 Welcome to our webinar on leveraging underutilized 12 gigahertz airwaves for 5G competition and digital equity. I am Michael Calabrese. I direct the wireless future project, which is part of New America's Open Technology Institute. First, I'd like to thank our friends at Public Knowledge, Kathleen and her team for co-hosting this webinar. After I provide some background, I will turn it over to Monica Eleven, the executive editor of Fierce Wireless, who will moderate our panel discussion. We encourage your questions, which you can put in the Slido box to the right of the video at any point. The 12 gigahertz band represents an unprecedented 500 megahertz of contiguous upper midband spectrum from 12.2 to 12.7 gigahertz. There is no other low or midband spectrum under consideration by the FCC that offers as much potential capacity for high speed 5G wireless connectivity. The FCC adopted a notice of proposed rulemaking last January seeking comment on proposals to expand access to the 12 gigahertz band on a shared basis. Opening the 12 gigahertz band to wireless 5G and unlicensed opportunistic sharing is premised on studies that suggest coexistence is feasible with the two satellite services that currently operate in the band. The long time incumbent is satellite TV, the direct broadcast satellite services operated by Dish and Direct TV. The other satellite service is being newly deployed by non-geostationary satellite operators, notably SpaceX, which this year began to offer its Starlink internet service using a constellation of low earth orbiting satellites. A third set of licensees have limited terrestrial rights to share the band for data and video distribution. These terrestrial rights are limited because they authorize only a one way service at relatively low power as a kind of adjunct to DBS. Dish and RS access hold most of these MV DDS licenses, which were purchased at auction, and they are seeking flexibility to provide two way mobile 5G services in the band. The organization together with public knowledge filed comments on behalf of a coalition of public interest groups that also included Consumer Federation of America, the National Digital Inclusion Alliance, the Center for Rural Strategies, Tribal Digital Village and others. Our overall perspective is premised on coexistence and more intensive terrestrial and satellite use of the band. We believe that expanding terrestrial broadband use could promote more competition in 5G services, enhance the benefits of next generation Wi-Fi, and help to address the digital divide in underserved communities. Our comments made three recommendations. First, we urge the FCC to give considerable weight to the fact that more intensive use of the band for 5G could improve competition affordability and quality of service. Second, we further urge the Commission to balance any expanded spectrum rights for existing licensees by adopting aggressive build out requirements and by authorizing open and shared access to unused spectrum capacity on a use it or share it basis. Our comments focused on two potential opportunities for expanding shared access for individual consumers and for small and rural ISPs. We recommended the Commission authorized an unlicensed underlay for at least low power indoor only use across the entire band. An unlicensed underlay similar to the one approved last year in the 6 GHz band for Wi-Fi indoors will be particularly relevant if it turns out that mobile 5G cannot coexist with incumbent satellite services. Finally, we urge the Commission to authorize opportunistic access to unused capacity in the band outdoors to the extent that coordination can protect the primary licensed services from harmful interference. As you'll hear from our panel, opportunistic access to unused spectrum for providers of fixed point to multi-point wireless broadband can improve access and affordability in rural, tribal and underserved areas. With that background of mine, we'll move now to our panel, moderated by Monica Eleven. Monica is the executive editor at Fierce Wireless, where she covers spectrum issues, as well as business trends and new technologies in wireless. Monica previously served as editor-in-chief of Wireless Week, and before that as a reporter and copy editor at several community newspapers in the Pacific Northwest. Over to you, Monica. Thanks, Michael, for that great introduction. Yeah, I'm just going to introduce our panelists today and then we can go into our Q&A. We have with us today Nicole Turner-Lee, Director Center for Technology Innovation at Brookings, Joel Thayer, President, Digital Progress Institute, Kathleen Burke, Policy Council at Public Knowledge, Matthew Ranteton, I'm sorry, Director of Technology Southern California Tribal Chairman's Association, and Ryan Johnston, Policy Council, federal programs next century cities. I'll turn it over to each of our panelists and you can give a brief introductory introduction, I'm sorry, on today's topic before we jump into the Q&A. Nicole, please go ahead. Well, thank you so much for having me and thank you, Monica, for my panel and Michael always, I've known Michael for over 25 years, believe it or not, when he was actually looking at white space. My comments are short because I just hang on the side of the bar with the spectrum folks. I'm not particularly an expert in gigahertz technology spectrum policy, but what I do know is that we need to do something to close the digital divide. And the more that we can actually expand upon the different spectrum options that are available. I wrote a paper not too long ago about communities of color and 5G networks. Obviously back then when we tried to go with high millimeter wave solutions, we found that we weren't going to get the density or the capacity of coverage that we needed to get. So mid band is obviously the way to go going forward. The question becomes is that this pandemic has showed us just how isolating being digitally disconnected can be I'm writing a book on that actually in Michael Calabrese is actually in my book with Harold felt in terms of the first time that they approached me about different forms and alternative technologies that we could actually use to connect urban areas. But I'd like to get out of this conversation and the contribution I'd like to make is whatever solution that we have is going to actually be enough to close the divide and allow not just for the consumption of movies and other entertainment commercial oriented applications but as I wrote in a paper recently that it actually allows for the enterprise downloads that we need to facilitate telehealth educational outcomes, the ability of people to work from home regardless of where they are in the country. So I'll stop there Monica because I'm curious to see how we actually blend the technical aspects with these sociological implications going forward, but I'm happy to participate and happy to talk a lot more on how any of these technologies particularly as we see the release of this new