FCC Lays Groundwork for Defining 5G Spectrum

[cdmagurus.com]

The FCC today issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to define the spectrum rules that may help form 5G networks in the U.S. It designated four new bands to be studied for 5G. The four swaths of spectrum are high in the band, including the 28GHz band (27.5GHz to 28.35GHz), the 37GHz band (37GHz to 38.6GHz), the 39GHz band (38.6GHz to 40GHz), and the 64-71GHz band. FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler said the agency is "taking a serious leap that creates a competitive opportunity for this nation to be a leader in the forthcoming 5G world." Moreover, the FCC will propose to the World Radio Conference 2015 in Geneva that these bands become added to the 5G standard. The Notice includes a number of rules, such as geographic area licensing, unlicensed use, and how to balance cellular broadband deployments with those deployed by private entities. Coexistence will be promoted throughout, as some bands will be shared with existing federal services. Such high spectrum bands were previously thought to be unusable due to their wavelength and propagation constraints. "Engineers have turned these weaknesses into strengths by finding ways to use short wavelengths to build dynamic beam-forming antennas to support high capacity networks that are small enough to fit into handsets," said Commissioner Mignon Clyburn. "Many expect that these engineering advances will lead to 5G networks that will offer much higher data speeds and substantially lower latency than what commercial mobile services offer today." Today's 4G LTE networks are primarily deployed in spectrum between 700MHz and 2100MHz, with some in the 2500MHz band. The ITU has yet to define what 5G itself will be, and doesn't expect to for some time.


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