2 Key Federal Telecom Agencies Promise to Play Nice With Wireless Spectrum
The federal offices in charge of allocating spectrum will step up their coordination so future 5G debuts won’t be grounded by the sort of interagency squabble that delayed C-band 5G’s launch.
On Tuesday, Federal Communications Commission Chair Jessica Rosenworcel and National Telecommunications and Information Administration head Alan Davidson signed a memorandum of understanding(Opens in a new window) (MOU) on spectrum coordination.
The idea here is to avoid the failures to communicate that held up AT&T's and Verizon’s introduction of C-band 5G for months because the Federal Aviation Administration said the frequencies the FCC had auctioned off in February 2021 for some $81 billion could interfere with radar altimeters on many airliners and helicopters.
Those fast, mid-band frequencies finally went online in January, but the agreement brokered between the carriers and the FAA won’t allow for full C-band service near 50 airports until next July, by which time airlines should have finished upgrading those altimeters to guard against interference.
Tuesday’s five-page memo(Opens in a new window) (PDF) aims to prevent any more games of telephone between the NTIA, a branch of the Department of Commerce, and the FCC, an independent agency, the next time new spectrum is at stake.
Since so much spectrum is already spoken for, freeing up any for use by wireless carriers increasingly requires getting other parties to cede some. See, for example, the contentious debate between Dish Network and SpaceX’s Starlink over whether Dish can use any of the 12GHz frequencies that Starlink relies on now for its under-construction 5G network.
The “MOU” requires the two agency heads to meet “at least quarterly” to plan spectrum allocation,
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