spectrum how it's actually going to impact communities of color and those that sit on the wrong side of digital opportunity. Okay, thanks that's good. All right, Joe, please go ahead. I have the distinct privilege of going right after Nicole who always throws a sweet layup and makes it really easy to follow so I appreciate Nicole for framing and allow and allow us to have this conversation. Also, I thank you new America and PK for having this thoughtful discussion. It's something that I think is very important and as Nicole rightly put it. We have to do a very a better job of merging the social policy with the with the technical policy. And these conversations are really helpful in getting the message out. But before I start I should put a plug for my own organization I am the president of the Digital Progress Institute, and the DP eyes overall goal is to merge the policy divide between tech and telecom. We try to do so through bipartisan consensus. So, our things like 12 gigahertz are very interesting to us because it fits into our overall, overall universal broadband plan, universal broadband priority, and the way it does so and as a is that because this up to 500 megahertz of spectrum does a very good job of increasing competition and also lowering the cost of overall build out so as a recent study I believe by our RKF engineering suggests that 12 gigahertz band can really expedite the 5G networks by providing so called last mile fix mobile services. This 500 megahertz of spectrum would complement the significant amount of mid band spectrum for 5G that the FCC has opened up under the leadership of chairman and she pie and I'm sure, moving forward with the, the future chairman, a rose and more so. So, if the Commission does proceed on this and I think that they ultimately should. Your mobile devices can connect more easily to distant wireless towers with minimal infrastructure. In practical terms, I'm sure Ryan, and also Matthew will talk about this more, more specifically, a city can enjoy more connectivity without deploying towers that look nothing like fake palm trees or digging up more wires to connect directly to buildings. So, this can mitigate mitigate the costs associated with seeking permits at the state and local level. These local barriers of entry, take a team of lawyers to sift through a jurisdictional legal claims and also take up a significant amount of time, which ultimately does look down build out generally but can only the few regulation regulatory hoops that carries you to go through in a city zoning process, the better, which makes this use of 12 gigahertz even more appealing so the fact is we're the 12 gigahertz not only for digital buy within urban communities under for underserved carrier for underserved individuals, but also answer folks in the rural, in the rural context as well. So, big fan. Okay, good. All right Kathleen, please introduce yourself. My name is Kathleen Burke and I'm a policy counselor public knowledge I have the great privilege and honor of getting to work under her old felt on the spectrum issues who has taught me so much and also getting to work with Michael Calabria says is has been amazing but when we're looking at the 12 gigahertz band, you know we we primarily represent a consumer interest. So what we are thinking about with the 12 gigahertz band is how does this impact consumers. You know, from a standpoint of wireless competition. So there's two things that are impactful here in the 12 gigahertz band that impact competition you have both the opportunity for this 5G mobile terrestrial use which would, you know, help expand competition in the wireless wireless markets, but then there's also this opportunity of the unlicensed overlay which also directly impacts competition in the wireless space. So why competition matters is because when you have a truly competitive market and you have more competition in the wireless space, you have better, more affordable access to two connections, you had tend to have better quality of service, and communities that don't have access are more likely to get access in a competitive market. So those are really the three consumer benefits that we see impacting that are impacted in this 12 gigahertz band. So I think one of the things that I like to say when I'm framing spectrum policy and how we can impact this consumer benefits is we need to move from a model of thinking about this as an either or and thinking about it as an end. The terminology that we now have in order to share bands of spectrum allows us to have an end attitude towards how we provide access to spectrum. So that's something that I think is a really important framing in order to, in order to see what's possible in this band. So, I think that's all I have to say so far. We'll get to more of that later. Matthew, let's go ahead. Thank you Monica. And thanks to public knowledge in New America for always keeping me in their conversations, both Harold and, and Michael have been very inclusive over the last two decades. I'm 21st year at Tribal Chairman's Association, and I have served, you know, around six or seven years on different groups in the FCC, two terms on the Native Nations broadband task force and one term on the communication security reliability and interoperability Council so I've seen the sausage making behind the lines. And I think, you know, this from a tribal broadband perspective, you know, tribes welcome the idea of opportunistic spectrum sharing of the 12 gigahertz. I mean, there are not enough tools in the toolbox right now to make this, you know, all the spectrum that's available right now in the unlicensed space work to build an entire network if you have a larger community a larger tribal network, you know, this is one of those tools that that really adds to the toolbox and allows us to do more and, and takes the stress off of, of the systems we have today. However, I'm going to throw a wrench into the works a little bit here. I'm really concerned that if the intentions that tribes will use this spectrum until the telcos decide to build out in their area. So then this is maybe not the best method because consider the capital expense a tribe would need to put up to be able to build network using 12 gigahertz, and then at some point, unknown what the timing will be that would be taken away. So this may also be the tool that solves the problem on the reservation for connectivity in a specific scenario, because of the, you know, the way the spectrum works and, and the usage of it in a certain region and then, you know, having that they be removed at any time is a little counter counterintuitive. So maybe, you know, a secondary market lease on that spectrum or some sort of a timeline that's locked that tribes could could bank on. Let's say, you know, let's just call it 10 years. If there was a 10 year timeline where the tribes knew they could use the 12 gigahertz they would deploy in that. Otherwise I don't know that they would support. You know, across the board, the