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FCC Sets Date for Major Midband Spectrum Auction for 5G:
The Federal Communications Commission is moving forward on its plans to auction off a key sliver of midband spectrum licenses for 5G service. The agency voted unanimously Thursday to seek comment on bidding rules for the auction, which is set to start on June 25, 2020.
The 3.5 GHz spectrum, known as the Citizens Broadband Radio Service, is coveted midband spectrum that big carriers like AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile see as valuable for 5G. But it's also spectrum that small rural fixed wireless service providers say can help them increase speeds and reach more customers.
Midband spectrum is considered valuable for 5G, because its propagation properties offer wireless carriers a good balance between coverage and speed. Up to this point, the FCC has focused much of its effort in auctioning off high-frequency spectrum, which delivers very high speed services over short distances. The FCC's 3.5 GHz auction next year is the first time the auction will release a significant amount of midband spectrum for commercial use.
[...]For years, the 3.5 GHz spectrum band has been mainly allocated for use by the Department of Defense radar systems. But the agency realized in 2015 that the spectrum was well-suited for 5G. Since then it's worked to recraft usage rules to open up the spectrum for non-federal. This included establishing a novel spectrum management concept known as the Citizens Broadcast Radio Service (CBRS). This framework, includes various tiers of access for the spectrum in order to allow the airwaves to be shared among different users. Some of the spectrum is unlicensed, some is allocated to the government and other licenses will be auctioned off to wireless carriers.
A key aspect of this arrangement is the management of the spectrum by third-party Spectrum Access System (SAS) managers, which will automatically coordinate the use of the spectrum among its various types of users in real-time.
See, also, Wikipedia's entry on S Band which covers frequencies from 3-30 GHz.
(Score: 2) by Rupert Pupnick on Friday September 27 2019, @12:56PM (1 child)
I guess it's good that communications engineers are trying stay far ahead enough on the technology curve that the RF interfaces used in data communications don't present a future bottleneck, but really... right now, we don't need it.
A 10 Gb/s capable data interface for everything? When I think of 10 Gb/s of bandwidth and look at a the shiny new smartphone in my hand (surprise! I'm a late adopter), I can't help but think, what for? What's the total available bandwidth of my eyes and ears (less than before, that's for sure)? Whatever it is, do I really want to fill it up completely using a hand held device I can take anywhere I go? I guess 10 Gb/s can avail you of some very high fidelity VR experiences, but is it really worth all of the development and deployment cost to make that available on every populated square inch of the planet? It just feels like overkill to me.
And 1 ms of latency is pretty nice if you're a gamer-- I understand that well. But the 50ms I get in my house isn't bad either, and that includes an entire round trip along with whatever processing latencies are at the server. Am I really going to notice 1 ms if I'm not gaming while walking down the street using a touchscreen interface that will never be as responsive as a console game controller?
This whole 5G thing reminds me of the grandiose stories we used hear during the Dot Com Runup. Sure, they have a solid technical foundation, but how does REALLY change the end user experience, and what's the business model?
I also understand that the potential impact falls on more than just mobile users, but I'm still not sure I'm seeing the benefits. Do we get faster microtransactions on financial markets? Self-driving cars with superb "intelligence", but that have to maintain an RF link to the server where all the smarts are?
Been wanting to rant and hear some opposing points of view (which I know there are!) on this for a while now. Thanks FCC and submitter!
(Score: 2) by Rupert Pupnick on Saturday September 28 2019, @05:32PM
Where’s takyon?