WISPs Argue Unlicensed Spectrum Can Close Digital Divide

Zumwalt expects to know more by May, the one-year anniversary of the notices of funding opportunity or applicants interested in its broadband, equity, access and deployment program (see 2205130054), on whether the groups’ arguments are working. “If we have a national priority, backed by federal dollars to close the digital divide, it makes sense to go with the people who are actually working on the digital divide now, trying to close it, and those typically are the WISPs,” he said.

Wireless is “capital efficient” and faster to deploy than wired technology, Zumwalt said: “By putting the thumbs on the scale, saying, ‘no, we really want to make sure that it’s fiber infrastructure wherever possible,’ then this really isn’t … about closing the digital divide” but about “bolstering and investing in fiber. Let’s call it that instead of putting up a billboard saying that we’re closing the digital divide.” Zumwalt said the $42 billion approved for the BEAD program won’t pay for fiber everywhere.

NTIA’s main concern about unlicensed is whether it will always be available, Zumwalt said. Neither the FCC nor equipment makers share that concern, he said. “You don’t just have systems that are broadcasting in all directions and causing interference, you have interference mitigation that’s happening actively,” he said: “We have been working closely with NTIA to help them understand what the state-of-the-art in the industry really is … and we’ve been answering their technical questions.”

WISPA recently sent a letter to NTIA Administrator Alan Davidson complaining the agency isn’t budging on its resistance to the use of unlicensed spectrum, widely deployed by WISPs, to offer fixed wireless. WISPA staff earlier had discussions with wireless equipment makers Cambium Networks, Siklu and Tarana Wireless. “Unlicensed spectrum is available now and for the foreseeable future” with the FCC allocating thousands of megahertz of spectrum for unlicensed use, the letter said.

Advances in engineering “mean that fixed wireless networks using unlicensed spectrum are not limited to 10 or 20 megahertz of licensed spectrum channels,” the letter said: “These networks are providing, and can continue to provide, fixed wireless broadband service with a high degree of certainty both now and for the foreseeable future and, in many cases, can provide more reliable broadband service than networks using licensed spectrum.” NTIA declined comment.

Zumwalt said WISPA members see unlicensed spectrum as meeting many of their needs. “The equipment is readily available in the marketplace” and is “supported by the vendor community,” he said: “It also makes it possible for [WISPs] to respond very, very quickly to the needs of the community. If they’re going to do full licensed spectrum” it requires “frequency coordination, it’s all the prior coordination work that has to be done. And it imposes, at least at the WISP level, a form of rigidity that doesn’t necessarily work in their marketplace.” Licensed can be useful for backhaul and middle-mile communications and some WISPs use a mix of licensed and unlicensed spectrum, he said.

With the House now under Republican control, and new leadership in key positions in the Senate, Zumwalt expects more scrutiny of NTIA and the broadband program than the agency faced in the last Congress. WISPA is also hearing that millions of challenges were filed to the FCC’s new broadband maps (see 2301130046), he said. The FCC doesn’t have the staff to handle that number of challenges “gracefully, in a reasonable period of time,” he said.