use of this I mean sure some of the tribes that are a little bit more advanced and have a little bit more fluid cash would potentially step into this if they have a larger community and they have, you know, things to do and they're easily able to transition but those smaller tribes, which is half of them, you know they're really trying to build this once and not build this, you know, as expensive as it could be, it's going to put them in a tough spot so realistically. The coalition should be open to supporting a tribal priority window for the license of 12 gigahertz in the 5G services space for all tribal lands. We have a very solid precedent for a successful tribal priority window at the FCC with the 2.5 gigahertz band, where the FCC publicly stated that they expected 12 applicants, 12 tribal applicants. Over 500 applications for licenses were and they were submitted and over 400 licenses have been awarded. So tribes are actively using 2.5 gigahertz is one of the tools to support their communication needs in their communities. We feel like 12 gigahertz would be the same opportunity. And this would bring widespread support from tribal leaders and tribal organizations. So as the title references of our talk today, you know the last, the last two words and it is digital equity, and this is digital equity for the tribes in this process. This would create partnerships between the telcos and the tribes, very similar to those partnerships that are being forged in the 2.5 gigahertz space today. They are actively working with telcos doing spectrum swaps and leases with that 2.5 gigahertz we'd love to see that happen in 12 gigahertz because it makes them part of the equation. Thank you. Okay, great. Thank you for that. And Ryan, you get to follow everybody else. Please take the floor. Wonderful. Good morning, everyone. And again, thank you to PK and OTI for hosting this event. I am the policy council for federal programs with next century cities and NCC is a membership based organization. We represent over 220 cities, towns, counties, localities across 40 states. And really what I want to focus on is how we can make sure that these communities are able to do the most it's in their power to get their residents connected. When we really look at it, the 12 gigahertz is so critical because of the opportunities that we have to actually share the spectrum. In those incredibly rural areas, the advances that we've made in satellite technology mean that satellite is actually a viable option for people now, instead of kilobits per second we're getting meaningful megabits megabits per second that people can use to you know stream do their homework. Things like that where they just weren't able to do that before, but at the same time, in urban communities, we have the ability for these point to point point to multi point and wireless mesh network builds that are able to connect the unserved and the underserved in those urban communities as well. But, and it's not just that we also have the low power uses that communities can use to build out their public Wi Fi networks that people can use for indoor uses things that we kind of take for granted at this point but some communities just haven't got haven't been able to do until now. So we're really looking at how best can we share this the spectrum. Right now the more spectrum sharing that we do now, the more precedent that we have for when we need to do it in the future. And really I think this is just the beginning of freeing up more spectrum and this is, we're certainly going to be having a lot more of these these discussions in different bands. So the more that we can say we have precedent for doing the hard work that makes the spectrum sharing easier in the future. We need to be doing that now. Thanks. All right, let's get into the Q&A portion now. And I'll start with one of the things that is still going on in this proceeding is SpaceX, they would like to use the spectrum. I think they just had another filing pretty recently, maybe even this week about how that what they want to do with it. And they say, quote, the surest way to promote rapid deployment of high speed broadband would be to close the proceeding and let the companies use a 12 gigahertz band. Of course that's what they would like. But I want to hear the panelists, what is your response to that? Big company, big money, all these things, interests. Can the spectrum be shared with them according to some studies that can happen? How do you deal with the SpaceX? I'll put it that way. And any takers on who wants to go first, I'll just throw it to you, Nicole. I mean, I think on the satellite side, you know, let's all be clear that there's been some recent innovation in satellite that I think it's worth looking at, particularly when you're talking about closing the digital divide. Low orbital satellites have a potential to actually close some of those areas that have been the hardest to serve. I know that for a fact in my book tour. And I think I didn't give you the title, but it's visually invisible how the Internet is creating the new underclass. I actually drove around the country pretty much and saw the fact that there were many communities that had more cows than people. And as a result of that, it was going to be harder to bring access there. So, I mean, I would have to say that as we come up with the solution that I think shared has always been in the pallet on the pallet of many technologists. When you think about spectrum, it's no shortage of conversation around the scarcity that's happened for decades, as you know that as well, Monica. And the question becomes, you know, can we all get along? What the pandemic has basically shown us is that we're going to have to figure this out because there are still millions of people who are disconnected before the pandemic and now afterwards. And so I think going forward, and I'll leave it to my colleagues to talk more on the technical side. I think it's one of those things in my opinion, and I'm pretty open about this. But this may not be a picking of winner and losers, but perhaps a better negotiation strategy for how we get everybody on board and how we find the right technologies that fits the particular community. I've been very public about that, but there's no one size fits all for these technologies. I think most importantly, and again, I go back to sort of where Ryan's coming from and where Kathleen has mentioned on that point is that the public interest is really important. And so as we begin to assess the validity of these technologies like 12 gigahertz to actually get into spaces, much more seamlessly and obviously we know 5G is going to be the game changer on that. If we can't get there, then what are we going to bring to communities and I think that's one of the challenges that I face in my research talking to educators across the country. How do we actually solve the digital divide and how do we make the technology make sense for those communities as well. So I think there's