 Welcome to our New America webinar, Easing the Home Connectivity Crunch, Wi-Fi's Role in the 5G Wireless Ecosystem. I am Michael Calabrese, Director of the Wireless Feature Project at New America's Open Technology Institute. And very happy you could all join us virtually, our second virtual webinar since this craziness began a few weeks ago. This event is co-sponsored by the Taxpayer Protection Alliance. And I'd like to thank Ross Marchand, who will be on the panel later. First up, we have FCC Chairman Ajit Pai with us to discuss the news he made last week by releasing a draft report and order proposing the first large-scale increase in unlicensed spectrum in two decades. As you'll hear, the order will enable gigabit fast next-generation Wi-Fi. The item is on the FCC's April 23rd, monthly meeting agenda. The order could not be more timely. Nationwide school and work closures are turning homes into classrooms and offices and highlighting just how critical it is to have affordable, very high-capacity internet connectivity for multiple devices throughout every home. Beyond the current crisis, future applications such as virtual and augmented reality and very high-resolution telehealth will require more and more affordable wireless connectivity in every home, office, school and enterprise. The draft order is truly revolutionary for Wi-Fi for unlicensed innovation and for advancing the concept of spectrum sharing more broadly. The order proposes to authorize shared unlicensed use across the entire six gigahertz band. That is 1,200 total megahertz from 5925 to 7125 megahertz. We'll get into details later, but from a consumer perspective, the order would do three big things. First, it makes all 1,200 megahertz available for indoor only use at lower power on a purely unlicensed basis. That is without the extra cost or complexity of database coordination. This enables as many as seven gigabit wide channels of 160 megahertz each. The further notice also proposes to make all 1,200 megahertz available for a separate category of very low-power devices, basically personal area network devices, including wearables like augmented reality and virtual reality glasses. Second, the order makes the two largest band segments, a total of 850 megahertz available for use both outdoors and indoors at a higher standard power. At standard power and for outdoor use, the network would be subject to coordination by an automated frequency coordination system which is basically a geolocation database similar to but much simpler than the spectrum access system that coordinates the new citizen's broadband radio service. Third, the order protects incumbent operations which will continue operating, including high power fixed microwave links, satellite uplinks, broadcast auxiliary services and others. Following Chairman Pye will have a panel discussion until 2.15 about how the order will impact the many real world use cases for enhanced Wi-Fi and wide channel unlicensed connectivity. Chairman Pye, thanks so much for joining us. I only wish we could do this in person. Well, likewise, this has become the new normal for you. For me, I suspect for many of those who are watching, but I really do want to express my appreciation, Michael, ICU to New America, to Ross and to the Taxpayers Protection Alliance for co-hosting this important webinar. And it's a subject that I think in previous months or previous years might have been more of an esoteric inside Washington discussion about the six gigahertz band and what it means. But as you pointed out very well in your opening remarks, I think that this proceeding highlights even more importantly than ever before why unlicensed spectrum is so important to help keep consumers connected as millions of us have transitioned to working from home, remote learning and the like, I think the need for Wi-Fi has been demonstrated all the more. And so I'm really grateful that we were able to do the legwork necessary over the last year or two to put us in a position to take major action on the six gigahertz band. I'm really excited for what it means for America's consumers, for America's innovators and for the country's overall competitiveness. So thanks for hosting this important conversation. Yeah, thank you for joining us. Well, the timing certainly is fortuitous since we don't know how long at least many of us may be needing to work or learn from home even as things begin to transition to normal. Has that, you know, has this current home connectivity crunch influenced your sort of your views about the importance of doing this or perhaps the need to speed up this extra capacity? I think it definitely underscores the importance that I attached to this particular proceeding into unlicensed spectrum in general. I think even before the pandemic resulted in this massive shift in how society operates, we had seen a consistent uptick in the amount of wireless data the consumers are using through Wi-Fi channels that's been in constant ever since the first Wi-Fi bands were introduced, as you pointed out almost 20 years ago. And I think one of the reasons why we try to stay ahead of the curve is because we knew that there would be an uptick in demand and the last several weeks has only accentuated that. And I speak not just to somebody viewing it from afar, but somebody who like you is living it every single day. The FCC was one of the first, if not the first agencies to shift to telework. I'm dealing with some of these same issues in terms of childcare at home, remote learning, pinging out just for groceries within staying at home otherwise. And all of those demands on our home networks pretty much rely on Wi-Fi. Even this call right now, of course, I'm sure you are as just as I am, relying on a good Wi-Fi connection. And so to us at least are charged as the FCC's amazing Office of Engineering and Technology staff in the very beginning was don't look at the politics, don't monitor the press releases, just look at the physics, tell us what is possible here. Because ultimately our goal is to make sure that this public resource is deployed as widely as possible for the benefit of American consumers. And in the midst of this pandemic, I'm proud to say that the initiative that they helped us get onto the table and which I hope my fellow commissioners will push across the finish line on April 23rd is one that will in some small way at least alleviate a little bit of the concern that consumers have during this awful time. Right. Yeah, and hopefully this new bandwidth will be put to use even before the end of the year. Absolutely, I think we're hooked. Yeah, that's what industry's telling us. Thinking, so looking out a few years beyond this, how do you think about the role that Wi-Fi 6 will play fueled by multiple wide channels on six gigahertz in the 5G wireless ecosystem? Because there's always been a lot of hoopla about mobile carrier 5G, but do you think of this as more of an overall wireless ecosystem and what role does this order play? I very much do, ever since I learned from some of the smart engineers and technologists there out there about what 802.11 AX promised, what Wi-Fi 6 could deliver in terms of bandwidth and the like, it sparked my interest, and what are the potential use cases? And obviously we are in the very, very early stages that's unclear exactly how it will be developed, but it would not surprise me at all if in a few years we start to view Wi-Fi and other unlicensed technologies as the dominant wireless use case and cellular as a very important compliment to it. As Cisco, for example, is projected that by 2022 some 60% of wireless traffic will be Wi-Fi offload. And I think that's only going to continue as we see the internet of things start to develop as some of the new applications you talked about AR and VR become more accepted as the norm. And so I think in a few years, the foundation we are setting now or hopefully we'll set in a few weeks is one that will really propel the unlicensed ecosystem to become the dominant wireless use case in the future. Now I want to make clear that obviously 5G continues to play an important part in that ecosystem. And in fact, I see Wi-Fi 6 and 5G is almost complimentary. It's one might be viewed as cellular, one might be viewed as unlicensed, but the question is how do we optimize the use of this limited bandwidth across the electromagnetic spectrum for the benefit of American consumers? And you can imagine use cases where 5G is obviously the optimal choice, but there are many, many other cases where Wi-Fi I think will become the dominant use case. So I'm really excited about what each of those technologies promises for the internet economy generally and for consumers in particular. Right, yeah, we