A Mid-Band Spectrum Compromise For Rural Broadband: Wins All Around

There is growing support for investments in infrastructure to support stronger, faster, more reliable broadband internet access for underserved rural areas. While urban and suburban areas increasingly benefit from fiber-fast broadband and mobile carrier plans for 5G wireless technology, more than 15 million Americans in rural and tribal areas still lack access to high-speed broadband.

There are two general approaches to expanding access to high-speed broadband in small towns and rural areas: with wires (fiber) and without (fixed wireless). Because trenching fiber is very costly in low-density areas, there is a growing recognition that “wireless fiber”–otherwise known as fixed wireless access–can provide broadband at high capacity (100/10 Mbps or better) at a fraction of the cost and also far more quickly.

That’s why the Wireless Future Project at New America’s Open Technology Institute, as part of the Broadband Access Coalition (BAC), filed a petition with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) last June to facilitate the sharing of spectrum to bring high-speed broadband access to rural Americans. The petition called on the FCC to authorize a new, licensed, point-to-multipoint (P2MP) fixed wireless service in the under-used 3700 - 4200 MHz spectrum band. That band of airwaves is primarily used by Fixed Satellite Services. The coalition’s goal is to bring very high-capacity fixed wireless broadband services in tribal, rural, and suburban areas where consumer choice is either lacking or nonexistent, and where fiber-to-the-home deployments are neither cost-effective nor necessary to support gigabit broadband service.

The satellite industry, as the incumbents in this underutilized spectrum band, have put forward their own proposal for the 3700-4200 MHz band to protect their interests. The dominant fixed satellite service (FSS) providers, Intelsat and SES, have asked the FCC to authorize them to strike private market deals with mobile carriers, effectively paying them (and many of the cable headends and other earth stations occupying the band) to vacate the bottom 100 MHz so that it can be re-licensed for traditional mobile carrier use.

For all the players involved, there is a lot at stake in the future of this band. However, it is possible to unleash the spectrum in the band for high-speed rural broadband and also protect satellite interests at the same time. The Wireless Future Project, other members of BAC, and Google made a 90-minute presentation to 26 FCC staff tasked with developing recommendations for a rulemaking that Chairman Pai has said could be adopted and opened for comment this summer. BAC also submitted a filing at the agency that explains why its proposal for shared access to the entire 500 MHz is complementary to the satellite industry proposal and in fact a win-win-win for all the band’s stakeholders, including in particular rural America.

The key to this compromise is that in many areas of the U.S, fixed wireless P2MP systems can operate in the 3700-4200 MHz band without causing interference to co-channel FSS systems. As the BAC and Google presentations explain, FSS and P2MP are actually able to coexist sharing the same channel of spectrum when the aggregate interference from planned P2MP deployments stays below the interference limit of any FSS earth station in the area. This co-channel sharing is possible by P2MP operating in areas with a relatively low number of earth stations, and using directional antennas that don’t point toward earth stations in that given area. P2MP can even more readily make use of the vacant, adjacent channels that the earth stations are not using in a local area.

FSS will still be able to operate as they currently do, without experiencing harmful interference—while also enabling P2MP services to beam connectivity ranging from 25 megabits per second up to 1 gigabit per second for as many as 120 million Americans living in less densely populated areas. The FCC would just need to require FSS earth stations to report the frequencies they are actually using, which would enable a database to greenlight band sharing in geographic areas where frequency separation could be employed to allow all players to make the best use of this spectrum.

The compromise offered by the Broadband Access Coalition would also allow a portion of the band to be cleared for mobile carriers to use for future 5G deployments in more densely populated urban areas. In addition, the FCC would authorize rural ISPs and others to access the remainder of the band, sharing it with FSS on a frequency- and geography-coordinated basis while protecting cable headends and other satellite earth stations from interference that would disrupt their business.

The combination of the Broadband Access Coalition proposal and that of the satellite industry balances the legitimate public interest in better rural broadband, 5G in urban areas, and protecting satellite video distribution by incumbent FSS operators. It would provide wins for the mobile broadband industry, satellite companies, fixed wireless broadband providers, and—most importantly—millions of consumers who would receive high-speed internet access. This “win-win-win” approach should be adopted to make the best use of this finite public resource as broadband infrastructure.

Summary presentation available here

Technical presentation available here

FCC ex parte available here