We have previously written about the FCC's "War on Millimeterwaves" - the inaction on moving the upper end of spectrum regulation above 95 GHz where it has been since 2003. Why invest in such new technology when you have no idea when FCC will allow market access? There are lots of other new technologies out there, some FCC regulated and others with different types of regulation, where either no government approvals are needed for new technology or where the needed approvals are both timely and transparent. Unless you are a masochist, why limit yourself to FCC-regulated technology and certainly why invest in a technology where there is "no light at the end of the tunnel". FCC's "blind eye" to the statutory requirements of Section 7 of the Communications Act to act in a timely way on "new technology" isn't helping either.

So let's look at what our national economic competitors are doing. The new report shown at the top of this page is from ETSI, the European Telecommunications Standards Institute. While this might sound like ANSI, its US counterpart, ETSI is really very different in that Europe's telecom regulators are key members and CEPT, the organization of Europe's "FCC's" had a key role in starting it. Also note that in Europe national and EU regulations often permit the use of equipment meeting ETSI standards, e.g. GSM and DECT, and forbid alternative technologies such as those developed and sold in the US.

In this document Europe Inc is making a roadmap for millimeter wave technology and it is clear that the same Europe Inc. is subsidizing the R&D of this technology. Here is part of the discussion of what this technology can be used for:

A variety of wireline as well as wireless technologies are available to build transmission infrastructures and usually a mixed environment of physical media is adopted. While optical fibre is perceived as the physical medium with the top performance, there are techno-economic factors that make installation or even extension of optical fibre network not always the most appropriate solution. Hence, wireless technologies represent today a significant or even a dominant percentage of various operators' transmission networks to serve efficiently the increasing upward trend for providing data-hungry applications.

While microwave solutions at traditional bands are more or less employed by all kinds of service providers (mobile, fixed), it becomes clear that moving to millimetre wave frequency bands, where underutilized massive bandwidth is available, will assist to deliver transmission services of equal to optical fibre performance avoiding the constraints that the latter might impose at particular scenarios. In this sense, millimetre wave frequency bands can be used in an immense number of current and future high-speed wireless transmission applications.

While FCC Docket 14-177 deals with mobile applications above 24 GHz, the NOI seems to go out of its way to deal only with mobile uplinks and downlinks issues, even though now mobile systems will need lots of infrastructure and backbone, much of which is a target for mmWaves. In any case, while UK's Ofcom has been much faster than FCC on its counterpart of 14-177, the FCC next action is still a few months away.

This week we have news from Japan on Fujitsu's development of a new 300 GHz receiver, shown below:



Note this section from the linked Fujitsu news release:

A portion of these research results were obtained through "R&D Program on Multi-tens Gigabit Wireless Communication Technology at Subterahertz Frequencies," a research program commissioned by Japan's Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications as part of its "Research and Development Project for Expansion of Radio Spectrum Resources."

Yes, Japan, Inc. is partially funding this R&D through the very same agency that is FCC's Japanese counterpart! Now do you think Fujitsu is losing sleep about regulatory delay when it is ready to market this technology?

Such state capitalism is not the US system and should not be the US system. But in highly regulated areas like spectrum how can US entities compete against Europe, Inc. or Japan, Inc.? The answer is increasing transparency of spectra policy as well as its timeliness.

Why is Qualcomm a US company? Qualcomm was incorporates in July 1985 a few months after the May 1985 Docket 81-413 decision that permitted general use of sported spectrum in 3 unlicensed bands. According to cofounder Viterbi this stimulated the capital formation needed to get things rolling and within 2 years Qualcomm got FCC approval for its CDMA cellular technology - unbelievably controversial at the time.

At the end of the Declaration of Independence are the words "we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.” Qualcomm founders Viterbi and Jacobs may not have pledged their "lives" to get the company founded, but they certainly pledged their "fortunes" and "sacred honor" as 2 major leaders of communications theory and technology at the time. But they were able to get timely and transparent treatment from FCC at that time and a major company now results that contributes to US leadership in telecom technology.

Let's face up to the reality of state capitalism in our economic competitors and see what can be done to "level the playing field". I think speed and transparency for new technology would be a good step. Who knows, maybe even FCC compliance with Section 7 of the Communications Act after these many years might be nice step?

Tags: mmW, innovation, Section 7