completely agree with that. So why 1200 megahertz? There were many who urged you to do less, but you said, let's go big. What difference does having, at least for indoor consumer use as many as seven 160 megahertz channels, what difference does that make? It's a very good question. And early on that we were asked by some, why are you proposing to hold 1200? Wouldn't it be much safer and easier to color inside the lines so to speak and just allocate a little bit extra for Wi-Fi to maybe nudge the amount of supply up a bit to address consumer demand. But again, I tend to take the long view in this as in other matters, depending at the FCC and looking at the long view became clear to me that for some of the high bandwidth applications we anticipate, we need these super wide channels. I mean, 160 wide channel for Wi-Fi is something that we don't have currently. And for most consumers who use the 2.4 gigahertz or even 5 gigahertz Wi-Fi, they may occasionally notice a limitation or some sort of cap in terms of the types of sources and applications that are available on those channels. If we remove that kind of spectrum capacity as constraint, we allow these multiple 160 megahertz wide channels. There's no telling what kind of benefits could be delivered and also gives innovators the certainty they need in order to develop some of those high bandwidth applications. And so part of the reason why we're very bullish about 160 in particular is that we think that there are many different applications and services that we can't even conceive of today that are going to be made possible. And I saw a little bit of this promise a couple of weeks ago before the telework situation arose at the FCC when a Broadcom and a few others came into the office and showed me some demonstration using some laptops, getting 1.8 gigabit per second Wi-Fi over 160 megahertz wide channel. All the lingo can, of course, make typical person's eyes glaze over, but for the end user, to be able to get a gigabit Wi-Fi over a free, essentially, unlicensed channel, that's huge. And that's something that we wanted consumers to start to get used to so that they can benefit from the consumer revolution that's about to come. Right. Yeah, no, and yeah, that is remarkable. And I also take your point that just as Wi-Fi itself emerged out of junk bands of spectrum that really just were set aside primarily for things like microwave ovens, we really don't know what this new band will bring in terms of innovation because it just invites innovation. But in terms of use cases, I mean, that we can foresee, what are you most excited about? What are some of the use cases and benefits for consumers and industry that we could reasonably expect in maybe the shorter term? I think there are a lot that people have talked about, for example, AR and VR, of course, gaming and the like. On the industrial side, perhaps a company could set up a managed network of Wi-Fi network that could allow them to improve performance in the warehouse and the like. But one thing I would certainly focus on, and I will concede that the pandemic has only accentuated this, is telehealth and telemedicine. I come from a rural part of the country where it's hard to get quality health care. There are millions of Americans now who are finding in their own hometowns or even nearby, there might not be a physician who's able to provide them the care that they need and to serve. And broadband is literally one of the only things that allows them to get that care unless they're willing to drive a couple of hours. And of course, during the coronavirus pandemic, one of the things that we've seen is that telehealth can be a game changer. It can enable patients to be treated outside of the bricks and mortar health care facility, which is important for patients who don't have coronavirus-related conditions and don't want to get infected. Or if they do have symptoms, it protects health care providers who don't have to be exposed in person. That's one of the reasons why the FCC has set up recently a $200 million COVID-19 telehealth program. But looking forward way into the future, I can imagine that Wi-Fi-enabled telehealth is going to be an incredibly important thing. It's super high resolution, very low latency. It allows telehealth providers to tailor the nature of the application or service to meet their patient's needs. I think that is going to be the tip of the iceberg. And I'm really excited for what it means. And one of the other things that I've noticed amidst the terrible stories coming out of the pandemic is an exceptionally sad situation in which a lot of coronavirus patients near the end of life are unable to be around another person. And it's one of the things that Nicholas Christakis has talked about on Twitter about that he's a former hospice doctor. And he's talked about the fact that at the end of life, that screen might be the only thing people see with their loved ones before they pass away. And you can imagine, obviously, that's the most powerful use case there is in terms of telehealth, enabling someone to have a connection during the end of life. That's something that none of us want to think about or talk about. But it's really been in my mind as we see a huge uptick in the number of patients. And that's the kind of thing we want to encourage, that kind of virtual connection when a physical connection is unimpossible. Right. Oh, yeah, definitely. And when you think of seniors, I have friends who can't visit their parents now because they're in assisted living or other these situations. It's truly critical. So as I mentioned at the top in my quick summary, the draft order really does something innovative that we haven't seen before, which is to have almost like for now two, maybe eventually three different flavors. But the two flavors of connectivity now for Wi-Fi will be where it's at the current 5 gigahertz powers, so standard power, particularly outdoors. It will need to be coordinated by a database, a automated frequency coordination system. But indoors, at much lower power, it will not need database coordination. And that's all 1,200 megahertz. So you really, and I think most folks don't realize that you and your team really struggled with this. I think it's what held things up for several months compared to your original timeline. Why was it so important to get to this? For example, will this allow off the shelf Wi-Fi routers and homes and small businesses to take full advantage of Wi-Fi 6? That's a great question. And it did take longer than we expected. And part of the reason was my public commitment to members of Congress, to others who are in the private sector, that we wanted to balance two interests here. Obviously, we wanted to make more spectrum available for unlicensed operations. And at the same time, we wanted to protect incumbents from harmful interference. And for those of you who might be watching who don't know, there are some incumbents, such as electric utilities, who use this in terms of managing the power grid. There are broadcasters who use it for electronic news gathering and the like. We wanted to make sure that those important functions were taken care of. And that's actually one of the great things about Wi-Fi. It's very opportunistic. It could work around some of those incumbent uses. But then the question became, once you put pen to paper, how does that actually happen? And so very quickly became apparent there is an indoor and outdoor component to the problem. With respect to outdoor, as he pointed out, we've set up an automated frequency system, coordination system, or AFC, that will enable us to essentially say, OK, if there is an incumbent use within range, we won't use the spectrum. But if that channel is open, then we'll go ahead and use it. And indoors, what we found is after a lot of careful analysis and a whole lot of studying of formula and variables and the like, based on our analysis by our Office of Engineering and Technology staff, we recognized that indoor was much less like significantly less likely to pose a threat to harmful interference to some of those incumbents who might be operating outside of the home, of course. And so one of the things we looked at then was, OK, well, how do we make sure that we accommodate the nature of indoor use? And so we set a power level for indoors, essentially, that we believe is sufficient to protect those incumbents from harmful interference, but at the same time, doesn't torpedo the value of this indoor and licensed spectrum for Wi-Fi. And so to us, at least, although I know it took longer than many would like to be included, at the end of the day, I think that care and time that we took was for a good purpose, because it allows us to be able