Category Archives: Regulation – What is it Good For?

Another Spectrum Battle

Back in July the FCC issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking seeking comments for opening up spectrum from 3.7 GHz to 4.2 GHz, known as the C-Band. As is happening with every block of usable spectrum, there is a growing tug-of-war between using this spectrum for 5G or using it for rural broadband.

This C-Band spectrum has traditionally been used to transit signals from satellites back to earth stations. Today it’s in use by every cable company that receives cable TV signals at a ‘big-dish’ satellite farm. The spectrum had much wider use in the past when it was used to deliver signal directly to customers using the giant 7 – 10 foot dishes you used to see in rural backyards.

This spectrum is valuable for either cellular data or for point-to-multipoint rural radio broadband systems. The spectrum sits in the middle between the 2.4 GHz and the 5.8 GHz used today for delivering most rural broadband. The spectrum is particularly attractive because of the size of the block, at 500 megahertz.

When the FCC released the NPRM, the four big satellite companies – Intelsat, SES, Eutelsat and Telesat – created the C-Band Alliance. They’ve suggested that some of their current use of this spectrum could be moved elsewhere. But where it’s not easy to move the spectrum, the group volunteered to be the clearing house to coordinate the use of C-Band for other purposes so that it won’t interfere with satellite use. The Alliance suggests that this might require curtailing full use of the spectrum near some satellite farms, but largely they think the spectrum can be freed for full use in most places. Their offer is seen as a way to convince the FCC to not force satellite companies completely out of the spectrum block.

I note that we are nearing a day when the need for the big satellite earth stations to receive TV might become obsolete. For example, we see AT&T delivering TV signal nationwide on fiber using only two headends and satellite farms. If all TV stations and all satellite farm locations were connected by fiber these signals could be delivered terrestrially. I also note this is not the spectrum used by DirecTV and Dish networks to connect to subscribers – they use the K-band at 12-18 GHz.

A group calling itself the Broadband Access Coalition (BAC) is asking the FCC to set aside the upper 300 megahertz from the band for use for rural broadband. This group is comprised of advocates for rural wireless broadband, including Baicells Technologies, Cambium Networks, Rise Broadband, Public Knowledge, the Open Technology Institute at New America, and others. The BAC proposal asks for frequency sharing that would allow for the spectrum to be used for both 5G and also for rural broadband using smart radios and databases to coordinate use.

Both the satellite providers and the 5G companies oppose the BAC idea. The satellite providers argue that it’s too complicated to share bandwidth and they fear interference with satellite farms. The 5G companies want the whole band of spectrum and tout the advantages this will bring to 5G. They’d also like to see the spectrum go to auction and dangle the prospect for the FCC to collect $20 billion or more from an auction.

The FCC has it within their power to accommodate rural broadband as they deal with this block of spectrum. However, recent history with other spectrum bands shows the FCC to have a major bias towards the promise of 5G and towards raising money through auctions – which allocates frequency to a handful of the biggest names in the industry.

The BAC proposal is to set aside part of the spectrum for rural broadband while leaving the whole spectrum available to 5G on a shared and coordinated basis. We know that in real life the big majority of all ‘5G spectrum’ is not going to be deployed in rural America. The 5G providers legitimately need a huge amount of spectrum in urban areas if they are to accomplish everything they’ve touted for 5G. But in rural areas most bands of spectrum will sit idle because the spectrum owners won’t have an economic use for deploying in areas of low density.

The BAC proposal is an interesting mechanism that would free up C-Band in areas where there is no other use of the spectrum while still fully accommodating 5G where it’s deployed. That’s the kind of creating thinking we need to see implemented.

The FCC keeps publicly saying that one of its primary goals is to improve rural broadband – as I wrote in a blog last week, that’s part of their primary stated goals for the next five years. This spectrum could be of huge value for point-to-multipoint rural radio systems and would be another way to boost rural broadband speeds. The FCC has it within their power to use the C-Band spectrum for both 5G and for rural broadband – both uses can be accommodated. My bet, sadly, is that this will be another giveaway to the big cellular companies.

The New e-Connectivity Pilot Grants

In March Congress passed a new $600 million grant/loan program to build rural broadband. The project has been labeled as the e-Connectivity Pilot and it’s expected that the specific rules for seeking the funding will be released early on 2019. The USDA sought public comments on the program in September and is now working out the details of how the awards will be made.

Anybody interested in these grants should get serious about it now, since it’s likely that the grant application window might not be any longer than 60 to 90 days. Getting ready means having a detailed and solid business plan as well as already having a source of funding for any parts of a project not covered by these grants. The grants are also likely to include provisions like getting a professional engineer to approve the network design – so designs need to be specific and not generic. It’s likely that the USDA will stick with their existing grant application process – and those forms have always been a bear to complete.

