Slashdot Mirror


FCC Will Auction 5G-ready 3.7-4.2GHz and mmWave Spectrum (venturebeat.com)

Jeremy Horwitz, writing for VentureBeat: Speaking at the Mobile World Congress today in Barcelona, Spain, U.S. FCC chairman Ajit Pai today announced that the commission is prepared to quickly make 5G-ready wireless spectrum available in two critically important ranges: Mid-frequency, including both 3.5GHz and 3.7-4.2GHz ranges, and high-frequency, including 24GHz and 28GHz millimeter wave (mmWave) ranges. Pai suggested that the FCC is ready to auction the spectrum in the near future, but requires Congressional cooperation by May 13 to make the 24GHz and 28GHz allocations happen.

40 of 64 comments (clear)

  1. Whenever this guy tries to hurry something up by enjar · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I'm wondering how I'm getting screwed.

    1. Re:Whenever this guy tries to hurry something up by singhsanju · · Score: 1

      Verizon and ATT have already figured that out. I don't believe this guy, Pai. and you want to me believe that its hard for Verizon, ATT and Pai to get get approvals from Congress...Lobby baby Lobby

    2. Re:Whenever this guy tries to hurry something up by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      these aren't real republicans just as the current lefties aren't real Democrats. the majority of the parties went to the FAR right and left respectively a long time ago. Last time we saw REAL Repubs/Demos was easily 2 decades ago, probably Regan and maybe earlier for Democrats.

    3. Re:Whenever this guy tries to hurry something up by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Instead of being opened for use, like the wifi bands, it is being auctioned to monopolists who will mostly sit on it to keep prices high. That is how you are getting screwed.

    4. Re:Whenever this guy tries to hurry something up by rickb928 · · Score: 1

      Were there real Demos in the 50s? 1880s?

      --
      deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
    5. Re:Whenever this guy tries to hurry something up by king+neckbeard · · Score: 1

      No, the parties are "far-right" and "center-right with identity politics."

      --
      This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
    6. Re:Whenever this guy tries to hurry something up by Brymouse · · Score: 2

      I'm a ham radio operator making extensive use of the 3.4-3.5 GHz (9cm)band. This story is useless without defining 3.5 GHz better.

      If it's 3550-3700, that's not the ham band and we're ok. But what band is it? 3.5 is lots of things to lots of people.

      Our link across Tampa Bay

    7. Re:Whenever this guy tries to hurry something up by kelemvor4 · · Score: 2

      Instead of being opened for use, like the wifi bands, it is being auctioned to monopolists who will mostly sit on it to keep prices high. That is how you are getting screwed.

      You can buy it. Call Pai and place a bid.

    8. Re:Whenever this guy tries to hurry something up by kelemvor4 · · Score: 3, Informative

      I'm a ham radio operator making extensive use of the 3.4-3.5 GHz (9cm)band. This story is useless without defining 3.5 GHz better.

      If it's 3550-3700, that's not the ham band and we're ok. But what band is it? 3.5 is lots of things to lots of people.

      Our link across Tampa Bay

      Details haven't been posted yet. They should turn up here: http://wireless.fcc.gov/auctio...

    9. Re: Whenever this guy tries to hurry something up by Type44Q · · Score: 1

      Well, the plantation owners needed somebody to represent them (they were desperate times; you took what you could get)...

    10. Re:Whenever this guy tries to hurry something up by sims+2 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Well IIUC this is related to the satellite spectrum that tmobile requested the fcc quickly auction off before the two new LEO constellations go into operation.

      --
      Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
    11. Re:Whenever this guy tries to hurry something up by lkcl · · Score: 2

      I'm wondering how I'm getting screwed.

      30GHz or thereabouts is the coiling / uncoiling frequency of human and animal's DNA. i haven't investigated plants. so 24-28 Ghz will basically hit the resonant frequency of our DNA. what do *you* think is going to happen? my recommendation: if you live near a 5G celltower that operates on anything that's a multiple of those frequencies (half-wave, quarter-wave), don't fuck about, SHOOT it.

