{"id":75763,"date":"2014-11-06T01:25:53","date_gmt":"2014-11-05T17:25:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/wimax-prepares-final-defense-for-the-3-65-3-7-ghz-spectrum-band-to-fcc\/"},"modified":"2014-11-06T01:25:53","modified_gmt":"2014-11-05T17:25:53","slug":"wimax-prepares-final-defense-for-the-3-65-3-7-ghz-spectrum-band-to-fcc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/wimax-prepares-final-defense-for-the-3-65-3-7-ghz-spectrum-band-to-fcc\/","title":{"rendered":"WiMAX Prepares Final Defense for the 3.65-3.7 GHz spectrum band to FCC"},"content":{"rendered":"

Via Satellite is reporting from the OilComm 2014 event.<\/em><\/p>\n

[Houston, Texas 11-05-2014] The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is nearing a decision point on the regulatory plan 3.55-3.65 GHz Citizen\u2019s Broadband Radio Service (CBRS). The FCC will decide on the fate of 50 MHz at the 3.65 GHz band, which several incumbent operators use today.<\/p>\n

The WiMAX Forum is going to meet with the FCC in December to finalize their position. In June the organization advised the FCC against including the 3.65-3.7 GHz spectrum band, warning that investments made over the years would be compromised by the decision.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\"Declan
Declan Byrne, president of the WiMAX Forum. Photo: WiMAX Forum<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve spent millions of dollars actively using the legacy band, 3.65, and even if you give us a runway of two-to-five years to make changes, you basically strand and obsolesce all that investment because we cant\u2019 keep supporting it,\u201d said Declan Byrne, president of the WiMAX Forum.<\/p>\n

If the FCC includes the spectrum band in the CBRS, and oil and gas companies have to bid on licenses, they could find themselves to be very disadvantaged. The way licenses are auctioned calibrates well to where people live, but not so much to less populated places where oil and gas companies operate. Spectrum is simply not organized favorably for industrial users. Byrne said the industrial market also lacks the financial wherewithal to compete against AT&T, Verizon and Sprint who are going to want these frequencies for small cells.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe industrial market generally doesn\u2019t like to rely on public operators for critical services for all sorts of really good reasons,\u201d he said. \u201cOil and gas companies, similar to utilities, deploy across their network with very low latency requirements \u2014 and if you don\u2019t meet those latencies, things explode. You don\u2019t really want to rely on AT&T to run your network. AT&T\u2019s business is the consumer voice and data market. It will never be Chevron.\u201d<\/p>\n

Oil and gas companies worry that in the event of a power outage or other emergency when they most need data services, they will find that public operators have crashed. Industrial business is not central to public operators, who tend to design their networks for mobile voice and broadband. Even if oil and gas companies choose to use public operator services, the design of LTE brings with it architecture and cost requirements that add quite a bit of expense. For these reasons, the energy sector often prefers to build its own networks.
\nByrnes said the outcomes could vary if the FCC decides to graft the 3.65 3.7 GHz spectrum band into the CBRS.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf the FCC ignores industry\u2019s rationale \u2026 two things have to happen. The manufacturers currently providing WiMAX in that band \u2014 which are principally Siemens and General Electric \u2014 are going to have to say \u2018do we want to put WiMAX? Do we have to change the technology so dramatically to accommodate a 200 MHz band and a whole different set of rules? Why don\u2019t we just walk away from it?\u2019 And\/or utilities and oil and gas companies try to figure out how they can extend current use for five years under the CBRS regime, which is all draft. They could try to make a go of it,\u201d he said.
\nFor a risk-averse industry like oil and gas, trying to use the 50 MHz from the 3.65 GHz band in new conditions, with new riles and untested processes is unfavorable.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe biggest thing is, if I\u2019m Chevron and I\u2019ve spent $40 million or more on various WiMAX networks in my total system, all of a sudden the FCC says \u2018you can continue to use 3.65, but it is part of the CBRS band,\u2019 and there is a spectrum allocation system \u2014 some super computer buried in the ground somewhere which on the fly is allocating shared spectrum resources \u2014 that\u2019s all very exciting, but it\u2019s unproven. Our view is when you have this many incumbent users in a band; you don\u2019t want to try something new like that. Come back to us in three to five years when you know if it works,\u201d said Byrne.<\/p>\n

The WiMAX Forum has put together a coalition with the American Petroleum Institute, the Utility Telecom Council and its vendors, to lead a drive to the FCC to oppose any change in the rules around 3.65 GHz. Byrne said he feels they have been pretty successful. Spectrum concerns have been on the minds of many in the oil and gas industry for some time. Byrne hopes that by this time next year, the industry will be able to breathe a little easier.<\/p>\n

\u201c[If we lose] it doesn\u2019t have to be the end of the world and the elimination of the 3.65 GHz as a usable band by industry, but it\u2019s going to be a pretty big blow,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s why we are fighting it so hard.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Via Satellite is reporting from the OilComm 2014 event. [Houston, Texas 11-05-2014] The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is nearing a decision point on the regulatory plan 3.55-3.65 GHz Citizen\u2019s Broadband Radio Service (CBRS). The FCC will decide on the fate of 50 MHz at the 3.65 GHz band, which several incumbent operators use today. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":75764,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-75763","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75763"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75763"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75763\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/75764"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75763"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75763"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75763"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}