to say to everybody involved, this is a true win-win. The incumbents will continue to be able to rely on the spectrum, and Wi-Fi indoors or outdoors will be able to thrive. And especially that indoors part, which we pointed out, we aren't requiring AFC. What this means for the end user is tremendous. It means, number one, huge savings in terms of time. Companies won't have to essentially innovate to create a more expensive, more complicated system indoors. And secondly, it saves a lot in terms of cost. From the end user perspective, there were some estimates that this would add $100 or so, or even more, to the cost of some of the routers and the like to accommodate that kind of system. So both in terms of time and cost, I think consumers are going to see a literal bang for their buck sooner rather than later. OK, well, thanks for explaining that. Well, and really, because of this, I mean, because of this innovation, this policy innovation in the order, we believe this order puts the US two steps ahead of the rest of the world on Wi-Fi. Europe, as I'm sure you know, Europe is close to approving 500 megahertz for shared and licensed use at the bottom of this band, but only indoors and without the sort of power level innovation that makes very wide channels more useful. Why do you think the FCC has consistently been more aggressive in innovating on unlicensed? That's a good question. I think it might have, and I'm just speculating here, of course, a few different reasons. Number one, America historically has been more aggressive in terms of spectrum policy, generally in unlicensed spectrum in particular. I think our leadership on 2.4 and then on 5 illustrated the fact that we were willing to push the envelope even when we couldn't foresee what the use case was. And I think at a very high level, maybe that reflects our relative risk tolerance, that the FCC is more willing to take a risk on so-called junk bands, which is what 2.4 was called way back when, for 6 gigahertz now, even when we can't describe with certainty exactly how that spectrum is going to be used. Secondly, in fairness to the Europeans and friends with many of them, especially those that are members of BAREC, they have to coordinate amongst many, many different member states when it comes to cross-border spectrum issues and the like. And in addition to that, there's, of course, the European Union or European Commission overlay. And so sometimes we're complicated for them all to get on the same page. And I think part of the reason why we've also been more successful in propelling unlicensed, ironically, is that we've also been more aggressive in enabling cellular. We pushed a lot of cellular spectrum out there. And I think that gives us the breathing space, so to speak, to be able to say, hey, there's a place for everybody in the wireless ecosystem. There's a place for a license. And there's a place for unlicensed. And so going forward with this full 1,200 megahertz for unlicensed in the 6 gigahertz spectrum, I don't think is reasonably seen as doing great damage to cellular innovation by any means. And to the contrary, actually, I think it will facilitate Wi-Fi offloads that even the cellular carrier is using something analogous to what they do now with 5 gigahertz with license-assisted access, they will be able to benefit as well. And 3GPP, of course, has that NRU specification for 5G and an unlicensed specification that I think will enable them to take advantage just as much as any. Oh, yeah. Well, as you mentioned earlier, Cisco's projections are that the demand for offload onto Wi-Fi indoors will just increase as the bandwidth of 5G applications and services increase. So all that ARV, our people are at home, they'll want to be on their cable network or whatever is fastest and most economical. So let me ask you about one thing that, because I know you didn't, particularly with the crisis, did not want to hold this order up anymore. So the order does not come to a final decision on the very low power use case. And so that's now part of the further notice of proposed rulemaking. So just so the audience gets this, so low power indoor or lower power indoor is roughly 25% of standard Wi-Fi power. But VLP is more on the order of 10%. Yet it's critical for the future of very short distance peripherals, such as connecting your smartphone to wearables, such as glasses for augmented reality or goggles for virtual reality. Are you optimistic that consumers will be able to use those devices in the band at some point? Are we going to get to an answer? Yeah, I am optimistic that they will and that we will eventually get to an answer. This is one of the issues where it was very difficult to figure out how to thread the needle. And we sat down with our engineering team for quite a bit of time and took a look at some of the evidence that had been put into the record by all kinds of stakeholders. And at the end of the day, we just weren't able to reach a resolution comparable to what we did with respect to the report and order. And so rather than take it off the table altogether or affirmatively rule it out, I said, okay, let's put it in the further notice. Let's study it further and figure out if there's a way to allow VLP because I do think that as you pointed out, things like wearables are going to become more important in the time to come and not just for some of the fun, so to speak, use cases that people would imagine, you can conceive of diabetic patients, for example, that one where Google glucose monitors all the time and those are the kinds of very important applications we want to enable. So although it is only in the further notice is not in the report and order, I would definitely encourage people to keep an eye on it and to certainly comment in that part of the proceeding because we want to make sure we have a wholesome record to be able to move forward as soon as we can once that technical analysis has been settled upon. Right. Yeah, I know that. That's going to be very important. Just to really enable all those apps that we've been talking about because the pieces have to fit together with the right connectivity. So let me ask you about, again, kind of coming back to this idea of the fact that you went big with 1200 megahertz to be shared for unlicensed use. The mobile industry has been arguing that 1200 megahertz is overkill and that half the band should be cleared of incumbents and auctioned for exclusive licensing. What led you to conclude that this entire band should be shared for unlicensed use rather than reallocated even if there might be an argument that it's not needed tomorrow for today's unlicensed? Right. Well, the first and foremost thing was consumer demand. I think if you look at the uptick in Wi-Fi usage over the years and certainly over the last weeks, I think it's becoming entirely clear that as consumers start to use more devices than ever, in fact, more than 1.0 devices per person in the home or even outside of the home, that Wi-Fi need is going to escalate. And if we don't get ahead of that curve, then ultimately consumer welfare is going to be reduced. But even beyond that, one of the things that it was important for us to do as we were looking through the CTIA argument was, okay, well, what would that imply? What would that mean if we accepted essentially dividing that 1200, 600 unlicensed, 600 licensed? And our concern was that some of the incumbents that are in that band, especially electric utilities and broadcasters and the like, they didn't want to move and so they'd have to be incentivized to move. Moreover, where were they moved to? And one of the bands that had been identified as a possible landing spot for them itself had federal users that were using that particular spectrum, especially in the seven gigahertz band. And one of the things that I've noticed over the last couple of years, last year in particular, one of the reasons why I have more gray hair now than I did before was that dealing with federal users trying to accommodate either relinquishment or sharing a spectrum is a very, very challenging task. And so I didn't think at the end of the day that the time value of that spectrum was worth it. In other words, the time that it would take to properly incentivize the incumbents in the six gigahertz band, accommodate the federal users in the seven gigahertz band, set up an auction, go through the process, et cetera, would deliver as much value as quickly as a 1200 megahertz slice of the six gigahertz band for unlicensed. I also, I would note, and you hinted at this earlier in your comments, we've been very aggressive in terms of licensed spectrum. We've got a CBRS auction starting in a few months of the 3.5 gigahertz spectrum. We have a 