By Shane Tews

For years, the Federal
Communications Commission (FCC) has been working to modernize use of key
sections of spectrum airwaves — known as C-band — by opening them up to
commercial use. Through a series of auctions, the FCC sold the C-band airwave
license rights to commercial 5G mobile telecommunications providers, unleashing
a massive wave of private investment to enable 5G deployment. But the Federal
Aviation Administration (FAA) recently warned that using C-band for 5G could interfere with
air safety, reigniting a multiyear battle that many believe FCC engineers have
successfully put to rest.

On the latest episode of “Explain to Shane,” I was joined by former FCC Commissioner Mike O’Rielly and Harold Feld of Public Knowledge to discuss why the FAA issued this warning, how legitimate its safety concerns are, and how the C-band auction winners have responded. Mike and Harold also shared their thoughts on what this kerfuffle could mean for the future of C-band and continued spectrum deployment in the wireless industry.

Below is an edited and abridged transcript of our talk. You can listen to this and other episodes of “Explain to Shane” on AEI.org and subscribe via your preferred listening platform. You can also read the full transcript of our discussion here. If you enjoyed this episode, leave us a review, and tell your friends and colleagues to tune in.

Shane Tews: Mike, you were at the FCC when the C-band auction plans
were moved forward, and Harold, you’ve been very active in this space recently.
Can you both give us some background here and share your thoughts on the FAA’s
recent warning?

Mike O’Rielly: First, I should
mention that nothing I say today is an attempt to engage or advocate before the
FCC in any proceeding. I like to put that out there so we don’t have any
problems later.

This issue is about concerns in
the altimeter industry and at the FAA that the deployment of C-band spectrum
for 5G services could lead to harmful interference with altimeters and cause
planes to fall from the sky. This is something the FCC considered while I was
there; we spent many months on this and considered it thoroughly, but now it
feels like something that was asked and answered before. There’s very little
data from the industry that supports their position. And the current delay this
has caused is only a small one, but I worry that it’s going to extend even
further.

Harold Feld: This is just the
latest example of a federal agency not liking the result it got at the FCC, despite
the fact that the FCC is the expert agency that’s in charge of this and frankly
does this kind of interference dispute stuff every day as opposed to just
protecting its own turf. Nevertheless, the FAA has decided to go fight a war in
the press and try to force the FCC to block deployment of 5G networks because
of highly suspect interference concerns involving altimeters.

For reference, altimeters are the
devices that tell planes when they’re coming in and pick up how close they are
to the ground. Obviously we care about that. We don’t want planes to fall out
of the sky or smack the ground particularly hard when they’re trying to land.
And this is certainly a case where even if there is a modest risk of harmful
interference, you want to be extra careful and make sure you address that. But
that’s what FCC engineers do all the time.

It’s the job of FCC engineers —
who are universally respected — to make the call on how this works. And I can
say having done this for 20 years that FCC engineers will always err on the
side of caution; they are not ignoring any safety concerns. They take the fact
that people’s lives are at stake very, very seriously. It just seems some of
these agencies don’t like the FCC being the one to make the decision.

We’re dealing with globally
harmonized spectrum bands, meaning the FCC is not the first agency to look at
this. Around 40 other countries have authorized use of C-band for 5G technology.
Not all of these countries have the same rules; some are more aggressive than
what we have. Japan, in particular, allows use for 5G up into the part of the
band that the FCC has excluded 5G operation from. And we don’t have any actual
reports of harmful interference — or incidents that could arguably be caused by
harmful interference.

Why do we not have a definitive answer on whether these altimeter
interference risks actually exist? I’ve been reading some aviation business
websites, and it seems like they don’t have a good answer either.

People think the analysis of
interference is some kind of computer function where you put numbers in and a
clean result comes out that definitively says whether it interferes or not. But
in reality it’s very complicated. Wireless spectrum and how the energy works
depends on a lot of environmental factors. And you have to try to predict for
things like what kind of equipment is going to be in use, the maximum amount of
energy that might be released by a device if it’s operating within its
specifications, etc. So there’s a lot of uncertainty about this. And when you
do your engineering study, you have to make some complex decisions.