There is one huge hurdle to overcome for this program since an application can’t cover an area that has more than 10% of households with access to broadband speeds of at least 10/1 Mbps. Considering that the CAF II awards and more recent CAF II reverse auctions awards already will supposedly provide this kind of speed to huge swaths of the country, there are not a lot of areas left that will meet this requirement.

Claiming that an area meets the 90% unserved threshold will be also be difficult because grant applications can be challenged by carriers that serves the grant area today. I have to assume that CAF II reverse auction winners will also be able to challenge. The big rub is that the original CAF II award winners still have until 2020 to complete their build-out and they will certainly challenge awards for any CAF II area that has not yet been updated. The CAF II reverse auction winners have ten more years to complete their buildout. The USDA will likely be obligated to reject an application that encroaches on any of the CAF II footprint – even if those areas don’t have broadband today.

This gets even more complicated since the CAF II reverse auction awarded funding to fixed wireless and satellite providers. They were funded to serve specific little pockets of unserved homes, but it won’t be hard for them to claim that the CAF II award dollars will allow them to serve much larger areas than the tiny boundaries they bid on.

The process of proving a study area isn’t served will be further complicated by the USDA’s reliance on the FCC’s broadband maps, which we all know to be highly inaccurate in rural America. This all adds up to mean that an applicant needs to prove the area doesn’t have broadband today and will not be getting it over the next decade from one of the CAF winners. They will also need to overcome any errors in the FCC maps. This is going to be hard to prove. I expect the challenge process to be brutal.

From the instant I saw the 90% unserved test, I’ve assumed that the most likely candidates for these grants will be somebody that is already planning on building broadband across a large footprint. If such an applicant is careful to only identify the scattered homes that meet these grant rules, then this funding can help to pay for a project they were going to build anyway. The other natural set of applicants might be those companies that already took CAF II funding – they could use these grants to fill in unserved homes around those build-out areas. The industry is going to be in an uproar if a lot of this funding goes to the big incumbent telcos (who won’t challenge their own applications).

Another issue to consider is that the USDA can award funding as a combination of grants and loans. These awards will surely require matching funding from an applicant. Anybody that is already planning on funding that matching with bank or other financing might find it impossible to accept USDA loans for a portion of a project. USDA loan covenants are draconian – for example, USDA loans usually require first priority for a default, which will conflict with commercial lenders. It’s always been nearly impossible to marry USDA debt with other debt.

rant applicants should also be aware that the USDA is going to be highly leery of awarding money to start-ups or somebody that is not already an ISP. The agency got burned on such grants awarded with the stimulus grants and has indicated that they are looking for grant award winners to have a strong balance sheet and a track record of being an ISP. This will make it nearly impossible for local governments to go after the money on their own. Chances of winning will be greatly enhanced by public/private partnerships with an existing ISP.

I know my take on the grants sound highly pessimistic. Congress saddled these grants with the 90% unserved test at the coaxing of the big telcos who wanted to make sure these funds weren’t used to compete against them. Past USDA grants had the opposite requirement and could consider awards to areas that didn’t have more than 10% of houses with broadband. However, if you are able to identify a service area that can survive the challenge process, and if you have the matching funded lined up, these grants can provide some nice funding. I’m not taking any bets, though, on the USDA’s ability to award all of the money – there might not be enough grant applications that can make it through the gauntlet.

Fighting Spoofing

One of the biggest problems with the telephone network today is spoofing – where robocalls are generated using stolen numbers to mask the identity of the caller. Spoofing and robocalls are the biggest source of complaints to the FCC and NANC (the North American Numbering Council) reports that in 2016 there were 2.4 billion robocalls per month – a number that has surely grown. As recently as a year ago I rarely got robocalls on my cellphone but now get half a dozen per day.

The FCC called upon NANC to find a solution to the problem. NANC used the Call Authentication Trust Anchor Working Group to find a solution to the problem. In May of this year the FCC accepted the recommendations of this group to implement a ‘taken’ system to authenticate that calling numbers are authentic.  Last week Chairman Ajit Pai asked the industry to speed up implementation of the solution, warning that the FCC would issue an order to do so if the industry didn’t solve the problem quickly.

The proposed solution involves a new process used to authenticate the originating telephone number for calls. The concept is to issue ‘tokens’ to carriers that allow them to authenticate, in real-time, that the originating number of a telephone call is really from the party that owns the number. This will mean a whole new overlay on the PSTN to make this validation quickly before a call is terminated.