going to be a lot more debate on this. I'm glad that I sit at Brookings so I don't have to actually chime in and say who's right or wrong, but I would say that I think there's some cool innovations that are happening on both fronts. The question is no one should hog the spectrum. If it means that we can't get to the communities that needed the most. Okay, go ahead, Ryan. Yeah, and I'll follow on the as someone who comes from a small town of Pennsylvania that has more cows than people. I certainly appreciate your point. But really when we're looking at kind of the arguments that are being made by some of the satellite companies that actually really eliminates the possibilities of 12 gigahertz being used outside of anywhere that isn't incredibly remotely remote. So satellite isn't going to work in urban communities. And so when we're looking at this, I'll give you two examples. So in Santa Rafael, California, at the beginning of the pandemic, this is one of the most impoverished communities in California. And they realize that they were having a big problem with their kids getting to school. And so they decided to provision their own wireless mesh network, simply just to get their students online. If, while they weren't using 12 gigahertz for that, we're certainly looking at, would someone in the future who is looking to undertake a similar project to be able to do that with the spectrum. And if so, cutting that off prevents them from being it might prevent them from being able to undertake those projects. At the same time, we look at communities like King, New Hampshire, where they are incredibly focused on trying to build out their smart city applications to figure out what analytics in their downtown core look like, how they can use that to influence their economy, how they can drive people to their various businesses. So there are a lot of things that 12 gigahertz can help create, but simply saying, you know, this is only for one type of provider will really cut off basically everyone else who should be able to use this to actually to improve the things that aren't wouldn't be readily available in their community, any willing satellite. You know, and I want to agree with Ryan on that it's actually funny I just did a webinar for the US Department of Education and the superintendent actually shared a story so Ryan this is why my mind is where it's at, one how they were actually using low orbital satellite technologies to actually cover a particular area where the district was because they couldn't get any service there was a small town in Texas. And I think that, you know, I haven't been the chair of the subcommittee back in the days when chairman Jenna Kowski was in office over the unlicensed wireless committee. We talked about this decades ago so I'm actually happy that we're opening up more spectrum bands so that we're able to actually be creative in their uses white spaces another area. So I do agree with you I think we just have to make sure that we don't cut off for the purposes of people who really are hard to serve or we can't. We have to have multiple posted notes to figure out ways to get to them that we think about the creative uses of 12 gigahertz band, but we also don't foreclose another opportunities. Well I'm curious does anyone want to weigh in and how technically this could be done because I guess what I'm thinking of is kind of like the sea band where they actually move satellite players. They have to physically move and that's a huge, huge thing, but and could the same thing happen with the 12 gigahertz man or a similar thing and not the same but something similar and maybe the space, or I'm sorry the satellite companies maybe have other spectrum they could use. So moving into the weeds on the technical let me just say it's sad that we're having to fight over 12 gigahertz to solve this when there is a wealth of spectrum in the warehouse, where we couldn't activate some more spectrum, so that both of these things can happen at the same time it's really kind of a sad situation that we're being forced to deal with the sort of like the scraps as they come available, versus opening up a swath of spectrum that is designed to support both the needs here. So the very valuable solution, Laura Thorbitt is a is a is a great blanket to have over the United States and over the world itself to solve those communication problems where you're not going to spend $100,000 to run fiber around a ridge line that feeds a single house, you're going to spend $100,000 on a tower to serve two houses that are out of line of sight from a wireless communications effort. So that is a really great pothole service solve it is not, you know it is not the total solution it is one of the tools to solve these problems. And I think that the fact that we're having to fight over a little chunk of spectrum when there's so much spectrum available at the US government to be able to unlock to be able to do these things. Do you mean a lot of the in the three gigahertz band or any particular spectrum are you thinking of Matthew. Well, if you look at the spectrum map that is wider than I can reach on a poster and the fact that we're using somewhere in this amount, and the rest of it is warehouse for military in the US government. It seems to me that there would be another band available that we can unlock to be able to do these things and you know to be able to support the satellite companies that are doing these things that are actually very valuable solution. And then be able to do the things that 12 gigahertz is supposed to do on the ground. I don't think we all have to play in the same 12 gigahertz I think we could move around I mean yes the physics determines what works best for what solution. We've been very adaptable to the limitations of specific types of spectrum to be able to do things that we've shown that we can do create very creative things with spectrum as go all the way back to 2.4 when we started building networks on 2.4. Everybody went what you know all the creativity happened in non licensed space so you know I'm just saying that there's enough warehouse of spectrum that we could solve this problem without having a fight. So we build on that point about that they're being a no spectrum we're talking on 12 gigahertz is also 500 megahertz or up to 500 megahertz it's a large swath. And so it's not as if it's and this goes back to Kathleen's overall point whether this is an, this isn't an and it's an or so and I think that there's plenty to your point, or to your question Monica about whether or not this will look like see better this is easier than see then in a lot of ways, just because the way these, the way the uses have been thrown out just through the record. It looks as if rural is going to satellites are going to handle rule very well. It might not even be relatively or even remotely affected by what's happening in the 5g wireless space that's going to happen mainly in urban. So you have this you have significant geographical