Today WifiForward, a multi-stakeholder coalition of public interest and consumer groups, tech companies and Internet service providers, released the following statement in response to the release of the final LTE-U Coexistence Test Plan:

“We applaud the Wi-Fi Alliance for developing a consensus-driven test plan that will ensure new LTE-U devices coexist fairly with the existing Wi-Fi networks and devices hundreds of millions of consumers already use and enjoy. Measuring LTE-U devices for fair coexistence under the test plan is also crucial to protecting the major financial investments made by organizational Wi-Fi users from schools, hospitals and libraries to cities, governments and small businesses. Only by requiring LTE-U equipment vendors to test all proposed devices according to the clear, consistent and comprehensive standards of the test plan can consumers have confidence that their Wi-Fi will continue to work as designed.

“A year ago, the FCC tasked the many diverse industry, public interest and community institution stakeholders involved in this effort to work together to develop an agreed upon test plan. This has necessarily been a thorough, compromise-driven process, but we are pleased that at the end of the day, parties have come together to implement the finalized test plan and move forward. Wireless broadband innovation can and should continue to expand our technological horizons while also maintaining and enhancing user experience, consistent with the fundamental goal of unlicensed spectrum to maximize the use of the public airwaves. Given the FCC’s support for the Wi-Fi Alliance process, we expect that moving forward, device authorizations will be based on successful completion of the testing protocols.”