In addition to developing the specifications for how the process will work, the NANC working group recommended the following industry process for making this work:

  • The industry needs to select a governance authority to take ownership of the process so that it’s implemented uniformly across the industry;
  • The working group also recommended that a policy administrator be chosen that will administer the day-to-day implementation of the new process;
  • The working group also recommended specific roles and responsibilities for the governance authority and policy administrator;
  • Set the goal to have those two entities in place within a year. I think the FCC Chairman’s frustration is due to the fact that this was recommended in May 2018 and I don’t think that the governance authority or policy administrator have been chosen.

Of course, this means a new industry protocol and process and comes with a slew of new acronyms. Primary among this is SHAKEN which represents new SIP protocols used specifically for purpose of creating the all authentication tokens. Also used is STIR (secure telephone identity revisited) which is the IETF group that created the specific protocols for telephony. This leads to the cute acronym SHAKEN/STIR which is being used to describe the whole process (and which would definitely not be approved by James Bond).

The working specifications recognize that what is being prepared is just the first step in the process. They understand that as soon as they implement any solution that spammers will instantly begin looking for workarounds. The initial concept is to first begin be implementing this with the largest carriers and that will still leave a lot of holes with numbers assigned to smaller carriers, numbers deep inside PBX trunk groups, numbers used for Internet calling like Skype. However, the goal is to eventually cover the whole industry.

The concept is that this is going to have to be a dynamic process. I envision it much like the software companies that build spam filters. The group making this work will have to constantly create patches to fix vulnerabilities used by spammers. I have my doubts that anything like this will ever fully stop spoofing and that spammers will always be one step ahead of the spoofing police.

This is a concern for small carriers because it sounds like something new that a voice provider is going to have to pay for. It’s likely that there will be vendors that can do this for small carriers, but that sounds like another check to write to be able to provide voice service.

The FCC’s Strategic Plan

In one of those quiet things that the FCC does behind the scenes, the FCC has created a strategic plan for the four years from October 2018 to October 2022. This strategic plan represents their official goals that they report to Congress. This plan also supposedly is how they judge their performance internally. The Strategic Plan has four primary goals:

Strategic Goal 1: Closing the Digital Divide. Develop a regulatory environment to encourage the private sector to build, maintain, and upgrade next- generation networks so that the benefits of advanced communications services are available to all Americans. Where the business case for infrastructure investment doesn’t exist, employ effective and efficient means to facilitate deployment and access to affordable broadband in all areas of the country.

 Strategic Goal 2: Promoting Innovation. Foster a competitive, dynamic, and innovative market for communications services through policies that promote the introduction of new technologies and services. Ensure that the FCC’s actions and regulations reflect the realities of the current marketplace, promote entrepreneurship, expand economic opportunity, and remove barriers to entry and investment.

 Strategic Goal 3: Protecting Consumers & Public Safety. Develop policies that promote the public interest by providing consumers with freedom from unwanted and intrusive communications, improving the quality of communications services available to those with disabilities, and protecting public safety.

 Strategic Goal 4: Reforming the FCC’s Processes. Modernize and streamline the FCC’s operations and programs to increase transparency, improve decision-making, build consensus, reduce regulatory burdens, and simplify the public’s interactions with the agency.

Within each goal there are more specific targeted objectives. For example, the goal for Closing the Digital Divide includes more specific goals like: adopt pro-competitive rules that will expand facility-based competition; ensure that broadband is built everywhere; use reverse auctions to efficiently award USF grants; remove regulatory barriers to next generation technology; develop industry best practices; foster participation in the market by non-traditional participants; free up spectrum to help eliminate the digital divide; continue to free up spectrum in the 600 MHz band; and, conduct timely spectrum licensing.

The period covered by these goals is already barely underway, and yet it’s already interesting to see how the FCC is performing against some of these goals. For example, the first Digital Divide goal is to provide a regulatory environment to promote broadband. This FCC has already tried to walk completely away from regulating broadband, and I have to suppose that they believe the best way to meet this goal is to have no regulations. However, it’s sophistry to claim that lack of regulation is the same thing as a ‘regulatory environment’.

I can think of a number of regulations that would help to foster competition. For example, regulations that curtail monopoly abuses by big ISPs help smaller carriers. Allowing small ISPs to continue to use unbundled copper loops fosters competition (something the FCC wants to end). Making Lifeline funds available to all ISPs fosters competition. Allowing rural carriers to use idle spectrum would foster competition. Many of the actions taken or being considered by this FCC seem to favor large ISPs rather than foster competition. I’m guessing that the giveaways to the big ISPs are covered in the ‘promoting innovation’ goal.

