Virtually anything the U.S. Federal Communications Commission wants to do has greater chance of success when rival stakeholders can agree on the principles and framework proposed by the FCC.
So the fact that Google, AT&T, and Verizon all agree with the spectrum sharing framework proposed by the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) is a good sign.
The PCAST report suggested a way to open up licensed spectrum in the 3.55 to 3.7 GHz band, currently used by government users, allowing commercial users to share the spectrum with license holders.
The PCAST report suggests a three-tier system of access priorities.
“Federal Primary Access” users, who hold the current licenses, would be guaranteed protection from harmful interference in their deployed areas. Federal Primary Access users could have exclusive use of the spectrum when and where they deploy networks or systems, but do not have exclusive use where they have not deployed network assets or in locations where, or times when, underutilized capacity can be put to use without causing harmful interference.
In other words, Federal Primary Access should be an exclusive right to actual use, but not an exclusive right to preclude use by other Federal or private sector users.
“Secondary Access” users would be issued short term priority operating rights in a specified geographic area and would be assured of interference protection from opportunistic use.
However, secondary access users would be required to vacate when a user with primary access rights registers a conflicting deployment in the database.
There may be multiple levels of Secondary Access users of spectrum, with different assigned levels of priority, so that some Secondary Access users may be preferred over others, either because of payments (an auction or user fees), or because of a public interest benefit such as being a Federal user or public safety user.
“General Authorized Access” users would be allowed opportunistic access to unoccupied spectrum if no Federal Primary or Secondary Access users are registered in the database for a given frequency band, specific geographical area, or time period.
General Authorized Access users would be obliged to vacate once a conflicting Federal Primary or Secondary Access deployment is registered (or sensed, in the case of bands where devices are authorized to rely on sensing to avoid Federal Primary Access users).
General Authorized Access devices should be required to have the capability to operate on multiple bands, using dynamic frequency selection, so that there is no dependency on access to a particular frequency, and so that the device can automatically switch to a different band and not be obsolete if any one band becomes unavailable.
That agreement by Google, AT&T, and Verizon suggests the novel spectrum sharing plan will move ahead faster than if Google and the telcos opposed the framework.
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