280 megahertz, a chunk of the C-band, but in 3.7 to 3.98 gigahertz is coming online. We've teed up proceedings in the 2.5 and 3.1 to 3.55 bands. We've got outstanding proceeding in the 4.9 gigahertz band. So again, to me at least, the SCD has got to be able to walk in chew gum, walk the walk when it comes to unlicensed innovation and still chew gum when it comes to cellular innovation. I think the balance we struck here is the right one. To view six gigahertz in isolation, I think is the wrong approach. We've taken an all of the above approach when it comes to bid-bent spectrum and that means there's a home for everybody. Right, and that notion you mentioned of the time value of spectrum for 5G and consumers, it's very consistent with the approach you took to C-band, which was to take a lot of heat in order to clear more of the band than anyone would have thought two years ago. And this one of the things that over the years is, a spectrum more than anywhere else, honestly, is that you will always find people with an incumbent interest or a short-term interest who are always going to say their standard objections. This will cause too much interference. This will take too long. This is unlawful. This is just a whole parade of reasons why it can't be done. And one of the things that I've tried to do over the last several years is to instead focus on why it should be done, why we should have a long view in mind and why some of those objections will prove themselves to be short-sighted. And I have every confidence of six gigahertz is going to be just like 2.4 gigahertz before it, that people might not know what it is in the moment, but boy, once it starts rolling out, maybe perhaps around the holidays this year or in the near term, there's going to be a pop. And that pop is the sound of consumers benefiting from a resource that they own that hasn't been leveraged to its highest valued use before. And to me, at least that expectation of something that confidence I have in that expectation makes it all the heat we get in the meantime worthwhile. Yeah, actually, I'd like to maybe follow up a bit on what you said about incumbents. Last May, when you spoke at the Wifi World Congress about 5.9 and six gigahertz, you said the FCC is, quote, aiming to have the best of both worlds protect today's incumbent users of the band, meaning both bands, while turbocharging the Wi-Fi networks and applications of the future. Yet, although that's been your view for a long time, I don't think any incumbent in any band hasn't insisted that spectrum sharing would be a disaster for them. And in this band, you had to wrestle with probably five, I think five different sets of industry incumbents. So how much is NIMBYism constraining spectrum sharing in this band and more generally? How do you think about that? So that's a really good question. And unfortunately, at least that has been the case over the past couple of years in some of our proceedings. One of the things I tried to do throughout this entire proceeding, but especially over the last several months, is to be very aggressive in meeting with some of the folks who had concerns about our proposal. So one of the last things I did, for example, before we shifted to full telework was to meet with the Edison Electric Institute, which represents some 200 or so utilities that cover approximately 220 million, I believe it is, American consumers when it comes to power. And I told them, look, this is what we're thinking of doing. This is why it doesn't harm your interest. In fact, this is why it actually helps you in the long run and try to sit down with them and not explain where we're coming from. We've done the same with respect to all kinds of other stakeholders. Unfortunately, there are always going to be some who take that Nimbia's view. And in the era in which we live, when people aren't able to dig into the nuances of AFC and what the spectrum bands mean and all that, it's much easier to go with a very quick headline. And so here, for example, the argument could be, well, the FCC makes a lot more spectrum available for Wi-Fi so that the power grid is going to go down. In the 5.9 band, it's the FCC makes more spectrum available for Wi-Fi and that's going to cause many more car accidents in the years to come. In the 24 gigahertz band, the argument is, well, the FCC is auctioning off a part of the 24 gigahertz band. And as a result, spectrum won't be available for you to be able to get your weather forecast. And that kind of thing is just not, it's obviously not, it doesn't have a foundation in technical analysis. And that's why I've consistently said that we will always focus on what are the physics? I'll take the heat over the politics, I'd be happy to receive the nasty press releases. But at the end of the day, if I can have the confidence of knowing that our OET staff, that stakeholders in the record have given us the evidence we need to move forward based on physics, then I'll be more than happy to do that. And that's not easy to do, regardless of administration. I've had a chance to talk to some of my predecessors, including Chairman Jenna Kalsby, who struggled with some of the same issues. And one of the challenges that the FCC has, you've always got to have your view on the prize, your eyes on the prize. And it might not be apparent to some why that is the prize when you see this parade of horribles being tried out there. But at the end of the day, we've got to be able to deliver in consumer value. And that's part of the reason why, as you pointed out very well, Michael, America's always led in terms of unlicensed innovation. Thanks to the decision I hope we make on April 23rd, we always will. Okay. Well, we are running out of time, but I just wanted to bring the points you just made back to the current proceeding on one last thing, which is the order proposes lower power indoor use without database control across the entire 1200 megahertz, which is a huge win for consumers, small business, entire economy. But the cable industry and others say that a relatively small power increase could make the difference between covering the entire home with a wifi router and definitely needing amplifiers or a different router on each floor. The issue is in the further notice. So it looks like even in this proceeding, you'll still have to be wrestling with it. Does the answer, I think you may have suggested is the answer boiled down to whether the wifi proponents can demonstrate that indoor only use does not sacrifice interference to incumbents? I think that's exactly right. And that's one of the reasons why we teed it up in the further notice. And we certainly encourage wifi advocates to continue to submit into our record evidence that would allow us to do that. There was evidence in the record thus far, but we also got some pushback saying no, a lower power level was more appropriate. And so that's one of the things we wanna try to sort out as soon as we can, is how to accommodate that need. Many people are now learning with kids and parents in multiple rooms using multiple devices. We wanna make sure that wifi is able to serve all of them at the same time. And I think the current situation, if anything, underscores the importance of the inquiry that we're kicking off in the further notice. Yeah, no, that's absolutely right. And I think sometimes we lose sight of the fact, we think so much about the connectivity that you bring to the home or office, and don't realize that bottleneck has sort of switched where all the big cable operators, for example, if you're willing to pay for it, you can get gig of that connectivity, but you can't distribute that throughout the home. And even with six gigahertz, you also need to get through a couple of walls. So do you have any closing thoughts for us, perhaps coming back to our current situation or anything? Just wanted to give you a last chance to tell us anything else that might be on your mind today. Well, sure, well, I would just wanna say again, Michael, thank you and thanks to New America for hosting this webinar. And of course, Ross and the other team and the other panelists to come. Generally speaking, though, I just wanna say, and I know it has nothing whatsoever to do with the FCC, but my heart goes out to those who are struggling with the coronavirus pandemic, first and foremost, of course, of those who have been diagnosed with it or may be diagnosed with it in the days to come. The heroic healthcare workers that we've got, I'm the husband of a physician, the son of two physicians, and seeing and hearing from them and some of my friends who were in the healthcare industry, this is one of the most daunting times they faced. And even beyond the healthcare system, I know this