You can make similar observations about many of their goals. For instance, this FCC seems to be antagonistic towards municipal broadband, which makes it hard to meet their goal of fostering participation by non-traditional participants.

I have no doubt that the FCC will claim that they are meeting every goal in the Strategic Plan. The goals are high-level and they are likely to be able to self-grade themselves as successfully meeting each goal. I coach clients on setting goals and I tell them they can’t have soft goals like “bring broadband to more customers in the coming year’. For a goal to have any meaning it has to be far more specific, such as “add 2,000 new broadband customers in the next calendar year”. The FCC’s goals are so nebulous that they can almost do the opposite of the goals and still claim to meet many of them.

Are Millimeter Wave Radios Safe?

Deep inside the filing of the recent docket at the FCC that resulted in eased access to poles for 5G providers were comments that warned about the unknown health impacts of millimeter wave radiation. A group of 225 scientists from 41 countries filed comments in Dockets No. 15-79 asking that the FCC be cautious in implementing millimeter wave radiation without further scientific research into the impacts of prolonged exposure of the radiation to humans. These scientists have all published peer-reviewed papers on the topic.

As scientists are wont to do, their wording sounds cautious, but in scientific language is a stern warning: “There is scientific evidence to cause concern among independent scientists, that this new infrastructure, on top of existing electrical and wireless infrastructures, will cause more harm to mankind and nature . . . The FCC needs to critically consider the potential impact of the 5th generation wireless infrastructure on the health and safety of the U.S. population before proceeding to deploy this infrastructure.”

I looked around the web to find some of the research that’s been done in this area in the past. A quick web search showed:

·         The biggest impact of millimeter wave radiation is on the skin and 90% of the transmitted power is absorbed by the dermis and epidermis layers of the skin – meaning concerns about skin cancer.

·          A 1994 study showed that low levels of millimeter radiation created lens opacity in rats, which is linked to cataracts.

·         A 1992 Russian study found that frequencies between 53-78 GHz caused overall stress in rats that manifested by an increase in arrhythmia and other changes to heart rates.

·         A 2002 Russian study found that exposure to low level 42 GHz radiation had a profound impact on the overall immune systems in rats.

·         A 2016 Armenian study observed that millimeter wave radiation created changes in the cells of bacteria. They postulated that the radiation could do the same to humans. This study concluded that changes to bacteria could change result in increasing drug resistant.

·         Another Armenian study showed that the impact to plants might be even greater than to animals.

·         Dr. Joel Moskowitz of UC Berkeley says that the impacts of all of these other studies might be understated since 5G uses pulsed frequencies. The studies were all done using constant frequency and Dr. Moskowitz has shown that pulsed frequencies magnify the impact of radiation on organisms.

One of the handful of current uses of millimeter wave radiation is in airport scanners, which use frequencies between 24 – 30 GHz. Numerous studies have shown that the likely exposure from these scanners is safe, but made the conclusion based upon the relative short burst of exposure. The issue that has scientists concerned about 5G is continuous transmission from poles in front of homes, and perhaps eventually building some of this frequency into cellphones.

Obviously, no study has yet shown a direct health impact from pole-mounted 5G transmitters since they are just now starting to see their first deployments. The scientific evidence of the dangers of the prolonged low-level radiation has a lot of people concerned. I’ve been contacted by several groups that are starting to alert their local officials of this danger (the inbox of a blogger can be really interesting). Nationwide several local politicians have jumped on the issue.

The question these local groups are asking is if there is any way to use the health concerns to try to block 5G deployment in their neighborhoods. It looks to me like the recent FCC order for allowing small cell sites on poles doesn’t contain much ambiguity – pole owners have a federal mandate to connect the 5G devices. However, that order is being challenged in court by numerous states and cities and I imagine that the health concerns are going to be one of the issues raised in those appeals – with the primary legal tactic challenging if the FCC has the jurisdiction to override cities on pole issues.

Interestingly, Verizon has announced a timeline that seems to be going full bore on installation of 5G transmitters. The industry is usually cautious about relying on any FCC order until it’s been vetted by the courts, but perhaps Verizon is only concentrating on 5G deployment in cities that have invited them to deploy, like Sacramento. It won’t be surprising to see cities ask for an injunction against deployment until the courts decide on the issues.