    12. Re:Whenever this guy tries to hurry something up by enjar · · Score: 1

      The chainmail body suit and tin foil hat aren't going to cut it any more?

  2. Re:Why net neutrality is a non issue by Nutria · · Score: 3, Informative

    You're comparing apples (aka "raw speed") with zephyrs (access to specific web sites at that raw speed without paying specifically for reasonable access that web site).

    --
    "I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
  3. Re:Why net neutrality is a non issue by AvitarX · · Score: 1

    And not worrying about latency.

    --
    Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
  4. Re:good news by bobbied · · Score: 1

    Don't forget money for the FCC, lots of it.

    --
    "File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
  5. What's the real need ? by Big+Bipper · · Score: 2

    5G will enable you to stream 4k or 8k to your phone. Do you really need 8k on a six inch screen ? Can you see the difference ? 5G will require micro cells with a tower on every street corner. To service those towers you'll need fiber to every street corner ( although that would help fiber access to the home ). Think about how much it would cost to run fiber to everywhere you now can get a 4G signal, when it's too expensive for telcos to provide most rural areas with real broadband. 4G is overkill for the needs of most phones, namely voice, and messaging, and sufficient for streaming movies in better resolution than you can see on a six inch screen. How many consumers will willingly shell out more $$$ for a phone that is only marginally better than the one they have and then only in the city core where 5G has been rolled out ? Your expensive 5G phone would fall back to 4G when you travel outside the city center. The money required to provide 5G in the most densely populated areas would provide far better service if instead were spent on infilling more 4G towers so the existing bandwidth could be shared among fewer customers.

    --
    You live and learn, or you don't learn much.
    1. Re: What's the real need ? by Miamicanes · · Score: 2

      Not really. At the end of the day, the radio modem still needs fiber or high-speed copper... the closer to the end user, the better. You will never, ever be able to do the equivalent of stream raw 4k HDMI over 5G in an urban area within a cell larger than a single room, let alone a single-family home or apartment. There just isn't enough spectrum. At gigabit+ speeds, 5G just means you can get away with running a fiber bundle to the curb & distribute it the last thousand feet to outdoor fixed antennas & relay it onwards to indoor wired networks feeding room-sized femtocells. Best-case, your service provider hands you a pile of boxes that "just work" (using whatever crap wiring the house already has) that allows nontechnical users to pretend there's no difference between "the internet" and something their nerdy cousin calls "a LAN".

      What I really want to see, though it'll never happen: the FCC partially taking Wifi "channel 14" from Globalstar via eminent domain, then making it legal for Americans to use... but ONLY indoors, with limited power (say, 10mW output, 50mW EIRP) and no channel bonding allowed, so we can have ONE GODDAMN 802.11n channel that neighbors in dense urban areas can't fuck up and ruin(*).

      2.4GHz is going to be with us for a long time due to cheap IoT devices, and channel 14 is the only place LEFT in the legacy wifi spectrum that hasn't been ruined by hopeless channel-bonding and neighbors who insist upon (or allow Comcast and AT&T) splattering across channels 1 through 11 with excessive power.
      ---

      (*) Made usable throughout the house by putting something like an old Ubiquiti access point in each room using 5Ghz or ethernet for backhaul. Traditional 802.11n client-initiated handoffs [via 802.11r] don't work well/at all in home environments... devices rarely implement 802.11r properly, and most consumer wifi gear is completely oblivious to it. Ubiquiti moved the logic to the access points... they all compare signal-strength notes, and mutually spoof each other to trick dumb clients into connecting to the best one anyway. I think Ubiquiti took away that feature last year for some crazy reason, but I like to hope they'd bring it back if they had a compelling reason to do so.

    2. Re:What's the real need ? by CrashNBrn · · Score: 1

      My phone regularly falls back to 2G, or the 2000-era "3G Edge." Then there are swaths of the interstates that don't have any cell service at all.