might sound kind of mundane, but to the grocery workers, to the postal workers, to the truckers who bring our foods, to the folks who are doing some of the work out there to enable us to continue to function. You've got my deep gratitude. And in particular, to the broadband companies that have taken my Keep Americans Connected pledge, I recognize that connectivity might not be at the front of people's minds. They're more worried, of course, about the health aspects of the pandemic, but to the extent that we can get and keep Americans connected through this pledge and through some of the other FCC initiatives, I hope that connectivity availability is one of the things that takes their mind off. Some of the concerns they might have. So I really appreciate what everybody in the country is doing. We're all in it together. We're gonna get through it together. And hopefully we'll come out of it with a six-gearhertz Wi-Fi and even more on tap on the communication side to benefit us all. Yeah. And thank you for your efforts and for taking the time to join us today. Happy to do it. And we'll talk to you soon. Next time I'll wear a tie and you have to open it. No, please. Well, I hope it's in your office, but you don't need to wear a tie. Okay, well, thank you. Let's, I guess, move on to our panel, which has more on this important topic. So the panelists could turn on their video so that everyone can see them. All right. So we have a great group for you today here to discuss the order and Wi-Fi six more generally. So I'm going to, I think what I'll do is just introduce you one at a time to, with a kind of an opening question. So we won't have any formal remarks, but by way of a short introduction, I'll ask you a question. And then after that, we'll have a broader discussion. And then I'd invite the audience to please use the Q&A functionality at the bottom on the bottom bar to ask any of your questions as we go along, because we will save a bit of time if there's at the end, if there are some questions. So I want to start with Chris Shamansky, who's the director of product marketing and global government affairs at Broadcom. And for Chris, I'm going to give a special shout out because Chris has been literally the field general of the high tech coalition that's been advocating this, the biggest tent high tech company coalition that I think I've ever seen. So Chris, you've been focused on making this six gigahertz band available for Wi-Fi globally for the past four years. How do you think the commission did on this? And what should other governments be looking for as they consider opening the band for unlicensed sharing? Well, first, Michael, thank you very much for your kind comments. It's really been a deep effort by many of my peers in the industry. We've worked very hard on this for a while and it's nice to see us coming to a positive conclusion. I think Chairman Pi has done an elegant job really with a rich and complex record, lot of technical details in this record. And there are a lot of different ways that OET could have taken this and the chairman could have taken this. And what they chose to do was to create rules that were tailored for very specific use cases. Low power indoor rules and rules that are meant to facilitate standard power devices that operate outdoors. And by tailoring the rules around these specific use cases, they were able to optimize things that the industry could accommodate in the design of products and it will facilitate meaningful access to the band. So for example, these indoor devices are gonna be constrained by design so that they're not useful outdoors. Their power is gonna be limited to somewhere around 70 to 80 times less than a standard power device if you were looking at it in a very narrow bandwidth and a one megahertz increment. But this is still possible to accommodate gigabit wireless broadband using wider channels. So the rules are designed to accommodate this need for a wide band with channels that we don't have in the five gigahertz band or in the 2.4 gigahertz band. These standard power devices are critical for a variety of use cases and they're gonna be able to operate like typical wifi in the neighboring five gigahertz band. Using a very simplified database model and that's what the commission's calling automated frequency coordination. And the principle behind this mitigation is simply this. These higher power devices can transmit on frequencies and in locations, even outdoors where they will not create harmful interference to incumbents. So, I think Chairman Pi met what he considered to be the best of both worlds when he spoke earlier, protecting incumbent interests and enabling the future of wifi. This is exactly what the FCC has done with these draft rules. And I guess to break it down to two more pieces. One, what does this mean for consumers? Their wireless connections using wifi 6E will be as fast as the internet coming into their homes and businesses at no extra cost. So this means just supercharged home or business and school network can handle exponentially greater number of devices, streaming video games, transaction information, like the chairman mentioned telehealth, telelearning, you name it. And so really Americans are gonna have access to 5G services indoors throughout the country. How's that gonna happen in a rural area? This is what the rules do for rural broadband. Wisps and other rural broadband providers are cities building community wide networks or other large scale networks. So think about like venues and big event spaces are gonna be able to provide gigabit speed, wireless broadband to places that we've never been able to serve before. And they'll coordinate their operations using this AFC to ensure that they avoid, incumbent users of the band. That are crucial for providing a variety of public services. So thanks. All right, thanks, Chris. Next, we have Audrey Connors, who's the vice president for government affairs at Charter Communications. Audrey, why will unlicensed sharing in six gigahertz make a difference for consumers who rely on Wi-Fi to stay connected in their homes? Thanks, Michael. As Americans are relying more and more on Wi-Fi today to stay connected. We're especially seeing this in the past few weeks with the COVID-19 pandemic, as the chairman mentioned. They are being required to stay home, but also stay connected to work, school, their healthcare providers, other resources and their loved ones. They're using Wi-Fi to do this. Even before the pandemic, Charter customers heavily relied on Wi-Fi. Nearly all of the 300 million devices connected to our network connect over Wi-Fi, including our customers' mobile devices. Of the wireless data consumed on our customers' mobile devices, over 80% comes over Wi-Fi. We've also started to see an increased demand for bandwidth. So as consumers connect more devices to the internet and use more data-hungry applications, we expect internet traffic to increase substantially over the next five years. And again, as the chairman mentioned, it will likely double over the next five years alone. So allowing unlicensed users like Wi-Fi to share the six gigahertz spectrum band will allow us to keep pace with this quickly growing demand and also, but also accelerate the transition to next generation connectivity. The large amount of spectrum in this band will allow us to make use of wider channels that we don't have today from 160 megahertz to 320 megahertz, which is already being looked at in the next, well, not this generation of Wi-Fi, but the following one. And those channels will enable multi-gigabit, high capacity Wi-Fi, bringing 5G-like connectivity to homes, businesses, healthcare providers, and consumers across the country. And the most immediate benefits will be seen through Wi-Fi 6, which is the latest standard of Wi-Fi being rolled out this year. And that standard will use 160 megahertz channels to deliver up to 10 gigabit speed in the home. So within the next year or so, consumers will start to see real benefits from opening this spectrum for unlicensed sharing. All right, thanks. Next I'd like to introduce Ross Marchand, who's the policy director of Taxpayer Protection Alliance. And thanks again, Ross, for co-sponsoring the webinar. So it'd be great if you could tell us a bit about why TPA is engaged in this issue, and also more specifically in making decisions on critical spectrum bands, how can the FCC find the right balance between licensed and unlicensed? Yeah, sure. So the Taxpayer Protection Alliance is, as the name may or may not imply, it's all about making sure that the government is making decisions in the best interests of taxpayers and customers. And look, in a lot of cases, Chairman Pye was the first to