Disasters and Regulation

Both Ajit Pai, the Chairman of the FCC and Governor Rick Scott of Florida have expressed frustration over the speed of recovery of communication in the Florida Panhandle following hurricane Michael. I don’t think anybody expects communications to be restored quickly in the neighborhood by the shore where even the houses are gone, and the frustration is more with lack of communications in areas that were damaged, but not totally devastated.

There are a number of issues to be considered when looking at the slow recovery – regulation, technology and the profitability of the telecom carriers.

The regulatory issues are pretty clear. Back when AT&T or some smaller independent telephone company would have served this area we would have seen the same sort of response from the telephone companies as we see today from the power companies. AT&T and other telcos from around the country would have mobilized swarms of technicians to replace fallen wires. The electronics vendors would have gone to extraordinary lengths to shuffle and direct all of their resources to the disaster areas.

We had plenty of hurricanes during the time when we had telephone monopolies and the telephone linemen were out working as furiously as the power companies to restore service. I remember from the time when I worked at Southwestern Bell that the company had disaster plans in place and routinely reviewed the plans with employees who might be activated during emergencies – the company made disaster a recovery an everyday part of operating the monopoly business.

But the days of monopoly are long past. The phone company is now far from a monopoly and probably only serves a small percentage of the customers in any given area. The big telcos have had huge layoffs over the years and don’t have the staffs that can swarm the area. I wouldn’t be surprised if they don’t even have disaster plans.

Cable companies are the closest thing we have to monopolies and I expect them to put wires back in a reasonable time after a bad storm – but there are many parts of the hurricane-struck area that aren’t served by a cable company. A cable company is still not likely to get the same swarm of technicians like we saw in the regulated telco days.

As we saw with hurricane Sandy, the telcos no longer rushes to fix the damage. After that storm Verizon decided that they weren’t going to fix the copper and used the storm as an opportunity to switch customers to all-wireless cellular broadband. That’s not a change that can be implemented quickly and we saw some of the areas after Sandy without telecom for months. I expect AT&T is going through the same thought process for much of the area from hurricane Michael and is not going to put back copper wires.

There are also technical issues to consider. I’m willing to bet that the primary cause of frustration is the slow recovery of the cellular towers. Unlike the telephone network there is little redundancy built into the cellular networks. When the towers, antennae and equipment huts around a tower are damaged there is no quick fix, and replacements need to be shipped in. Unlike the major coordinated disaster plans of the old Ma Bell, I doubt that the cellular carriers have react-immediately disaster recovery plans. That kind of planning costs money. The companies would need to hold dozens of cell sites in place as spares that were ready to be shipped out on a moment’s notice. That’s not profitable and there is no regulatory agency insisting that the cellular companies have such plans in place.

As the technology at the edge increases, the time needed for recover from a disaster increases. I remember that this was a concern for telcos when they first placed DSL cabinets in neighborhoods – they knew it would take a lot longer to recover from destroyed electronics compared to the days when the outside network was most just copper wires. The cellular networks are the same, and we are about to enter a time when 5G and other new technologies will place electronics deep into neighborhoods. As slow as the recovery might be for hurricane Michael, it’s going to be worse when we are relying on dispersed 5G electronics deep in the field – it takes longer to fix the electronics and the backhaul networks than it is to put wires back on poles.

The issue that nobody wants to talk about is that all of the big companies in the telecom market are now publicly traded companies that exist to maximize quarterly earnings. Having disaster plans in place costs money – and the big companies these days don’t spend anything extra that’s not mandatory. Call it lack of regulation or call it an emphasis on the profit motive, but the big ISPs and cellular companies have no motivation or incentive to make extraordinary efforts after a disaster. I doubt that the existing regulatory powers even give the FCC any authority to impose such rules – particular with broadband, since the FCC says they are no longer regulating it.

Will South Dakota Get 5G?

The Senate Commerce Committee held a recent hearing in Sioux Falls, South Dakota talking about the benefits that 5G will bring to the state. The hearing was chaired by Senator John Thune, who’s one of the primary telecom-related members of Congress.

A local paper quoted Thune as claiming that 5G is going to transform the economy of the country and of the state. He cited the same 5G talking points used by the FCC in their recent order that mandated cheap and fast connections to poles for 5G transmitters. Thune also said we’re in a race with China, Japan and South Korea and that we can’t afford to lose the 5G race.  FCC Commissioner Brad Carr was at the hearing and said that 5G could bring hundreds of millions of dollars of economic benefit to the state. He also estimated that realizing the benefits of 5G would require hundreds of thousands of small cells mounted on poles and light poles in the state.

The numbers cited in this hearing stun me. What would it mean to have hundreds of thousands of 5G transmitters on poles in South Dakota and could such a network create hundreds of millions of benefits for the state? I decided to try to put those numbers into context.

