FCC Chairman, Thomas Wheeler, recently gave a speech on the planned rollout of 5G cellular technology in our communities. Below are excerpts from his June 20, 2016 speech at the National Press Club.
This speech can be heard on www.c-span.org and seen here: https://www.fcc.gov/document/remarks-chairman-wheeler-future-wireless
Excerpts:
“Yes, 5G will connect the Internet of Everything. If something can be connected, it will be connected in a 5G world. But with predictions of hundreds of billions of microchip-enable products from pill bottles to plant waterers, you can be sure of only one thing: the biggest IoT has yet to be imagined….
Rule number one is that the technology should drive the policy rather than the policy drive the technology.
We will be repeating the proven formula that made the United States the world leader in 4G. It’s a simple formula: Lead the world in spectrum availability, encourage and protect innovation-driving competition, and stay out of the way of technological development.
Unlike some countries, we do not believe we should spend the next couple of years studying what 5G should be, how it should operate, and how to allocate spectrum, based on those assumptions. Like the examples I gave earlier, the future has a way of inventing itself. Turning innovators loose is far preferable to expecting committees and regulators to define the future. We won’t wait for the standards to be first developed in the sometimes arduous standards-setting process or in a government-led activity. Instead, we will make ample spectrum available and an urban environment tend to bounce around buildings and other obstacles making it difficult to connect to a moving point. But it also means that the spectrum can be reused over and over again…
Our plan proposes making a massive 14 gigahertz unlicensed band. Consider that – 14,000 megahertz of unlicensed spectrum, with the same flexible-use rules that has allowed unlicensed to become a breeding ground for innovation.”
http://transition.fcc.gov/Daily_Releases/Daily_Business/2016/db0620/DOC-339920A1.pdf
Also, further excerpts from his talk and the Q&A:
“…That is why 5G is a national priority, and why, this Thursday, I am circulating to my colleagues proposed new rules that will identify and open up then rely on a private sector-led process for producing technical standards best suited for those frequencies and use cases…
On the network side, Verizon and AT&T tell us they will begin deploying 5G trials in 2017.
These efforts will, of course, help inform the standards process by putting stakes in the ground.
And the first commercial deployments at scale are expected in 2020.
This timeline requires that we act to pave the way today. With the new rules I am proposing in our Spectrum Frontiers order, we take our most significant step yet down the path to our 5G future.
The big game-changer is that 5G will use much higher-frequency bands than previously thought viable for mobile broadband and other applications. Such millimeter wave signals have physical properties that are both a limitation and a strength: they tend to travel best in narrow and straight lines, and do not go through physical obstacles very well. This means that very narrow signals in vast amounts of spectrum for 5G applications. We call it the Spectrum Frontiers proceeding, and we will vote on it July 14th.
… And high-band spectrum will be the focus of our decision next month. These bands offer huge swaths of spectrum for super-fast data rates with low latency, and are now becoming unlocked because of technological advances in computing and antennas.
If the Commission approves my proposal next month, the United States will be the first country in the world to open up high-band spectrum for 5G networks and applications. And that’s damn important because it means U.S. companies will be first out of the gate.
… We will be repeating the proven formula that made the United States the world leader in 4G. It’s a simple formula: Lead the world in spectrum availability, encourage and protect innovation-driving competition, and stay out of the way of technological development.
Unlike some countries, we do not believe we should spend the next couple of years studying what 5G should be, how it should operate, and how to allocate spectrum, based on those assumptions. Like the examples I gave earlier, the future has a way of inventing itself. Turning innovators loose is far preferable to expecting committees and regulators to define the future. We won’t wait for the standards to be first developed in the sometimes arduous standards-setting process or in a government-led activity. Instead, we will make ample spectrum available and an urban environment tend to bounce around buildings and other obstacles making it difficult to connect to a moving point. But it also means that the spectrum can be reused over and over again.
Brilliant engineers have developed new antennas that can aim and amplify signals, coupled with sophisticated processing, allowing a moving device to pick up all of the signals bouncing around and create one coherent connection. To make this work, 5G build out is going to be very infrastructure intensive, requiring a massive deployment of small cells. But it also opens up unprecedented opportunities for frequency reuse and denser, more localized, networks.”