to-the-curb like was demonstrated by Verizon in a few neighborhoods in Sacramento and a few other cities earlier this year. The company is delivering residential broadband at speeds of around 300 Mbps. These two frequency bands are higher than what Verizon is using and so won’t carry as far from the curb to homes, so we’ll have to wait until somebody tests this to see if it’s feasible. The big cost of this business plan will still be the cost of building the fiber to feed the transmitters.

The really interesting use of the spectrum is for indoor hot spots. The spectrum can easily deliver multiple gigabits of speed within a room, and unlike WiFi spectrum won’t go through walls and interfere with neighboring rooms. This spectrum would eliminate many of the problems with WiFi in homes and in apartment buildings – but again, this needs to first be built into laptops, sart TVs and other devices.

Unfortunately, the vendors in the industry are currently focused on developing equipment for the licensed spectrum that the big cellular companies will be using. You can’t blame the vendors for concentrating their efforts in the 24, 28, and 39 GHz ranges before looking at these alternate bands. There is always a bit of a catch 22 when introducing any new spectrum – a vendor needs to make the equipment available before anybody can try it, and vendors won’t make the equipment until they have a proven market.

Electronics for millimeter wave spectrum is not as easily created as equipment in lower frequency bands. For instance, in the lower spectrum bands, software-defined radios can easily change between nearby frequencies with no modification of hardware. However, each band of millimeter wave spectrum has different operating characteristics and specific antenna requirements and it’s not nearly as easy to shift between a 39 GHz radio and a 60 GHz radio – they requirements are different for each.

And that means that equipment vendors will need to enter the market if these spectrum bands are ever going to find widespread public use. Hopefully, vendors will find this worth their while because this is a new WiFi opportunity. Wireless vendors have made their living in the WiFi space and they need to be convinced that they have the same with these widely available spectrum bands. I believe that if some vendor builds indoor multi-gigabit routers and receivers, the users will come.