Senate Bill Urges Testing of 5 GHz for Wi-Fi

June 25, 2014

By J. Sharpe Smith —

Legislation has been proposed in the Senate that would expand unlicensed spectrum by requiring the FCC to test the feasibility of opening the upper 5 GHz band.

Booker

S. 2505, the Wi-Fi Innovation Act, which was introduced by U.S. Senators Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Marco Rubio (R-FL), directs the FCC to seek comments and conduct tests to assess the feasibility of unlicensed use of the 5850-5925 MHz band.

“This bill requires the FCC to conduct testing that would provide more spectrum to the public and ultimately put the resource to better use, while recognizing the future needs and important work being done in intelligent transportation,” Rubio said in a prepared release.

Federal systems in these bands include a variety of radar systems and a number of airborne RF communications systems for testing and training of unmanned aircraft systems. The bands are also used for non-federal fixed satellite uplinks and federal and non-federal mobile services.

Rubio

In January 2013 the National Telecommunications and Information Administration released a study of the risk to federal users if the FCC were to allow Unlicensed-National Information Infrastructure (U-NII) devices to operate in the 5350-5470 MHz and 5850-5925 MHz bands. The report identified a number of possibilities of harmful interference that large numbers of U-NII devices might cause to federal systems in the bands and suggested strategies for mitigation.

The report concluded that further analysis was needed to determine whether and how the identified risk factors can be mitigated through new safeguards. Perhaps the FCC can provide some answers with its testing.

_________________________________________________________________

J. Sharpe Smith is the editor of AGL Link and AGL Small Cell Link newsletters