differences and distances that will protect that will serve as that level so that goes back to kind of what Ryan is describing to which is like look you can't simply say, well it's only for 5g or only for rural it's actually for all. And I, and I go and I very much sympathize or Matthews point on interagency processes and it's kind of being the largest squatter of and I'll say it like they are like sorry they are spectrum squatters. And I think it's time to reevaluate how we work with the government to open up these, these mid bands which are Goldilocks like spectrum. So if you look at what what the DoD is doing they're throwing out pilots about how we can better use this well one way you can better use it is let's repurpose it for things that we are actually actually useful. And if you look at 12, that would actually really increase the value of things like 12 gigahertz or six gigahertz because, frankly, you can't look at spectrum in a way that as a monolith, each spectrum band can actually have a different spectrum band and in some ways like you look we saw the 24 gigahertz. When you're receiving where you're looking at 24 gigahertz as a linchpin to other types of spectrum, 12 gigahertz could play that role. And again, I just think that if, if you're having a business model saying we can do it better well this is just about all the business models that rather than a, we're trying to create creative solutions. I think there are plenty of studies on the record or there's plenty of evidence that this is a very much shared band I think a lot of the FCC engineers agree with that that perspective so I think that's probably the way forward and I know Kathleen had wanted to jump in as well because I, she's done a lot of great work on the whole sharing arrangements and being able to use flexible use licenses in that way. Yeah, I just want to jump back a little bit to the question Monica asked and addressing SpaceX's, you know, claims that it's not possible to share this band. First of all, they have not submitted any studies, or any technical analysis that says that it's not possible. The only technical study that is in the record before the FCC on this proceeding says that it is possible and demonstrates that it is possible. I am not an engineer, but we have an ex term who hasn't it who's a telecom engineer and has been working in the industry for 10 years and he did review the study for us and give us his opinion of whether or not it's valid and he couldn't find anything wrong with it. So, I think when it comes to this discussion of what's possible in the 12 gigahertz band. The evidence demonstrates that it is possible to share this band that you can have this NGOS, NGSO satellite operations in the band, and also have the 5G mobile terrestrial use without there being these issues of interference that SpaceX is so concerned about. If they are truly concerned about this then show the study, do the do the engineering analysis show us the facts show us the show us the why and where and the technical reasons, and that has not happened in this proceeding. So I think what's important to also remember is that anytime there's an incumbent in a band who has an exclusive license to spectrum. They are always going to fight sharing I don't think there's an ever been an instance of an incumbent who has been like yes please let me share my spectrum now that it's now that we have the technology to do so. I am happy to share my spectrum with other uses that's just not how it's just not the reality of how these things play out. And so I think that's also something that you need to consider when you to pay attention to like how SpaceX is engaging with this particular proceeding. So I just wanted to like bring that all back together and point out some of this. I wanted to take you back down a little bit because I have a little bit less of a pessimistic view on how the 12 occurs proceeding is working I mean, we're actually seeing incumbents really coming to the table with 12 occurs, I think. So you have like dish and you have ours access coming to the table and saying look we're willing to share. We're trying to figure out what we'll figure out the flexible use like we'll figure out what type of license scheme we need. I think that that's a positive interaction and I think when you and I absolutely and categorically agree with Kathy left that if this or if this is a technical issue, then let's have a technical solution to resolve the issue. And I think that you're going to, you're going to find very quickly that space or any other coming isn't very losing very much or anything at all. And I think that it's a bit disingenuous for SpaceX to make the claim that they have rights in the space when it's a modified right it's it's not like they're like the overall comments they have a very very specific use of that band and they based on the, I think it's the RKF study that I think Kathleen is referring to as well because it's the only study I've seen in, in, in this record, it suggests that space as, as provided now and even in the future wouldn't be affected because it's based off of their own business model, they are going to rural areas which will be far outside of anything 5G will touch. So it's, I think in this instance you're seeing an incumbents, outside of SpaceX playing nicely and trying to figure out with the FC what's the best way forward and how does everyone get a piece of this pie and again, we, the fact that we even have to do this, Matthew, you are like, you're preaching the choir here. The fact that like we are fighting over this tiny amount of spectrum when they're when the real battle is in the is in the three and the 3.5 to above or even 4.2, where you have government incumbents, like this is where we're fighting over peanuts, where we were, we could probably have more meaningful discussions about really covering really close this divide if we just got government to come in and say what are you doing with the spectrum, and can we use it. And if so, how can we protect your interest while at the same time advancing what Nicole argues all the time which is close, making sure that not only underserved folks are served but under underserved folks are also promoted in advance as well so again, I think that there's plenty of spectrum on the table, even in 12 gigahertz. Okay, well, I actually did have the question recently like how much spectrum does the DoD control and I did not get the answer but if anybody's out there Googling and finds it let us know in the chat please or Q&A maybe okay. Anyway, yeah, so I was also this might be a good time to ask you about the structure of the 12 gigahertz band and I was going to ask like is it more appealing than the 3.45 band that's currently being auctioned. But then it gets down to you know like how much is unlicensed how much is licensed, some of you've already talked about that a little bit. How do you think that should be handled in this band. If it gets to that point like, can you go houses on