Citizens Band Spectrum Should Be Open to All, Not Just Big Mobile

Two years ago, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) unanimously passed a set of rules that opened up the 3.5 GHz band, previously used exclusively by the Navy, for shared use by the private sector. The vote was a landmark step in opening shared access to very valuable and underutilized spectrum to enable fast and innovative broadband networks—with a unique twist. Under the rules, half of this new Citizens Radio Broadband Service (CBRS) at 3.5 GHz would be unlicensed, while half would be licensed in a new, more accessible way. The Priority Access Licensed (PALs) would be only as large as census tracts, which is a tiny fraction of the size (and cost) of traditional cellular licenses bought at auction by behemoths like AT&T and Verizon.

The FCC limited the licenses to very small, targeted areas—and to short three-year terms with competitive renewal—to ensure that a wide variety of entities could buy licenses to build rural broadband, industrial IoT, neutral host networks, and other private LTE networks customized and deployed on a local basis. Thousands of business firms and community anchor institutions—including universities, sports venues, hospitals, corporate campuses, libraries, schools, factories, office buildings, and other businesses—have expressed a desire to use the CBRS band to self-provision their own networks without needing to go through one of the major mobile industry leaders. The rules, as finalized in 2016, allow rural and small ISPs, individual business facilities and venues, and public-purpose networks such as schools, libraries, college campuses, and municipal services to use this spectrum at its full potential.

However, after pressure from the mobile industry, the FCC decided to open up the discussion about the CBRS rules and renegotiate the size of the license areas and their terms. The wireless giants are seeking to get the FCC to create multi-county license areas that allow them to buy up the spectrum in large swaths and add it to their portfolio for their own nationwide networks. Only the largest ISPs can justify buying licenses as large as traditional cellular licenses.

Of particular concern are a few “compromises” being floated by industry groups and some mobile companies at the FCC, which would considerably undermine the purpose of CBRS in empowering smaller institutions to buy licenses and build their own networks. Every other interested industry and potential user of CBRS opposes the mobile industry’s effort to upend the rules to create seven super-sized licenses in the 300 largest metropolitan markets, and county-sized licenses for the rest of the country.

Recently, the Open Technology Institute at New America joined Public Knowledge, Consumers Union, the Schools Health & Libraries Broadband (SHLB) Coalition, the American Library Association, the Consumer Federation of America, Next Century Cities, Tribal Digital Village Network, Free Press, Common Cause, the Benton Foundation, and the Gigabit Libraries Network as the Public Interest Spectrum Coalition to call on the FCC to ignore these compromises and retain census tracts as a marker for licenses areas for the CBRS band.

A wide variety of companies have already begun to invest based on local access to the band, and community anchor institutions are reviewing how to use CBRS to build localized networks. Contrary to the “5G” hype that Big Mobile is using to lock down all the best spectrum—and lock out innovative alternatives—the most robust 5G wireless ecosystem of greatest benefit to the U.S. economy and consumers will provide direct spectrum access for rural broadband, industrial IoT, neutral host networks, and other private LTE networks customized and deployed on a local basis by the widest range of business firms and community anchor institutions.