    3. Re: What's the real need ? by pak9rabid · · Score: 1

      What I really want to see, though it'll never happen: the FCC partially taking Wifi "channel 14" from Globalstar via eminent domain, then making it legal for Americans to use... but ONLY indoors, with limited power (say, 10mW output, 50mW EIRP) and no channel bonding allowed, so we can have ONE GODDAMN 802.11n channel that neighbors in dense urban areas can't fuck up and ruin(*).

      What's wrong with using either 802.11ac, or 802.11n on the 5 GHz spectrum? The signal barely penetrates a person's house as it is now, and most normal people aren't setting up AP's outside.

    4. Re: What's the real need ? by Miamicanes · · Score: 1

      Nothing, except for the fact that many cheap devices still can't *do* 802.11ac & are stuck in a 2.4GHz 802.11n ghetto.

      Also, in South Florida (and Washington DC, plus other metro areas) roughly HALF the UNII band is locked out due to nearby weather radar sites using the same frequencies, and most of the rest is stomped-over by goddamn channel-bonding neighbors. Thank GOD channel 165 can't be bonded... it's literally the only one left that still works reliably at my house.

      The decision to allow 802.11n 2.4GHz channel bonding (instead of limiting it to 5GHz+) was one of the worst & most inexcusable decisions, ever. I have one neighbor splattering over channels 1-6, another splattering over 3-11, both stomping each other on channels 3-6, and making the entire goddamn 2.4GHz band unusable for me. All I ask for is one fucking low-power narrowband safe haven that works reliably for 10-20mbps & can't penetrate much beyond a single room or two. :-(

  6. Less Auctions - More Unlicensed by Deathlizard · · Score: 4, Informative

    If the FCC was really serious about getting WISP's off the ground, They would ditch these auctions that tend to go to the highest bidder and sit unused and open the Spectrum to unlicensed, WISP only, long range use.

    Most WISP's out there today are using the 2.4 and 5GHz bands because their unlicensed, unfortunately their also used for WiFi traffic as well. These wreak havoc with WISP equipment especially in dense populations, and it's only getting worse as cable companies started packing 5GHz WiFi in their modems that broadcast 80MHZ of spectrum regardless if wireless is being used or not.

    A clear, WISP Equipment only, spectrum block would not only help out smaller wireless ISP's with their Point to Multi point deployments, but also give business other options of connectivity between buildings besides fiber runs, since most point to point microwave setups are built around Point to Multi-point Wireless Spectrum allocation.

  7. C Band (3.7-4.2 GHz) Satellite Interference by Junior+Samples · · Score: 4, Interesting

    It's very likely that this decision will cause interference with C Band satellite signals which down-link in the 3.7 - 4.2 GHz band. These satellites provide video feeds to television stations and cable systems world wide. Strong ground based signals in the same band will overload the low noise LNBF on C Band satellite TVRO dishes.

    This is very disturbing since I recently pulled the plug on cable and rely heavily on Free To Air (FTA) video feeds from C Band domestic satellites in the USA. https://www.lyngsat.com/freetv...

    1. Re:C Band (3.7-4.2 GHz) Satellite Interference by flargleblarg · · Score: 2

      Screw it. I'm waiting for the C++ band.

    2. Re:C Band (3.7-4.2 GHz) Satellite Interference by s122604 · · Score: 1

      I'm waiting for the C# band, it's a much less intimidating band.

    3. Re:C Band (3.7-4.2 GHz) Satellite Interference by rjmx · · Score: 2

      Mention of that frequency range is what attracted me to this article. Long, long ago (well, 30+ years) I was a satellite communications guy posted to a remote earth station, so I'm well aware of the dangers of using this band for anything but satellite comms.
      Why on earth does the FCC want to do this? Or have the major users given up C-band?

    4. Re: C Band (3.7-4.2 GHz) Satellite Interference by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Absolutely. We light up and saturate new C-band transponders almost monthly for customers.

      To date 5G has been eating into the extended C-band range (below 3.7) which hasn't been much of an issue as most regulatory bodies already embargo this segment at earth stations near metro areas.