this like half unlicensed half licensed. How would that work anybody want to jump in on that idea, or yeah, that thought. If the tribes were licensed on the tribal lands that's far less than half if you haven't looked at a map of the reservation space in the United States lately, where it was all of the US previously now it is a, you know, micro amount so it would not even need to be 5%. If the tribes got their license. Yeah, I don't think that we're thinking of this band as a, this section of the band is unlicensed, this section of the band is licensed. So much as having an unlicensed underlay that operates on an interference free basis. The rules governing the unlicensed devices that would be allowed to operate in this band would have things like indoor only use or low power and other ways of mitigating interference so that they're still able to use the whole 500 megahertz band, but it's not interfering with the licensed operations that are occupying the same spaces. So that's, that's my understanding of how we are approaching this band, not like we did with the 5.9 gigahertz band where it's like the bottom half is going to be hopefully, so on is that appeal in the DC circuit goes well. And this is going to be 45 megahertz for unlicensed exclusive in that space and then the top 30 megahertz was given to the license folks. That's not the model that this band is has been proposed in this band it's more of this underway structure. And this isn't a perfect analogy but they could the FC could probably leverage the experience they got out of the three dot the CVRS band, where you had different tiers of usage and also. But again it's not a perfect analogy but it kind of feeds into both what Matthew and Kathleen are referring to which is like this underlay of like look, we recognize that there might be uses that we haven't thought of yet. And we want to make sure that we are increasing the capabilities and also leveraging as much technology as humanly possible to ensure everyone can leverage this band and promote broadband. But again, I think that they're the FC has a lot of at least a lot of experience in sort of breaking up the bands while including things like general access. So they can probably leverage things again I think CVRS is it would be an interesting study and the upcoming CBand auction will also yield some benefits out of this. I was just going to I was just going to mention this something I've written about as well. I think that this spectrum in particular I wanted to sort of respond to Joel in terms of the satellite cornering the real market. And I think that's the purpose of this band right to be able to have better propagation in real markets with 5G because right now, it's not very few companies that have the depth and the capacity to actually serve along large swaths of area. We have a lot of tribal lands, as well as like in parts of rural America, we know we have very little facility. With that being the case, you know, I think it goes back to what we've been talking about, you know, I don't think we should X out one over the other. I think part of the challenge that we have I can go there based on my work that I do at Brookings is that China is sort of beat us to the punch on many of these technologies and we're sort of behind. And the question becomes, can we start putting together the ingredients of what will make much more capable systems for us to actually drive, which we know is going to be a game changer which is 5G right because 5G is not just about talking and texting and downloads but it's really about our ability to have seamless connections to carry these enterprise based functions that require a lot more bandwidth less, you know, a lot less slippage and they need more propagation we've just not been able to solve that. And also, I think when I was sharing the unlicensed committee with Rudy Brioche back in the days, I feel like I'm old now because we've been doing this conversation as we go off a long time. You know, this creative use is really a real thing, you know, when you go back to Michael Calabrese and Harold felt early days of promoting white spaces look at where it's at now so I think the conversation needs to be had because what we actually will see is the turn of events on technology will be highly connected to what Matthew said that is fighting over it, figuring out how we can actually go into the depth of these technologies do really cool things to close the divide. And if I can add to that just a little bit, but we're looking at hopefully seeing as much of the spectrum being in licenses we possibly can get because we're when we look at what wireless internet service generally is it's unlicensed spectrum. We're looking at a community, a rural community saying we need to provision our own network because we can't convince a provider to come out here. They might not have the staff capacity the technical knowledge, the ability to hire a consultant lawyer to come out and say okay this is how you apply for this license this is how you get from point A to point B to have the piece of paper and hand that says you are allowed to use these airwaves. So, if we need to put as kind of few barriers between the people that want to connect their, their residents are get connected, and the ability for them to do so. All the roadblocks, if we put roadblocks in the way via licensing and whatnot will actually probably continue to keep the divide close to where it is rather than actually close it. All right, well I wanted somebody Joel I think you mentioned the FCC and I kind of want to zero in on that since we've had some recent changes there are soon to be changes with the nomination of Jessica, Jessica Rosen Warsaw as the permanent FCC chair and GG so on as a new commissioner. And I'm just wondering like, realistically how fast can they move on the 12 gigahertz band. You know, regardless of where everyone is situated maybe some people are saying you know get it on the agenda and let's go it's not, you know we can we can do something now and this sort of thing. What are sort of your thoughts about that. Do we know where, where the commissioner stand on this I think Commissioner car mentioned something a while back about, you know it's up to the engineers it's an engineering question so I don't know. Any volunteers on jumping in on that one. It's a little it's hard for us to read but john please. I don't think any of us have a crystal ball and it's with the spectrum every time you have a commissioner saying openly this is a tech as technical problem you know that it's going to be a long fight. Yeah, but based on the record, I think that it can. It's fairly clear that, given that, again, and I'm not pooping anything is basically saying it ultimately I'm just saying that we compared to some of the documents that we've got the actual engineering studies that are on the record, compared to what they presented. I don't think that there is a real engineering question here I think the question really comes down