Wireless Infrastructure Required for AI Leadership, Say WIA Panelists
The increasing adoption of AI and U.S. leadership in the technology require massive investments in wireless infrastructure, a focus on making more spectrum available, and attention from Congress and regulators on making those things happen, said speakers at the Wireless Infrastructure Association's Building the AI Future event Wednesday in Washington, D.C. “The bricklaying for AI that telecom provides is really, really important,” said Deputy NTIA Administrator Adam Cassady, while Crown Castle COO Cathy Piche told the panel that “wireless infrastructure is really AI infrastructure.”
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Providers such as Verizon are key to AI because using it on wireless devices requires large amounts of data transmission and low latency, both of which must come from an infrastructure network, said Verizon Chief Technology Officer Yago Tenorio. AI processors need “power, space and cooling,” and Verizon’s network means it already has those things in the areas where consumers are, allowing for low latency, Tenorio said. Akhil Gokul, Ericsson's head of technology, added that companies expect consumers to increasingly use AI via wearables such as smart glasses, which will continuously upload data from the environment around them.
While, historically, internet use has emphasized downlink speed, Tenorio said the rise of wearables will put pressure on uplink capacity because of the mass of data flowing from users. AI wearables will generate “a very high amount of uplink traffic,” agreed John Kuzin, Qualcomm's spectrum policy and regulatory counsel. “Think about wearing glasses watching your kids play soccer and streaming it to someone who can't make it to the game on the other side of the world.”
The requirements for transmitting all that data mean the U.S. must push to prepare for 6G and free up more spectrum, several panelists said. Under even conservative projections, the current U.S. spectrum capacity will be “saturated” by 2028 or 2029, said Gokul.
Diamond Communications CTO Tony Sabatino said the “workhorse” for AI applications could be C-band spectrum, adding that the industry needs a wide band of contiguous spectrum to allow for the future of AI. Gokul argued that the industry and regulators must “come together” to have the needed spectrum available in the right time frame. 6G “is only five years away, and the planning happens actually much earlier,” he said. "We need to start thinking about investments, decision-making in the next 18 months or so, so we have that pipeline in place.”
FCC Chief AI Officer Arpan Sura said the agency is working to facilitate U.S. leadership in AI by implementing Chairman Brendan Carr’s Build America Better agenda, which involves, in part, reducing red tape for infrastructure buildouts. The previous administration suffered from “regulatory scoliosis” and made it unnecessarily difficult for broadband infrastructure development, Sura said. He pointed to the agency's efforts to reform its National Environmental Policy Act rules and proceedings on FCC preemption authority. The FCC could facilitate 6G by not getting in the way of industry, rethinking its view of competition and embracing the convergence of formerly siloed industries, he added.
Several panelists said AI could also improve network buildouts and spectrum use. “The only way we’re going to get there is by using AI itself,” Cassady said, suggesting that the technology should be deployed to coordinate spectrum sharing. Airwavz Senior Vice President Jonathan Lester said the industry is on the cusp of having “self-healing” networks administered by AI. Sura also said he's working to increase the FCC’s internal use of AI, which can augment its workforce and allow it to serve the public more effectively and accurately.