I still don’t know what a 5G transmitter on a pole will cost. I’ve heard that a full-blown small cell site currently costs more than $15,000 – but I have to assume that in order to make this even reasonably profitable that most of the devices in a 5G network will have to cost far less (and likely have far less functionality than a full-blown small cell site). Assuming thst that manufacturers will somehow get the installed price down to $2,500 each, then deploying on 200,000 poles (derived from “hundreds of thousands of poles”) equates to a cost in the state for just for the pole electronics of $500 million. This doesn’t include the cost of the fiber and other backhaul costs needed to support the 5G gigabit network.

I look at that $500 million number, knowing that it’s only a portion of the cost of deploying 5G and I wonder who is going to make that kind of investment in South Dakota. It’s not going to be the two primary incumbents, CenturyLink or Midco, the primary cable TV incumbent. It’s unlikely that Verizon owns any significant amounts of fiber in the state and they are not likely to do much there. I look around the industry and I can’t see any major player who would make a $500 million investment in a state with so few people.

Consider the demographics. South Dakota is one of the least populated states and the Census estimates the population to be around 870,000 with almost 400,000 housing units. The biggest city is Sioux Falls with a population of 176,000, Rapid City has 70,000 and cities are much smaller after that. When you get outside the cities it’s one of the least densely populated states.

Even if somebody made that kind of investment in South Dakota, how do they make their money back? Very few large public companies today are willing to earn infrastructure returns on investments, which is one of the primary drivers of our infrastructure crisis. Almost nobody other than governments are willing to invest in projects that have 10 and 20-year paybacks. This is the primary reason why no big ISPs are building residential fiber-to-the-home. It’s hard to envision the paybacks for 5G being much faster than fiber.

If I do the math on a $500 million investment, it would require a new revenue stream of $35 per month for every one of the 400,000 households in North Dakota to repay that investment in 3 years. Even at 6 years that’s still $17.50 per month for every household in the state. When you consider that only a much smaller percentage of people would somehow pay for some sort of theoretical 5G product, the cost per potential customer becomes gigantic – if 25% of the people in the state somehow bought a 5G product that would require a new expenditure of $70 per home per month to pay this investment off in the six years that Wall Street might find acceptable.

Of course, the investment is not just $500 million because there are a lot of other costs to bringing a widespread 5G network. To build the kind of network envisioned at the Congressional hearing has to cost far north of a billion dollars, any possibly several billions if a lot of fiber has to be built. That makes me wonder what the 5G hype is all about. It’s hard to envision anybody making this kind of investment in South Dakota. I’m not busting on South Dakota because this same cost to benefit applies to any place outside of large NFL cities with a high density of households.

I don’t have a crystal ball and I can’t say that somebody won’t invest in 5G in states like South Dakota. But I understand business plans and paybacks and I can’t foresee any of the current big ISPs in the industry making the needed investments where housing density is low. Smaller ISPs can’t raise the huge amount of needed money. It’s certainly possible that some of the neighborhoods a few cities in the state might see some 5G, but that’s probably not going to be on anybody’s radar for a while. I’m skeptical because I just can’t see a way to make the math work.

FCC Proposes New WiFi Spectrum

At their recent open meeting the FCC announced that it is proposing to use up to 1,200 megahertz of the spectrum band between 5.925 GHz and 7.125 GHz (being referred to as the 6 GHz band) as unlicensed spectrum. This is a bold proposal and more than doubles the total amount of bandwidth that would be available for WiFi.

However, their proposal comes with several proposed caveats that will have to be considered before expecting the spectrum to be useful everywhere for rural broadband. First, the FCC proposal is that any place where the spectrum is currently being used for Broadcast Auxiliary Service and Cable TV Relay service that the spectrum only be licensed for indoor use.

In those places where the spectrum is being used heavily for point-to-point microwave service, the outdoor use would have to be coordinated with existing users by use of an automated frequency coordination system, or a database, that would ensure no interference. I assume one of the rules that must be clarified is a definition of what constitutes ‘heavy’ existing point-to-point use of the spectrum.

In places where there are no existing uses of the spectrum it sounds like it would be available for outdoor use as well as indoor use.

This band of spectrum would be a great addition to networks that provide point-to-multipoint fixed wireless service. The spectrum will have a slightly smaller effective delivery area than the 5.8 GHz WiFi ISM band now widely in use. The 5.8 GHz spectrum is already the workhorse in most fixed wireless networks and adding additional spectrum would increase the bandwidth that can be delivered to a given customer in systems that can combine spectrum from various frequencies.