What are the
political factors at play here? Do you think FCC Acting Chair Jessica Rosenworcel’s
upcoming confirmation hearing for the permanent chair position is playing into
this?

Mike O’Rielly: We’re seeing federal agencies jump into
spectrum policy on their own behalf. In the last four or five years, we had
fights with the Department of Education, Department of Defense, Department of
Transportation, NASA, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
over particular bands. They felt aggrieved by the decision-making process,
mostly through the National Telecommunications and Information Administration
(NTIA). Either they didn’t think they weren’t represented, or they felt better
about going to Capitol Hill and trying to make their case.

We were told that this administration would be different —
that past mistakes were going to be resolved and that we’d have a collaborative
process. But this seems more of the same, in my opinion, where now you’ve got
the FAA going at this directly to scare the American public. The last
administration had not listened to the FAA’s concerns, I guess, sufficiently to
their liking. And now they have a new one that’s willing to listen — wrongly in
my mind — and give this issue credence. It really scares the public
unnecessarily rather than trying to work through the collaborative process.

But even when you get to the collaborative process, you’d think
what the commission did here — a huge guard band of 220 MHz — would be
sufficient. That’s unprecedented in modern spectrum policy in terms of
protecting another entity.

Harold Feld: I think the big problem here is not that we
have an administration that is necessarily believing the FAA over the FCC. I
think the problem has been that we’ve left FCC and NTIA positions open for far
too long. It’s particularly NTIA: the agency that is supposed to manage how
other executive branch agencies operate when it comes to spectrum policy.

It takes a lot of work. The George W. Bush and Obama
administrations both invested a lot of White House credibility in making sure
everybody played nice because the agencies don’t have authority over each
other. So if the agencies decide they’re going to go around NTIA, there’s
nothing NTIA can do. But it makes a real difference if you have an actual
political appointee in place operating at the same level as the head of the
sister agency who, frankly, can call up the Secretary of Commerce or White
House if necessary and say, “Hey, you’ve really got to talk to these guys because
they’re running crazy.”

Mike O’Rielly: I worry that it’s not just about people and
personnel. You could have the best person at NTIA, but if the administration
doesn’t give them credence or recognize the decisions they’re making, you
really don’t get that far. That’s been the problem with NTIA; we’ve had
administrators and it hasn’t really been beneficial.

Harold Feld: I think the upcoming Rosenworcel confirmation hearing
could be a factor here. The Senate Commerce Committee is also the Senate
Transportation Committee, which is not the case on the House side. So to the
extent that the FAA and aviation industry are going to have allies in Congress,
they’re likely to be on that committee.

On the other hand, I don’t see this as a major issue
derailing the confirmation hearings. I do think that may have played into the
decision of AT&T and Verizon to delay this a month to not get caught in the
politics of nomination and see if there’s some way they can satisfy the FAA’s
concerns on their own.

What happens if a
decision isn’t reached after the month that AT&T and Verizon have agreed to
wait? Can they just move forward with 5G deployment?

Mike O’Rielly: The industry has rights in terms of spectrum
use. Until the FCC changes that or decrees differently, they can move forward.
They’re nice enough to extend the timeframe; I’m not sure it’s for the
Rosenworcel hearing as much as it is just not wanting to be on the wrong side
of a story that suggests they’re threatening the American flying public, which
is not accurate in my mind. But they want to be able to say they’ve done
everything possible to try and work these issues out.

Harold Feld: There’s the possibility of a longer-term impact
for the wireless industry on deployment where we had a rulemaking, we had an
auction, and the industry collectively spent over $80 billion. Now they
potentially find themselves looking at what’s going to make the FAA happy so
that they can move forward, with no idea as to what the timeframe or cost potentially
could be if the FAA is not willing to have the aviation industry upgrade their
equipment if they think that’s the problem.

At the moment, one month is not going to be a significant
issue. The problem is: If this drags on indefinitely, what will this do not
just to AT&T and Verizon’s deployment, but to the faith industry can have that
when they have an auction and the FCC sets rules, they will actually be able to
develop a deployment schedule and get things out on time?

The post A spectrum roadblock for the wireless industry: Highlights from my conversation with Mike O’Rielly and Harold Feld appeared first on American Enterprise Institute – AEI.