The Federal Communications Commission today issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that could result in yet more spectrum put to use for mobile broadband and other purposes.
The FCC is looking at a slice of airwaves between 3550MHz and 3650MHz, and hopes to extend that to 3700MHz to forge a 150MHz block. The FCC said it will create a new Citizens Broadband Radio Service for general consumer use, carrier-grade small cell deployments, fixed wireless broadband, and other potential uses. Portions of the spectrum in question are in use by the federal government, so the FCC is proposing a three-tiered access and sharing model that will include: federal and non-federal incumbents; priority access licensees; and general authorized access users. Though the proposal says these three groups will share the spectrum, the federal government’s portions thereof will need to be protected from interference. T
he FCC is seeking comment on potential rules that would govern auctioning the spectrum, allocating it, and technical specifications. The FCC has been on a major push to make spectrum available for the last few years. It already has two auctions on deck including an incentive auction for the 600MHz band and another for AWS-3 spectrum.
