Today's Regulatory Mix:  FCC Chairman Proposes New Rules to Provide a Boost to Wi-Fi and Other Unlicensed Spectrum Use, FCC Chairman Pai Proposes Rules for 5G Fund for Rural America, FTC Announces Data Portability Workshop 

FCC Chairman Proposes New Rules to Provide a Boost to Wi-Fi and Other Unlicensed Spectrum Use 

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai announced he was circulating draft rules permitting unlicensed devices to operate in the 6 GHz band. The proposed rules would make 1,200 megahertz of spectrum available for unlicensed use. Unlicensed devices would share this spectrum with incumbent licensed services under rules that are crafted to protect those licensed services and to enable both unlicensed and licensed operations to thrive throughout the band. The Chairman’s draft rules will be voted on by the Commission at the FCC’s Open Meeting on April 23.  

“From Wi-Fi routers to home appliances, Americans’ everyday use of devices that connect to the Internet over unlicensed spectrum has exploded,” said Chairman Pai. “That trend will only continue. Cisco projects that nearly 60% of global mobile data traffic will be off-loaded to Wi- Fi by 2022. To accommodate that increase in Wi-Fi demand, the FCC is aiming to increase the supply of Wi-Fi spectrum with our boldest initiative yet: making the entire 6 GHz band available for unlicensed use. By doing this, we would effectively increase the amount of spectrum available for Wi-Fi almost by a factor of five. This would be a huge benefit to consumers and innovators across the nation. It would be another step toward increasing the capacity of our country’s networks. And it would help advance even further our leadership in next generation wireless technologies, including 5G.”  

If adopted, the draft Report and Order would authorize two different types of unlicensed operations: standard-power in 850-megahertz of the band and indoor low-power operations over the full 1,200-megahertz available in the 6 GHz band. An automated frequency coordination system would prevent standard power access points from operating where they could cause interference to incumbent services.  A Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking proposes to permit very low-power devices to operate across the 6 GHz band, to support high data rate applications including high performance, wearable, augmented-reality and virtual-reality devices.  

FCC Chairman Pai Proposes Rules for 5G Fund for Rural America 

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai announced he has circulated a draft Notice of Proposed Rulemaking aiming to establish a 5G Fund for Rural America, which would distribute up to $9 billion across the country for 5G connectivity.  The 5G Fund would specifically target rural areas that would not see timely deployment of 5G service absent support and are not likely to be covered by the T-Mobile transaction commitments.  The FCC will vote on the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking at its April 23 Open Meeting.  

“5G promises to be the next leap in broadband technology, offering significantly increased speeds and reduced latency,” said Chairman Pai.  “The 5G Fund for Rural America focuses on building out 5G networks in areas that likely would otherwise go unserved.  It’s critical that Americans living in rural communities have the same opportunities as everybody else.”  

The Notice would seek comment on two options for identifying areas that would be eligible for 5G Fund support:  

• Under one approach, the FCC would hold an auction in 2021 by defining eligible areas based on current data sources that identify areas as particularly rural and thus in the greatest need of universal service support.  In recognition of the challenges of ensuring that 5G service is deployed to areas that lack any mobile broadband service, the proposal would prioritize areas that have historically lacked 4G LTE or 3G service.    
• The second approach would delay the 5G Fund Phase I auction until at least 2023, after collecting and processing improved mobile broadband coverage data through the FCC’s new Digital Opportunity Data Collection.   

Phase II of the 5G Fund would target support to bring wireless connectivity to harder to serve and higher cost areas, such as farms and ranches, and make at least $1 billion available for deployments that would facilitate precision agriculture. 

FTC Announces Data Portability Workshop 

The FTC announced that it will host a public workshop on September 22, 2020, to examine the potential benefits and challenges to consumers and competition raised by data portability.  Data portability gives consumers more control over their data, allowing them to move data—such as emails, contacts, calendars, financial information, health information, favorites, friends, or content posted on social media—from one service to another or to themselves. Data portability may also promote competition by allowing new entrants to access data they otherwise would not have, enabling the growth of competing platforms and services. 

Some of the challenges to implementing data portability include how to treat a consumer’s data that might contain information about others, such as friends’ photos and comments; how to securely transfer data from one service to another; and whether mandating data portability will give companies less incentive to invest in data-driven products and services. 

The workshop will bring together consumer advocates, industry representatives, economists, regulators, and other stakeholders for a wide-ranging public discussion on these issues.  To assist the agency’s analysis of this topic, the FTC is seeking comment (until August 21, 2020) on a range of issues including: 

• how companies are currently implementing data portability; 
• the benefits and costs of data portability; 
•  the extent to which data portability has increased or decreased competition;  
• who should be responsible for the security of personal data in transit between businesses; and  
• lessons learned and best practices from the implementation of the GDPR and CCPA data portability requirements. 

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The Regulatory Mix, Inteserra’s blog of telecom related regulatory activities, is a snapshot of PUC, FCC, legislative, and occasionally court issues that our regulatory monitoring team uncovers each day. Depending on their significance, some items may be the subject of an Inteserra Briefing.