“Jerry and I, we’re on different sides of the aisle but these are issues that affect all of us. It’s not a Republican, Democrat, or Independent issue,” offered Rep. Bob Latta (R-OH), “And when you’re looking at Wi-Fi and the uses out there, we have to have it.”
The “Jerry” Mr. Latta was referring to is his co-chair of the newly formed Congressional Wi-Fi Caucus, Rep. Jerry McNerney (D-CA). Sharing the stage at last week’s second annual Wi-Fi Summit hosted by WifiForward, the bipartisan pair highlighted what prompted them to work together on Wi-Fi related issues.
As a part of the 2018 Summit, WifiForward hosted policymakers, industry experts and companies for live demonstrations from WifiForward member companies, keynotes from Members of Congress and FCC Commissioners, as well as panel discussions featuring industry and policy experts.
While there are always reasons to disagree on spectrum policy — and reasonable minds will — some principles, like promoting policies that balance the availability of licensed and unlicensed spectrum, find bipartisan support.
For why, we need look no further than Wi-Fi. The tech that runs on unlicensed spectrum is the workhorse of our wireless networks. According to Cisco, over the next four years, wireless data services in the United States are expected to increase 500 percent and the number of devices that use unlicensed airwaves—mostly Wi-Fi—is expected to grow by 50 percent to more than 13 billion devices. Every major e-commerce and brick-and-mortar retailer relies on Wi-Fi — our orders don’t ship without numerous Wi-Fi-based transactions from tablet to product-picker to forklift operators in distribution centers. Hospitals are improving patient outcomes by using Wi-Fi to carry medical telemetry, and connecting the average of 15 devices per patient room. Major global airlines depend on Wi-Fi to literally get planes to take off; ticket scanners, baggage scanners, maintenance inspections and flight plans transmit over Wi-Fi. And hundreds of billions of dollars are traded via financial transactions that run over, you guessed it, Wi-Fi.
Back at the Summit, Representative McNerney weighed in on the importance of balance to the next generation of networks. “Balance is really important. We need licensed spectrum so that we can develop 5G technology and so on, but the real important issue here is that 60% of 5G traffic is offloaded to unlicensed spectrum. We need a balance between licensed and unlicensed. And the nice thing about unlicensed spectrum is that it spurs so much innovation.”
FCC Commissioners O’Rielly and Rosenworcel continued the day’s bipartisan theme and picked up where their legislative branch colleagues left off. The Commissioners have long supported unleashing more spectrum for Wi-Fi, in large part because of the economic possibilities. During their fireside chat, both Commissioners cited the importance of these considerations for policymaking, pointing to a just-released study from RAND which found that opening up just the 5.9 GHz for unlicensed uses could add significantly to the U.S. economy.
“$100 billion dollars — that’s extraordinary. We should embrace the economic possibilities of bringing that to market and allowing all that permissionless innovation to happen,” remarked Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel. “It’s why I believe both of us support the FCC taking a fresh look at this band. We need to do this sooner than later.”
Commissioner O’Rielly was in full agreement with his colleague on this matter, citing the failure of DSRC technologies’ operating within the band for the past two decades. “There’s a need to reexamine the 5.9 GHz band. I don’t think the activity from one big car company this week made anyone too comfortable about past promises they’ve made. You start thinking about the promises they’ve made on DSRC — I’m not feeling too comfortable. It just heightens the need to examine the 5.9 GHz band. I think the study is incredibly insightful,” said O’Rielly.