Expert Panelists Join Broadband Breakfast to Discuss Democratizing Spectrum Access

Oct 21, 2024

As Congress and regulators weigh options for maximizing finite spectrum resources, stakeholders have rallied around spectrum sharing in the 3 GHz, 7 GHz, and 37 GHz bands. Expert panelists Mary Brown (Executive Director, WifiForward), Dean Bubley (Founder & Director, Disruptive Analysis), and Dr. Monisha Ghosh (Professor of Electrical Engineering, University of Notre Dame) joined a Broadband Breakfast panel discussion on democratizing spectrum access and the value of building a more competitive ecosystem for local, non-exclusive spectrum rights.

During the event, Dr. Ghosh explained that sharing frameworks allow for greater competition and options in the marketplace. 

“The more we allow democratized access to spectrum like this, the more innovative use cases we’re going to see,” she said.

Brown discussed the economic benefits of low-power spectrum, including unlicensed technologies like Wi-Fi. 

“The economic value [of Wi-Fi] by 2027 to the U.S. economy is going to be $2.4 trillion. That is growing 33% – that is 10% of the U.S. economy – it is huge,” she explained.

Bubley called on the U.S. to advance spectrum sharing on the international stage.

“One thing the U.S. should be doing is take its leadership role in evangelizing the idea of spectrum sharing and take it around the world… This is a way to essentially improve wireless for all of humanity.”

Watch the full webinar here or check out some additional excerpts of the panelists’ remarks:

“Way over on the other side of the business model [of] spectrum is stuff that bubbles up from the end user, and those examples are unlicensed and Citizens Broadband Radio Service in 3 GHz. Citizens Broadband Radio Service uses some of the same technology that the carriers do. Unlicensed uses a different technology. But the point is, at that level, it is the end user who is defining what he or she or it wants to do with the spectrum. That is where all the energy around sharing or coexistence is happening. Because those technologies are lower power than the high-powered exclusive use spectrum that the carriers use, there are opportunities for multiple users to either share or coexist.”

Mary Brown, WifiForward

“6G is going to inherently be more democratized than 5G has been in terms of accessibility by multiple different classes of service providers, enterprises, governments, perhaps cooperatives and others. We should be designing the 6G, both as a policy environment, but also the technology to be – we can call it ‘sharing-native’ – both in terms of spectrum but also in terms of the infrastructure.” 

Dean Bubley, Disruptive Analysis

“I’m in South Bend, Indiana, where Notre Dame is, and to just give an example of how this spectrum has enabled innovative use cases – the local school district, during the pandemic years… decided to take advantage of equipment that was available that operated in CBRS and set up a deployment just to serve underserved residents of South Bend. This is exactly the kind of thing that CBRS, which was labeled the innovation band, was supposed to do – and it’s doing that beautifully. The latest numbers I’ve heard is that there are 400,000 CBSDs [CBRS base station devices] … This is incredible if you think about [it], there were zero four years ago, so growth in CBRS has been phenomenal. The use cases that you’re seeing in CBRS are use cases that kind of fall into the gap between what a public cellular network can provide versus what unlicensed Wi-Fi can provide.”

Dr. Monisha Ghosh, University of Notre Dame

“Sharing really works well… just like in a crowded room. If everybody keeps their voices down, you can have multiple conversations happening in parallel and everybody hears everybody else. If somebody gets on a megaphone and blasts their voice into the system, other conversations stop. So, we really want to be able to investigate these kinds of spectrum and see what brings most value to people and use cases and the economy.”

Dr. Monisha Ghosh, University of Notre Dame