point this out, in a lot of cases, it makes sense to go the way of licensed spectrum. And the FCC has a great track record in this regard. Since 1994, more than 100 spectrum auctions resulting in more than $120 billion net winning proceeds for taxpayers. But again, as Chairman Pye said earlier, it's not a competition between licensed and unlicensed. It needs to be a delicate balance between the two. And unfortunately, since, let's say like the past 20 or 25 years, there's been sort of an unbalanced allocation in favor of licensed versus unlicensed. You've had, since 2003, for example, you've had nearly 5,000 megahertz allocated to licensed, very little allocated to unlicensed. And this sort of unbalanced, this disparity is going to get far worse in coming years because you're going to have, according to Cisco by 2022, 60% of mobile data traffic is gonna be offloaded onto Wi-Fi. And I think that those projections were created before the coronavirus pandemic. And now with the increase in telework, I think a lot of the increase, the bump in Wi-Fi traffic is here to stay. So it's more important now than ever that we get this balance, right? And we make sure that we have some dedicated allocation towards unlicensed to make sure that we're getting the right balance and making sure that people can continue to work from home and have VR applications, internet of things, all these great things can come our way, but we need to make sure that we get that offloading right and we have enough unlicensed in place to make sure we can facilitate that transition. You have, I mean, the first generation of Wi-Fi back in the day had only 20 megahertz wide channels, right? And why are the channels you could get through successive generations results in lower latency and greater speed for customers? Now the current generation, you have 160 megahertz wide channels and with the next generation, you're gonna have 320 wide megahertz channels. But in order to tap the full potential of those wide channels, you need sufficient unlicensed allocation. And that is why the FCC draft rules are so important. But it's also super important to make sure that you have the technical guardrails in place to ensure that unlicense is not getting in the way of incumbent licensed users. And that's why these draft rules are so important in delineating that through, for example, power levels, through, for example, technical design to make sure that indoor devices stay indoors. And this is the balance that we have to maintain through these guardrails, licensed and unlicensed. And that's why I'm happy that finally the FCC is making a huge step in the right direction to make sure that we have the best of both worlds. And we are prepared for the future and the digital domain over the next few years as this mobile offloading takes place into applications like Wi-Fi. So that's why I think it's very important. And TPA and a lot of like-minded organizations are continuing to monitor these developments and work together and say these are the allocations that we need to make for unlicensed. This is how we get the balance right. And this is how we can make sure that taxpayers and customers are getting, are reaping the benefits from economic growth and increased Wi-Fi applications and 5G at the same time. All right, thanks for us. Next we have John Windhausen, who is Executive Director of the School's Health and Libraries Broadband Coalition, Shelby. John, why has your Shelby Coalition been such a strong supporter of unlicensed access indoors in particular to the entire 1,200 megahertz? Well, thanks, Michael. I wanna start off by congratulating you as well as Chairman Pye for moving this initiative forward because making this Wi-Fi spectrum available is tremendously important for the schools and hospitals and libraries and other anchor institutions that are part of our Shelby Coalition. But it's in particular because our institutions are incredibly big users of Wi-Fi. I saw one report that suggested homes now have about nine connected devices per home and they theorized, predicted in the future, that homes may have 50 such devices in the future. Well, schools and libraries and healthcare, they already have 50 or more devices that are accessing those Wi-Fi connections and the demand on those Wi-Fi connections is really beginning to take its toll on their Wi-Fi capability today. So I think this is a huge impact. And in particular, I think what's noteworthy is the emphasis on innovation. You know, Chairman Pye mentioned how useful this Wi-Fi spectrum can be for telehealth and that's certainly true. You can do much better diagnosis over a telehealth connection if you've got much greater bandwidth to deal with. So you can do much more precise measurements of not just on the body, but potentially inside the body to be able to relay that information to physicians in a way that we have never been able to do before. Schools and libraries are using Wi-Fi for innovation as well. A lot of innovation happens. The libraries, for instance, have history of creating maker spaces within the libraries, intentionally encouraging young people to come into the libraries and innovate, develop new sophisticated applications. I can well imagine schools replacing their shop classes with IoT classes. You know, I think that students could be in a great position to figure out, you know, how their toaster can interact with their coffee maker and the refrigerator and electronics around the house. You know, that would be a great area for schools to be the incubators for all of that kind of ingenuity that students can bring to the table and they need Wi-Fi in order to be able to do that. So I'm very, very excited about this. In fact, I would say, I would suggest that for anchor institutions and for consumers, the FCC's decision to make the six gigahertz band available is going to be more impactful than 5G. I mean, 5G is tremendously grateful, but it's primarily focused on businesses and it's going to take a huge amount of investment before that 5G level of service can get out beyond the dense inner core of the urban areas to extend out to the suburbs and rural areas. Whereas this making six gigahertz available and Wi-Fi six, that's something that all consumers can buy that equipment probably within six months or a year after this decision. So this decision is going to have a very widespread impact on America that I think is just wonderful. The only question I'd raise just for discussion at some point is how does this new six gigahertz proceeding and Wi-Fi six, how does that impact the E-rate program? You know, the FCC has been pretty good about making more funding available for schools and libraries to purchase Wi-Fi routers, but do all those Wi-Fi five pieces of equipment now need to be replaced with Wi-Fi six equipment? And what does that do to the budget that the FCC set for category two and E-rate? That's an open question. I don't have the answer to that right now. I'd just flag it for future discussion, but I do want to say we're definitely incredibly excited about moving in this in the right direction. Yeah, thanks, John. It's a great point. I think we should come back to what you said about 5G, for example, because the schools, schools and libraries in particular, I think thanks to Shelby's efforts are almost, we're very close to getting the gigabit or multi-gigabit connectivity to all of them, but they need to distribute it to every classroom, every student, and that's not a mobile endeavor, right? The students are using that connectivity as we all do at home inside the building, which brings us back to the importance of 1200. So finally, I'd like to introduce Christina Mason, who is the Vice President for Legislative Affairs at WISPA, which is the Wireless Internet Service Providers Association. Most of us probably think of unlicensed spectrum, mainly in terms of Wi-Fi at home, at work, in Starbucks, or maybe these days, sitting outside Starbucks. Why has WISPA been such a strong advocate for more wide channel, unlicensed spectrum? Very good question. So for those of you who aren't familiar with WISP and how we work, we use fixed wireless technology to deploy, using radio spectrum, to deploy in largely rural, last mile deployments. So literally we use radio spectrum to deliver high-speed broadband to those Americans who are unserved, underserved, away from urban cores and need still high-speed internet, and this technology allows us to deliver that. Unlicensed access to spectrum is critical. It is our workhorse and it's what allows our connectivity to be affordable, widely deployed, allow applications along with everything, all of our esteemed panelists already brought up, telehealth, particularly in rural settings, distance