Time to Stop the Scare Tactics: Spectrum Sharing & Unlicensed Uses Enable Mobile Competition

COMMENTARY

We’ve become a wireless people. We expect access to anything and everything, whenever and wherever we want, without being tied to cables and wires. It sounds like we are spoiled, but this is the convenience that innovation and technology has delivered in just a few years. 

All of this traffic travels over radio wave frequencies that carry data to and from our cellphones, laptops and billions of other connected devices. But it’s been over a year since the Federal Communications Commission’s authority to conduct “spectrum auctions” of these radio frequencies expired. 

To restore this authority is critical because of how much of our economy has come to depend on wireless technologies, but it will take an act of Congress, which might be too dysfunctional to get anything done.

The problem is that the wireless players are at loggerheads.

The traditional telecom players — Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile — want all new spectrum to be dedicated to exclusively licensed spectrum that they own and control for their 5G networks. But cable providers and tech companies would prefer these bands be freed up for low-power unlicensed uses, namely, Wi-Fi networks or for “shared licenses.” Such licenses allow for commercial use alongside the federal agencies already operating in those bands.

The Department of Defense and NASA, as users of the spectrum desired by big wireless carriers, not surprisingly, tend to prefer this shared approach, as it would save them decades of effort and tens of billions of dollars in “clearing costs” to swap out all their communications equipment to new bands to make room for the wireless giants.

Up to this point, Congress and the FCC have done a great job of spooling out spectrum.

Some years ago, at a communications summit hosted by my organization, the speakers explained that the best strategy for making spectrum available is to spool it out gradually, rather than dumping huge amounts of spectrum on the market all at once that would likely just be hoarded. 

While the FCC’s spectrum auction authority should be renewed, there is little evidence that telecom providers are suffering from a lack of spectrum.

“We have quite a lot left of spectrum,” said Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg last month on an earnings call. “We bought spectrum for decades, not for the next two quarters. … So we feel really good about it.”

“We have C-band that we haven’t deployed, 3.45 [Ghz], as well as refarming potential from spectrum being used for LTE right now,” agreed T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert late last year. In fact, T-Mobile is actively trying to sell off some of its licenses — and is struggling to find any interested buyers.  

So why the spectrum scare tactics? It’s all about competition.

The Telecommunications Act of 1996 specifically intended to make it possible for telecom and cable companies to compete with each other. Telecom companies began offering video services, and cable companies began offering voice service.

It was easier for the telecoms to get into the cable business, but now cable providers have become a competitive threat, peeling away more than 14 million mobile subscribers in recent years. 

Cable’s mobile services offload more than 80% of their data traffic onto Wi-Fi hotspot networks and shared-license bands, at lower costs than the 5G model. 

It’s hard to conclude anything other than telecom providers are using spectrum access to crowd out their most serious long-term competition.

Globally, more than 19 billion devices connect via Wi-Fi networks; here in the United States, over 85% of all mobile device data — and 50% of all U.S. internet traffic total, both wireline and wireless — travels over Wi-Fi. 

The data clearly suggests Wi-Fi needs additional spectrum capacity at least as urgently as 5G. 

Wireless companies have leaned heavily into the narrative of Chinese 5G dominance, and our technological competition with China is no small concern. But innovation and development of advanced Wi-Fi technologies is just as important.

Think about your day — how much of your information access depends on Wi-Fi rather than on cellular data? Because Wi-Fi is “free,” pretty much everyone sets their devices to prioritize it, and I’m guessing at least 75% of my data access is done through Wi-Fi rather than cellular data.

Congress needs to restore the FCC’s spectrum auction authority, but it should not be proscribed in statute from including unlicensed and shared spectrum in its strategy.

Tom Giovanetti is president of the Institute for Policy Innovation, a conservative, free-market public policy research organization based in Dallas, Texas. He can be reached on X.