to what do the rules look like and also, in particular how the power levels work out. And so I, again, I think that if there's enough in the record now for the FCC to move on a lot, a large portion of the empire and if not all of it. So I would expect that now that we have a full slate. I, I'm, I agree again like she's never been commissioner but she's, she's certainly been pretty active in the, in the FC space and she's made her opinions known which this is why I love her so much. I would expect that she's probably that she would probably be in favor of moving forward with these types of arrangement with sharing arrangements, just based off of her previous record and I think Jessica rose and Rosal, or I should say chairman Rosal is, I would think very keen on leveraging some of the, some of the successes that the previous kept CC had in terms of opening up more spectrum. So, if you, if you're pushing out a CBAN auction, it makes sense that you want some to compliment CBAN. And so I think that 12 gigahertz may offer her that lay up in terms of opening up a very significant band. Well, at the same time, leveraging some of the past successes of the FC as a clearing spectrum, because as we all agree here, there's no greenfield spectrum. The sharing is probably going to be probably going to be the motive operation moving forward. Again, I hope that she can do this in the first quarter of next year. But again, this is a spectrum fights never work out the way I want them to, or never work out the timeline that I want them to, but no, nobody's asking me for that, that kind of experience. But however, I think that the record does indicate that there's enough to move forward and I ultimately, I hope that we see something in the first quarter of next year. First of all, I hope we get confirmation. That's, I think that's step one. And, you know, they've been sort of stuck in the mud, if you will, with with the situation there and now so it'll be nice to have, you know, five, five on the bench and be able to actually operate as the FCC is intended to operate. You know, it'll open up the process again where we can actually move things through. I think a lot of that's been stuck. I'm looking forward to that opportunity and you know the history and relationships that tribal communities have had with both of them. And I have been very good over the years so I think, you know, potentially, you know, some of the things that I mentioned might be on the table as well as, I think just the looking at tall good hurts as an opportunity to solve a lot of other problems as well so, you know, I look at it in a positive space but I don't know if we can assume that everything's going to be rushed. Honestly, don't think that anything's going to be rushed to the way things have been moving lately. Oh, I'm sorry. No, you go ahead, Nicole. Oh, please. Yeah, I was just going to jump in and say, well, actually, Kathy, you go because you probably got to talk about the technical because I'm throwing something a little different. I was going to talk about the politics of the nomination but I have a much more optimistic viewpoint granted with the caveat that I don't have a crystal ball. You know, Rosenhorstle needs to be confirmed before Congress goes on session because her term is up. So we're, you know, we're hopeful that this will go through quickly and, you know, we kind of think that it'll be likely push GG and so on and Jessica Rosenhorstle and I'm thinking on the NTIA nominee right now and my apologies. All three of them at the same time in order to try to get them through all together and also it's really important that they get them all nominated together because having a full commission and having a, you know, ready to go NTIA is critical to the funding mechanisms of the infrastructure package. And hopefully, by the end of the year, there will be, you know, confirmations, and there's also precedent for the speed. I'm sounding 10 went through pretty quickly so we'll see, but you know, over to you, Nicole. Yeah, I'm going to say the same thing as all my colleagues on this call. It's about time right because there's going to be a lot of money flowing into the Federal Communications Commission as well as the National Communications Information Administration and Kathleen that's Alan Davidson, all people including Gigi that we know and acting chairwoman Rosa Warsaw as we all know is a commissioner, much like a GPI that actually understands spectrum policy so I think that we'll actually see things get done. The question though I think based on this conversation we're having today that we got to make sure that we know what the landscape of national spectrum assets are in this country because there seems to be this divide as well between all the people who deal with the sociological implications like myself and all the people who are highly technical. And I think at the end of the day, we're going to make assumptions that more spectrum is actually going to lead to better consumer benefit that we need to quantify that and figure out, again, not a one size fits all approach but where do we need to expand upon the capacity of certain spectrum to get the job done. We should not go into this post pandemic stage where people still can't get high capacity 5G, if we do have a spectrum that's going to allow that so I want to put that out there too. I also think with Gigi in particular, we're going to see a lot of focus on public benefit which I think is really important but I want to kind of bring people back to one of the issue that I'll actually put out there that I was working on for a long time when I was doing advocacy, we're going to have minority ownership in the secondary market of the spectrum asset so we're going to see a lot of spectrum floating through, but we've never been successful and Monica you know this Janelle Trigg was a person that I followed and getting minority ownership of some of the secondary market spectrum is critical to not just closing digital divide but also closing digital and economic opportunities for entrepreneurs. And so we've seen a historical trend where we've not been able to share that spectrum on that economic front the way that we're talking about it on technical front. Hopefully we'll have a commission suite of people who see the importance as part of economic recovery in this country to make sure that we open up some of that spectrum opportunity to folks that will get it to the communities of interest. So, you know, I hope that it'll go through fast I actually agree with everybody else I don't think we don't get acting chair acting chairwoman Rose were also confirmed before the end of the year. That's going to be a problem, particularly since we have all these assets flowing potentially through the infrastructure bill we want somebody at the head of the ship. That's going to make sure these funds go to the right place but we have to have to have to contextualize it among you know the public interest as well as equity to make