By Claus Hetting, WiFi NOW CEO & Chairman
UK regulator Ofcom today released their decision on how to regulate the upper 6 GHz band between Wi-Fi and mobile – and the results are unequivocal: The Ofcom decision is an all out victory for Wi-Fi while reasonably accommodating the wishes of the mobile industry. The decision also puts the EU’s recent – and dubious – IMT-only recommendation on the same band in perspective. Are you listening, European Commission?
UK regulator Ofcom is once again proving that they are in pole position (at least on this side of the Atlantic) when it comes to regulatory innovation: Ofcom’s decision as of today means that standard power (36 dBm EIRP) Wi-Fi may be used outdoors within the 5925 MHz – 6425 MHz band while under the control of a third-party AFC system. Ofcom is also proceeding to make the upper 6 GHz band available to low-power Wi-Fi devices “while consulting further on approaches to enable Wi-Fi in the upper 6 GHz band (6425–7125 MHz),” the regulator says – although in practice, use of the upper 6 GHz band will only happen once the remainder of the regulation for upper 6 GHz is in place.
And if that wasn’t enough, Ofcom is mapping out the road ahead for use of the upper 6 GHz band using a prioritised scheme: Wi-Fi priority at the bottom (6425–6585 MHz) and mobile priority at the top (6585–7125 MHz). For the bottom part Ofcom is proposing that the Wi-Fi rules are the same as for lower 6 GHz, meaning indoor low power and standard power with AFC.
But here’s the kicker: Ofcom is proposing also to make the top part of the upper 6 GHz band available to Wi-Fi under the control of AFC for the time being. “This will ensure that we can clear Wi-Fi out of the way, in the locations and channels where mobile deploys later on,” Ofcom says. This is arguably a little work of genius by Ofcom to enable the fast adoption of Wi-Fi into this band while reasonably accommodating the wishes of the mobile industry – all the while introducing relatively little risk to any AFC-operated Wi-Fi that could be deployed in the meantime. This is remarkably clever – by any standards.
The latter two proposals are not final but rather new consultations issued by Ofcom with a submission deadline of March 20. The full Ofcom statement and related documents can be found here.
What does all this mean?
As far as we can tell the decision to enable outdoor standard power Wi-Fi in the 5925 MHz – 6425 MHz band with AFC is in immediate effect and only limited by the availability of a suitable (and presumably Ofcom approved) third-party AFC system. There are several FCC-approved AFC providers available in the US, including Qualcomm, Federated Wireless, even Wi-Fi Alliance and the Wireless Broadband Alliance. This means that this restriction shouldn’t amount to much of a challenge but of course such systems need to be configured and enabled for UK purposes.
The second – and exceedingly important – result of this policy is that Ofcom (contrary to others) is not sitting around and waiting for the mobile industry to come up with something that may (or more likely won’t) work for the 6 GHz band. Their wishes have been accommodated but in the meantime, Wi-Fi use of the band will be permitted. If it should come to pass that some kind of meaningful mobile service can be set up for the top of the upper band band, it is true that AFC would then ‘clear out’ any Wi-Fi usage – but this is a minimal risk to any Wi-Fi deployments since the bottom part is still available and because any such use will likely only be local.
At WiFi NOW we don’t believe that the mobile industry will ever extensively invest in equipment and services for this spectrum since it penetrates walls poorly and will hardly do anything to boost mobile ARPUs. But now they are free to pay for such bands and go ahead, if they so wish.
Are you listening, European Commission?
All of this cleverly designed regulation stands in sharp contrast to the EU’s recent recommendation on the same upper 6 GHz spectrum – we’ve covered it here. Reserving this spectrum for IMT (mobile) without even the slightest suggestion of using 21st century technology to manage it fairly between Wi-Fi and mobile is simply – in our view – a result of indiscriminate cronyism. There is no longer any excuse for the EU not to revisit this issue more widely and open their minds to new ideas that will benefit the people and businesses of Europe, and not only Nokia and Ericsson.
/Claus.