The key is going to be to find out what the two restrictions mean in the real world and how many places are going to have partial or total restrictions of the spectrum. Hopefully the FCC will produce maps or databases that document the areas they think are restricted using their two proposed criteria.

This spectrum would also be welcome indoors and would add more channels for home WiFi routers, making it easier to cover a home and provide coverage to greater numbers of devices simultaneously. The FCC hopes the spectrum can be used everywhere for indoor use, but they are asking the industry if that causes any problems.

Note that this is not an order, but a proposal. The FCC released a draft of the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on October 2, and after this vote they should soon publish a schedule for a public comment period from the industry and other interested parties.

WiFi has been a gigantic boon to the economy and it’s a great move by the FCC to provide additional WiFi spectrum, even if this turns out to be largely restricted to indoor use. However, everybody associated with rural broadband is going to hope this is decided soon and that the frequency is added to the toolbox for serving fixed wireless in rural areas.

Interestingly, this spectrum would make it easier for ISPs that claimed they can achieve universal 100 Mbps speeds for fixed wireless in the recent reverse CAF II auctions. Perhaps some of those companies were counting on this spectrum as a way to meet that claim.

It’s always hard to predict the speed of the FCC process. I see that various WiFi-related organizations are hoping this means use of the spectrum as early as sometime next year. However, we’ve often seen the FCC proceed a lot slower than what the industry wants and one of factors the FCC is going to take into consideration is the pushback from cellular companies that will likely want this to be licensed spectrum. Unfortunately, the large cellular companies seem to be getting everything on their wish list from this FCC, so we’ll have to see how that plays out.

I imagine that device manufacturers are already considering this in the design of new hardware, but still need to know more before finalizing software. This is perhaps the best announcement so far from this FCC. The benefit to the country from WiFi is gigantic and this will vastly strengthen the advantages of WiFi.

About the FCC

I have probably averaged a blog a week over the years talking in some manner about the FCC. I thought today I’d discuss a few basic facts about the industry that might help a non-regulatory person understand how they operate.

The FCC’s mission statement is straightforward – the stated mission of the FCC is to ensure that the American people have available—at reasonable cost and without discrimination—rapid, efficient, nation- and worldwide communication services, whether by radio, television, wire, satellite, or cable.

The FCC is an independent agency, meaning it’s not under the direct control of either Congress or the White House. With that said, each new administration gets to select at least a few FCC commissioners, but can’t have more than three of the five commissioners from the same party as the president.

Since 2009 the FCC has been funded through regulatory fees it collects from various industry sources such as annual licenses on cable TV providers, long distance providers, or owners of spectrum. The budget for the year just started on October 1 is $322 million. Starting this year, none of the monies collected from spectrum auctions can count towards the FCC’s budget. The Ray Baum Act that authorized the FCC earlier this year is the first FCC reauthorization bill since 1990. The agency could theoretically operate indefinitely without reauthorization as long as it generates enough fees to cover its budget.

The FCC has a lot of flexibility in determining how it will regulate the various industry. Their authority is only limited by specific rules established by Congress, such as the Communications Act of 1934 that created the FCC or the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Congressional bills that change FCC regulations are somewhat rare, but Congress may pass a number of bills in any year that change some specific aspect of operating the agency. In this past year there were bills that did such things as change the reporting requirements by educational broadcast stations, eliminated some obsolete reports that were prepared for Congress, and established the office of Inspector General at the FCC.

The FCC can establish new rules for regulating the various industries as long as those rules don’t conflict with past Congressional mandate. Many of the challenges that are filed against new FCC decisions question if the FCC’s actions are in conflict with the authority granted to the agency by Congress. The extent and limitations of the FCC’s authority has been defined over the years by a series of court decisions.

The FCC’s rules are encapsulated into seven sections, called ‘Titles’. The FCC rules that govern the telecom industry are included in a few of the Titles:

  • Title II regulates Common Carriers that include telephone companies, CLECs, wireless providers and long-haul fiber networks. Some of the regulation in Title II must be coordinated with a Joint Board, that includes both FCC and state regulators.
  • Title III regulates broadcasting of radio and television.
  • Title VI regulates cable TV communications, including Video programming provided by telephone companies.

The day-to-day functions of the FCC are carried out by 7 bureaus – the Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau, the Enforcement Bureau, the International Bureau, the Media Bureau, the Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau, the Wireless Telecommunications Bureau and the Wireline Competition Bureau.

Most FCC rules are adopted using a process known as ‘notice and comment’ that are defined in Title I. The FCC will issue various forms of proposed rules and anybody in the public can comment.