sure that we have this conversation a way that everybody gets a piece of this pie. And Monica this I think that you're hearing kind of a general consensus among Democrats and Republicans in that we need to figure out what the government has and how do you value these assets I mean we had the Ray bombs act that essentially tried to do that. But there's all these circumventions as to how we can get that out to the general public so in order for us to truly assess this the government has to play ball. And they have to be able to honestly and earnestly figure out not only what they have but the value of that and as long as that they've done that in your faith which I'm not going to sit here and say the government doesn't do things in good faith but I'll leave that to the viewer to decide my my the point is is that this is going to require not just the FCC, but in all the agencies that are either using spectrum owners, owners of spectrum, or just casual users to honestly and earnestly figure out what they have and what value it is and that way we get it to the right folks and that way it helps folks like Nicole be able to research exactly. How does this, how do the technical specifications match with the sociological benefit and allows Matthew his constituents to figure out well how much of the how much would be required for tribal to make sure for tribal entities to make sure that they are also not left in the digital desert. So it this, this is going to be a holistic approach to spectrum policy. And again, I think that you have acting rosin, which I guess I was a little bit to more optimistic than some of the folks by actually straight up calling your chair. But I, I honestly think that these are folks on the panel, these panel of FCC folks are work very well, at least on the spectrum side of things to figure out good compromises. And I'm very hopeful that we're able to do, we're able to walk and chew gum, not only are we able to do these lay perform these layups, but also get other entities do D to help us like understand what they have and how much they can let go or at the very least comes up with some flexible use license licensing that makes sense. And I'll say to it, I, I'd say that it's not just the Department of Defense on this one. We're looking at kind of all of these intergovernmental squabbles and the Department of Transportation comes to mind with some of the CVDX stuff. But I'd say that I'm pretty optimistic when we when we look at how quickly this can go I mean we've seen acting chairwoman Rosalind commissioner Starks be very clear about what they want. We've seen commissioner signing to say that he wants to milk them in advance for everything we can get. And Commissioner Carter has always been a proponent of 5G. So we have, like, at the moment, all of the commissioners aligned on pushing through this, this technology, how exactly can we get there we don't know but 12 gigahertz is a good start for that is a fantastic start and no matter how we go about this, it, the spectrum is needs to be shared to kind of meet all of those goals that each commissioner has. There's no, no one at the FCC is saying, we're only going to follow the satellite route or we're only going to follow the 5G route. And it comes down to a, everybody saying yes 12 gigahertz is good, it's going to be shared. So I'm very optimistic that, hopefully, within the dwindling legislative days we get some confirmations. And that will be that will kind of make everything certain that we'll get it through. But if, as we get closer, hopefully we might see some action on the NPR and even if we haven't gotten to the confirmation stage yet. Good. Well, we're getting down to the final minutes here. And I'm going to some of the audience questions. One of them has to do with the tribal broadband and that question for you Matthew is, I think you mentioned the tribal priority window for this band. How would that work, can you just maybe briefly tell us a little bit about how that, how that might work at 12 gigahertz. Yeah, so it was first instituted in the FM radio station band. During the time that I was at the nation's broadband task force and and I was chair of native public media at the time as well. We fought to get that in place they basically grabbed the language from the FM priority and put it into the 2.5 gigahertz if you look at that language. So essentially, identifies the areas. Unfortunately, it was a rural tribal definition and not a tribal definition tribal lands definition that was instituted by a Jeep PI but we are pushing to go back to the tribal lands definition that existed prior, so that we include all the tribes. And then it is an opt in process. It's a simple application, an opt in process that allows tribes to get the license for their tribal land right for their tribal community to serve their tribal community and not outside their community, and not, you know, the whole state or the whole county or any of those things, but to serve their own communities needs and communications and and therefore solve their the problem that's not being solved by the incumbents that have been incentivized repeatedly for decades to do so. You know, the tribes have realized that nobody's coming to do this for them in most cases, and so they're having to build that themselves so an opt in process, an application window allows them to sign up and some don't because some don't want that piece of spectrum or some don't want to participate in this realm, but very many of them do want to have access to these tools, especially at a licensed level because tribes don't have bankable assets to borrow money to build out on so they have sovereign land that cannot be repossessed you can't put your land mass up in as collateral for a loan. So these these licensed spectrum allocations these licenses are actually a way that they can put up as collateral against a loan to build out their networking and pay those bags so it's really strategic economic tool as well and it really takes the tribe from, you know, a consumer to an owner, and, you know, has equity in the game. Okay. Very good. Well, thanks for that. All right, I think we're going to have to wrap it up now. Thanks everybody I think I don't know if Michael you want to have any closing remarks, but I appreciate everybody being here today. Very good panel. Okay, sounds good. Oh, here we go. Michael. Thanks Monica. I'd know I just, just to thank all the speakers for a really informative discussion covered a lot a lot of ground and provided a lot of context for this the ongoing debate about this band and thanks to all of you who joined us today this is of sort of an ongoing series of webinars on spectrum issues that one of us future holds and we'll be having more, you know, in the coming months so we'll, you know, please get on our event list on the new America homepage if you are not already and thanks. Thanks all and we'll see you next time. Thank you very much. Thanks Michael. Thank you. Thanks Monica and everybody.