learning for rural communities, remote work in rural communities, and a lot of times precision agriculture and modern farming techniques are kind of forgotten with the kind of applications that we discussed, but that's incredibly important, particularly when we're thinking about supply chain and the issues that we're dealing with today. It is incredibly important that we have unlicensed access to this band to be able to deploy and continue those applications. I like to say that we kind of have interest in all three constituencies of the six gigahertz band. First constituency are the incumbents. We are very sensitive to the needs of incumbents because we have incumbents in the band using six gigahertz currently as backhaul that essentially allows us to deliver high-speed internet to that last mile. They use that connectivity and they don't want interference because that could tremendously affect the speeds we can deliver and the quality of internet we can deliver. We don't want interference at all either, and so that's why we've been strong proponents of a AFC regime that's simple to administer, but effective because we do have concerns in the incumbent realm. Then kind of the second constituency, we may be one of the only folks in it, but as internet service providers, we need this spectrum, unlicensed spectrum to deliver higher speeds to more customers. If you think of Spectrum as a highway, this allows us to add several lanes to our highways to deliver what we need to world customers, and kind of the third constituency is the consumer and customer application that in-home Wi-Fi use. When our customers are streaming Netflix while their kids are distance learning and on the Xbox and everything that's happening and their internet is slowing down, guess who they call? They don't call FCC saying, hey, FCC, we need greater unlicensed access because my internet is lagging. No, they call the internet service provider saying, hey, we pay a lot of money every month for these high speeds, you deliver to us and yet my internet's lagging. Why is that? That's why we have interest in seeing Wi-Fi 6 and greater Wi-Fi capacity so that we can actually, or our consumers can actually experience the speeds that we are actually delivering. It's just, as we all know, it's kind of a, the home is, there's a lot of devices going on, especially these days, and it's a challenging dynamic that all of everyone on this panel, their constituencies and ISPs are working to solve and this is a huge, huge step in the right direction. So we are very optimistic for the potential and we're looking forward to how we can use six gigahertz unlicensed access to this band to further deploy to more rural Americans. Okay, thanks, Christina. So I'm gonna, I think loop back to Chris and any of you who want to jump in, are there any improvements in the framework for six gigahertz that should be made to the order or emphasized as part of the further notice? For example, the chairman and I were talking a bit about the third class of a portable device is very low power that I know that many of us have proposed and the FCC was considering, but isn't a done deal by any means. Chris, what do you think? Thanks, Michael. Before I hit that, I just wanna just touch on one thing that Christina said and just, I guess punctuate the sentence. I think this order puts rural communities and wisps on a whole new level of being able to serve communities in a way that I think they were unable to do before and just agree wholeheartedly with everything that Christina said. I think it's very important. It's important for manufacturers like Broadcom because it gives us a higher and larger addressable market. If more consumers can consume broadband in rural and suburban areas where you don't have access to really high speed internet and there's a lot of devices that those consumers aren't buying and taking advantage of. So very, very, very excited about that. So yes, Michael, thanks for the question. I think that the commission has a little bit more work in store here. There's two things that it has teed up in a further notice that are both very, very important. Number one, it tees up the very low power portable device class. And that's something that Broadcom and many other companies were actively engaged in with regard to this proceeding. We see the very low power portable device class being important for kicking off a whole new class of wearable devices. Devices for AR, VR, worker training, et cetera. And this device class is important because you might be in places where you don't have great connectivity inside your home or business or next to a 5G hotspot, et cetera. And so you'll need to be able to tether to things like a mobile phone. And so rules for this class, although they weren't included in the order the FCC is exploring how to enable this class in a further notice. And so Broadcom is looking forward to explaining, number one, why portable operations are critical and why 14DBM, EIRP, which sorry to get into the DBs here, but why that power level is instrumental in kicking off this class. And look forward to explaining how all of this can be done while protecting incumbent operations. And also very, very importantly, the order presents the opportunity to increase power level for low power indoor devices. So as I mentioned, when you look at power on a per megahertz basis, the FCC has greatly reduced the power, much lower than traditional wifi in the 5Ghz band. And one of the things that they've teed up is the ability to increase the power, a slight amount, 3DB more. And what that's going to do is on average, it'll improve throughput for consumers anywhere between 10 and 15%. So whatever you could have gotten under these rules, in terms of wireless access, roughly, you'd be able to increase your throughput by 10, 15%. So very, very important. And Broadcom looks forward to digging in the FNPRM. Thanks, Michael. And I would just add to that on the PowerPoint for low power indoor, which is very important to try for our wifi service, the difference we've seen in the slight increase that the commission is exploring in the further notice is the difference in our ability to be able to cost effectively and reliably deliver the multi gigabit wifi services throughout the home to our customers. So we originally with Cable Labs and Comcast came up with a proposal for how to limit power spectral density at 8 dBm per megahertz, which is again slightly higher than what the commission proposed or put into the order. And the reason we proposed it that way was because limiting the power spectral density to 8 dBm would reduce the overall coverage of wifi while preserving our ability to make the best use of the wide channels that are coming available in this band. And it would reduce coverage by requiring us to reduce the power for narrower channels that reach further, but still being able again to use those wide channels, which cover a shorter distance. So we're looking forward to continuing to work with the FCC on how to make for that in the FNPRM. All right, thanks. So let me ask Christina and anybody else about the rural point I think that Chris brought up, which probably has two different aspects, both the fixed aspect and the indoors, as Christina mentioned. So mobile operators like AT&T and Verizon are really admitting, I think the true 5G will be deployed in, primarily in urban and more densely populated areas initially, there's higher returns there. It just makes business sense. How can unlicensed spectrum sharing in the six gigahertz band, bring the promise of 5G capable apps and services to rural and small town areas more quickly? Yeah, so we are, I think Chris and Audrey brought up a key point that we're currently wrestling with is the power. High power outdoors, the higher the power, the better the internet, the more customers we can serve. And that is the long and short of that. So yes, we can deliver, we've been calling it fixed 5G, that's our fun little, you heard it here first term. We can deliver those kinds of speeds to rural America if we're giving the tools in the toolbox to do so. We, in order to deliver the cost-effective deployments that we currently are able to deploy, the higher the power we need. And so if we can maybe massage some of the current power limits to allow that deployment, we're incredibly optimistic about the speeds that we can deploy in rural America. There is truly such a opportunity here that does not go, is not lost on us. This is, I think, a turning point for connectivity for rural America in talking about making sure that we have comparable service, making sure that these communities are not left behind, particularly in context of this pandemic, we do need to make sure