The New America Foundation's Open Technology Institute joined Public Knowledge in submitting comments to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regarding unlicensed access in the 5 GHz band. Read the full text of the comments (pdf) here.
The undersigned Public Interest Organizations strongly support the Commission’s proposal to expand and enhance unlicensed access in the 5 GHz band by designating the U-NII- 2A band and U-NII-4 band for unlicensed use while also generally harmonizing the technical rules to permit more contiguous and wide-channel use of the band in a manner that takes advantage of the emerging high-capacity 802.11ac Wi-Fi standard and encourages future innovations. The beneficial and mushrooming impact of unlicensed spectrum on the telecom sector and the broader U.S. economy is well documented. Expanding unlicensed access across a variety of frequencies with different propagation characteristics will spur innovation and is the most promising strategy for satisfying exploding consumer demand for wireless broadband applications and services and increasing the ability of wireless Internet service providers to serve rural and remote communities. Expanding unlicensed access to both the low-frequency TV bands below 1 GHz and the higher, mostly line-of-sight frequencies above 5 GHz can each complement the use of licensed spectrum and facilitate new market entrants, services and applications that rely solely on unlicensed.