The public is also free to file complaints to the FCC about actions by regulated companies that have harmed them. The FCC has a defined process for handling such complaints, and most are referred back to the offending regulated party with instructions to explain their actions of make amends if they acted incorrectly.

There is also a more formal process for regulated companies to make complaints against each other, or which seek resolution of industry disputes and the FCC has Administrative Judges that hear such complaints and make rulings or assess fines. Many of the ‘orders’ we see from the FCC, such as a whole series of rulings over the last few years about access charges, are actually rulings from Administrative Judges and not from the FCC Commissioners.

The FCC also has an Engineering and Technology bureau that advises the FCC on technical issues such as spectrum allocations. This group also authorizes the use of equipment, and most telecom equipment must be approved by the FCC before it can be introduced into the public networks. This group also can grant the use of experimental licenses to test new ideas in the field.

Small ISPs and the Internet Bill of Rights

Recently Ro Khanna, a California Congressman, worked with some of the biggest thinkers in Silicon Valley to develop what he’s calling an Internet bill of Rights – the document included at the end of this blog. This Bill of Rights lays forth the ideal basic right of privacy that users most want out of the Internet.

This document is possibly the start of the process of discussing regulation for the big Internet companies – something that doesn’t exist today. Currently the Federal Trade Commission theoretically can pursue web companies that rip off the public and the Justice Department can tackle monopoly abuses – but otherwise the web companies are not regulated.

It’s becoming increasingly clear in the last few years that web companies have grown to the size where they value profits first, and any principles that were loosely followed in the early days of the Internet are long gone. There are constant headlines now declaring abuses by web companies. Recent Congressional hearings made it clear that the big companies are misusing customer data – and those hearings probably barely uncovered the tip of the iceberg.

The European Union has begun the process of trying to reel in some of the biggest abuses of the web companies. For example, web companies in Europe now have to disclose to users how they intend to use their data. In this country we’re starting to see sentiment from both Democrats and Republicans that some level of regulation is needed.

It won’t be easy to regulate the big web companies, which are now gigantic corporations. I read recently that there are now more lobbyists in DC working for web companies like Facebook and Google than work for the big telcos and ISPs. There will a major pushback against any form of regulation and it would obviously require a significant bipartisan effort over many years to create any worthwhile regulations.

My guess is that the public wants some sort of protection. Nobody wants their data released to the world through data breaches. Most people want things like their medical and financial records kept private and not peddled between big companies on the web. Almost everybody I know is uneasy with how the big web companies use our personal data.

I think this creates an opportunity for small ISPs. There are aspects of this Bill or Rights that the big ISPs will oppose. They are clearly against net neutrality. All of the big ISPs have purchased companies to help them better mine customer data – they obviously want to grab a slice of the money being made by Google and Facebook off user data. The big ISPs are likely to fight hard against regulation.

It’s virtually impossible for small ISPs to violate any of these principles. That creates an opportunity for small companies to differentiate themselves from the big ISPs. I think small ISPs need to tout that they are for net neutrality, that they value customer privacy and that they will never misuse customer data. I have a few clients that do this, but very few make this one of the key ways to differentiate themselves from the big ISPs they compete against.

I strongly recommend giving this some thought. Supporting consumer data rights can be made a key part of small ISP advertising. Some statements akin to the Internet Bill of Rights can be made prominent on web sites. These concepts should be prominent in your terms of service. These are concepts your customers will like and it shouldn’t be hard for any small ISP to embrace them.

Internet Bill of Rights

The internet age and digital revolution have changed Americans’ way of life. As our lives and the U.S. economy are more tied to the internet, it is essential to provide Americans with basic protections online.

You should have the right:

(1) to have access to and knowledge of all collection and uses of personal data by companies;

(2) to opt-in consent to the collection of personal data by any party and to the sharing of personal data with a third party;

(3) where context appropriate and with a fair process, to obtain, correct or delete personal data controlled by any company and to have those requests honored by third parties;

(4) to have personal data secured and to be notified in a timely manner when a security breach or unauthorized access of personal data is discovered;

(5) to move all personal data from one network to the next;

(6) to access and use the internet without internet service providers blocking, throttling, engaging in paid prioritization or otherwise unfairly favoring content, applications, services or devices;

(7) to internet service without the collection of data that is unnecessary for providing the requested service absent opt-in consent;

(8) to have access to multiple viable, affordable internet platforms, services and providers with clear and transparent pricing;

(9) not to be unfairly discriminated against or exploited based on your personal data; and

(10) to have an entity that collects your personal data have reasonable business practices and accountability to protect your privacy.