For an excellent overview of the FCC's progress putting spectrum into commercial use during Chairman Ajit Pai's tenure, look no further than his remarks to the Information Technology Industry Council (ITI) on January 14. He also addresses the future of American spectrum policy.
When I came into office in 2017, the cupboard was almost empty. The only mid-band spectrum in the pipeline was the 3.5 GHz band, which was saddled with misguided restrictions that weren’t going to encourage 5G deployment. So not quite “mark it zero,” but close. Despite starting from behind the eight ball, we turned things around, and in a big way. Under my direction, the FCC systematically identified mid-band airwaves that were being underused. This was a very complicated case, you know, a lot of ins, lot of outs, a lot of what have yous. But we figured it out and set plans in place to put these airwaves to work for the American people…
Put all these together—the C-band and the 3.5 GHz band, together with a future auction of the 3.45 GHz band—and we are on a path to have a contiguous 530-megahertz swath, from 3.45 to 3.98 GHz, of mid-band spectrum available for 5G. Not bad, considering where we started. That’s 5G FAST.
Later, Chairman Pai describes the Commission's success in making much more spectrum available for unlicensed use:
These two initiatives, on 6 GHz and 5.9 GHz, will open up 1,200 and 45 megahertz of spectrum for unlicensed use, respectively. Now let’s talk about gigahertz—1,000 times as large. Through our 2019 Spectrum Horizons Order, the Commission made a massive 21.2 gigahertz of spectrum above 95 GHz available for unlicensed use across four frequency bands.
Importantly, Chairman Pai squarely addressed the problem of other federal agencies putting up obstacles to the repurposing of more spectrum for commercial use:
[A]rguably the biggest thing hampering efforts to use spectrum more efficiently is—our own government. On proceeding after proceeding, we saw that other federal agencies tried to throw up roadblocks. Rather than look out for the public interest, many agencies were looking out for their narrow parochial interest. And since most don't have in-house spectrum expertise, they ended up simply parroting the exaggerated, hysterical, and often outright false claims being made by the industries they regulate. To achieve their aims, they ended up bypassing normal channels and complaining to Congress or the media in an effort to block or delay efforts to free up spectrum for commercial use.
Chairman Pai offers wise words to his successor at the FCC in holding the line on spectrum reallocation. identifies the need for strong NTIA leadership going forward, and addresses the need to discuss reforms to the government's spectrum management framework.
Be sure to check out Chairman Pai's remarks to ITI in their entirety.
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