      The expansion above 3.7GHz however is a real threat - not just commercially to satellite operators but to many critical applications. C-Band will always been the most rain fade resilliant commercial satellite band available and while Ku and Ka satellite is making rest strides in throughput it will never be suitable for demanding high availability applications in remote locations.

      Even most modern high throughput Ku and C solutions cross strap their small and narrow high power Ku beams back to C-band for earth station gateways. So the use of 3.7-4.2 by 5G also puts Ku and Ka networks at risk.

    5. Re:C Band (3.7-4.2 GHz) Satellite Interference by SeaFox · · Score: 1

      I'm waiting for the C# band, it's a much less intimidating band.

      Shouldn't the sharp ones be more intimidating?

  8. Yeah, selling off public property by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    I realize the reasoning behind trying to give companies a somewhat guaranteed license, but RF is a finite resource and should be "sold" only with requirements that it be effectively used and fairly priced, otherwise it gets taken away. We should also be devoting random chunks of spectrum to public unlicensed use (think Wi-Fi, cordless home phones, etc). Sadly I highly doubt any of this has happened in the past and under Pai it probably wont happen this time.

  9. Guess Who Pays by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    The carriers are just the middle-men. Since all auction fees are recouped from the consumer, we're actually paying another tax.

  10. Re:High Frequency? by s122604 · · Score: 1

    Yes, and a piddly little 1 farad capacitor is actually deadly..

  11. Re:Why net neutrality is a non issue by Crashmarik · · Score: 1

    Yeah more like market choice is market choice. 5g will provide many more choices that will make it much harder to leverage deliberately crippling other services.

    But nice windy fruit analogy.

  12. Re:Why net neutrality is a non issue by Crashmarik · · Score: 1

    That's when your wireless carrier offers you a "protection" plan for your connection

    How many wireless carrier choices do you have at the moment ? That only works if all your choices including wired are operating the same way.

  13. Re:Why net neutrality is a non issue by Actually,+I+do+RTFA · · Score: 2

    Half a gigabit speeds over wireless and people are running around like crazy worried about their wired carriers ?

    So it'll be Verizon, AT&T and XFINITY Wireless pulling net neutrality shenanigans instead of... Verizion FiOS and AT&T DSL/Fiber and Comcast XFinity wired services?

    At most, you're looking at adding Sprint or TMobile as one extra option.

    --
    Your ad here. Ask me how!
  14. Re:Why net neutrality is a non issue by Crashmarik · · Score: 1

    Remember when you used to pay by the character for text messaging ?

    The cost to the provider was so near zero as to be laughable The major carriers were making so much money off of it though they didn't want to compete on it. That changed as soon as you got a few betrayals. The same is true now. As long as the only way to get good service is a wire into your home that's controlled by a monopoly or duopoly forget about it.

  15. Re:Why net neutrality is a non issue by Actually,+I+do+RTFA · · Score: 1

    That changed when unlimited (or large) data plans gave people another options, not with competition among the carriers.

    --
    Your ad here. Ask me how!
  16. Re:Why net neutrality is a non issue by Crashmarik · · Score: 1

    Try again. You had people paying a couple hundred bucks a month for text. When they could get number portability and bundled fixed rate text plans they dropped carriers like hot potatoes.

  17. Re:Why net neutrality is a non issue by Actually,+I+do+RTFA · · Score: 1

    Wikiepedia disagrees. But please cite a source if I'm wrong.

    --
    Your ad here. Ask me how!
  18. Re:Why net neutrality is a non issue by Crashmarik · · Score: 1

    The number of texts sent in the US has gone up over the years as the price has gone down to an average of $0.10 per text sent and received. To convince more customers to buy unlimited text messaging plans, some major cellphone providers have increased the price to send and receive text messages from $.15 to $.20 per message.

    Not only are you wrong your source doesn't even say what you think it does.

  19. Re:Why net neutrality is a non issue by Actually,+I+do+RTFA · · Score: 1

    Cool. Assertion war.

    Put up a source..

    --
    Your ad here. Ask me how!