that WISP are given the tools to actually make that those speeds possible. But we're optimistic, we think that with this order, with the little tweaks to the higher power allowances, we can certainly hit comparable speeds. Okay. We better not, we're getting close to the end of time already, partly because Chairman Pi was so generous with us, but I did want to, there are a couple audience questions. So for Chris, we can move through a couple of things. I just have one more because I wanted to pick up on something John mentioned in his opening, John, and again, anyone else. Shelby Coalition has joined Commissioner Rosenwursl, Senator Markey and others in calling for emergency funding for mobile Wi-Fi hotspots that schools could loan to students in homes without internet access. Can you tell us more about how that might work? You know, in the crisis, but perhaps even after kids go back to school? Well, sure. Although Michael, your last point isn't quite uncertain one. When will students be allowed to go back to school? I think is a big question. And I think, unfortunately, we have to be prepared for them not to be able to go back to school in September, even if- Or not everywhere. Or not everywhere, exactly. So we really need to be designing policies that will bring broadband to students at their homes for quite some time, as soon as possible, and then for a longer period of time than we might have first thought. So hotspots are one piece of the solution, but we need to get more hotspots to be made. There's currently a shortage of them and they don't always work if you don't have a strong enough cell phone signal. So we're also supporting the idea of subsidizing broadband at the home wired broadband or high capacity wireless broadband through the home, in addition to hotspots to make sure that everybody's connected. I think what's most disturbing to me is when I see that schools are shutting down their online teaching by telling teachers not to teach online because some of their students don't have broadband. So that means none of the students can get online teaching and that's really setting our country behind. So that's really a national emergency now, not just on the health side, but on the education and learning side. We really need to get broadband to the home as quickly as possible with every means and every technology possible. Great. Thanks, John. So at the risk of just running a few minutes over, you know, I'd like to get a couple quick audience questions and one is why or how is the use of an automated frequency control system for six gigahertz different from the existing spectrum access system in the 3.5 gigahertz band for the one that's coordinating the new citizens band radio service and why is it needed for only part of the six gigahertz band and not needed for the indoor use, the LPI anyway. Son of Chris or Audrey wanted to try that. Yeah, I'm happy to take a stab at that. I think it's a great question. Thanks. So database style regime or really any mitigation necessary to protect incumbents from harmful interference should be designed fit for purpose. What does that mean? So CBRS or the SAS was designed to protect the very specific incumbent operations in the 3.5 band. And those are different incumbents than the incumbent operations that are in the six gigahertz band. In addition, CBRS was designed to enable some, you know, licensed shared access regime with higher qualities of service than the general access regime. So it was sort of a multi-tiered approach necessary to facilitate a very, very specific form of access. TV white spaces, you had broadcasters, television broadcasters. So once again, those rules were designed very specifically to enable a use case, TV white spaces device. And at the same time, to protect those incumbent operations with AFC, what the commission has done, I think very, very elegantly is they've determined that these high power microwaves are located in certain areas. Those locations don't change. They're well known. So you know where the geolocation is. And if you can determine where you're operating as a wifi device, then the database can tell you the AFC can tell you, okay, you're good to go at this power level and this channel. So you don't need to bring in a lot of the rules and structure from TV white spaces and CBRS because those were designed to protect a different set of incumbents. And there are certain things that were brought in for AFC to protect these incumbents in the six gigahertz band that weren't in TV white spaces and they weren't in CBRS. And nor should the commission consider changing TV white spaces or CBRS to include these new mitigations. We really need to be fit for purpose. And I don't know if Audrey had anything to add to that, but I just wanted to add from the WIS perspective, particularly in the high power outdoor use case, folks have to also remember that our technology is fixed along with what Chris is saying. We're not using omni antennas. We're not mobile technology where it's kind of all over the place and it's kind of hard to tell where high powered usage is gonna be at any given moment because our technology is fixed using directional antennas and pretty consistent all the time. And AFC regime is, which is simpler as Chris eloquently and completely described. Simpler AFC regime is more than adequate to ensure that these high power use cases aren't causing interference because we know exactly where our signals are going when because of the directional nature of our technology. And I would just add on the point about why it's not, why the commission's not requiring it across the band, including for low power indoor. I think the commission has taken other steps to ensure that low power indoor devices do not interfere with incumbents in the band by significantly, as Chris has mentioned, reducing power, requiring devices to be indoors. So there are a lot of factors that prevent the indoor wifi signal from interfering with an incumbent operator. And importantly, I think the AFC database itself has not been fully developed. So in the interest of getting the spectrum to youth, especially for Wi-Fi, Wi-Fi 6, coming out this year, it's very important that we're able to use the spectrum without having to develop a new mechanism to support it. Okay. Thanks Audrey. Those are great points. So wanted to, I think we can close on to one last audience question, which is, it's a big picture question. So maybe that's fitting due to our circumstances not being in person. Lester Salomon, who's a professor emeritus at Johns Hopkins, notes that the coronavirus has created a major inflection point for digital readiness and inclusion. So when the launch of, after the launch of Sputnik in 1957, raised alarms about the adequacy of German science, the German government decided to sell the state-owned Volkswagen Foundation and use the proceeds to endow a private German science foundation. And this is something that's been done in some other countries using public assets to address a greater need. So he's wondering if you think we should consider an effort to devote something, perhaps it's five to 10% of future US auction proceeds, say over the next four or five years to endow a similar American Digital Futures Fund or Digital Futures Foundation to sponsor cutting-edge research into innovative ways to make most efficient use of our broadband assets and benefit all the American people. Like I said, it's a big picture question, but a fitting one to end on, I think. Any thoughts on that and whether we should be plowing some of our auction revenue back into this sector for this sort of social innovation? I could try to take a stab at that. I think whenever you have the government trying to pour money into targeted initiatives, it does not go as planned and there's a bunch of unintended consequences. You see things like cost overruns. I think it's far better to let the market sort itself out in a way that combines licensed and unlicensed. And I think that we are reaching, I think the questioner said an inflection point, is that right? There's some sort of inflection point going on because you have a lot of people who didn't really explore the possibility of fully working on a tele-basis and they will, I think, shift some operations over the long-term to tele-operations. And especially in rural house, I think about my parents, for example, they live in rural New Jersey. They're starting to work tele, they're starting to tele-work. They never consider that possibility and they're facing a lot of problems with connectivity if they're both trying to have teleconferences at the same time. So I think that if we let the market sort of open up towards unlicensed uses with these draft rules and similar draft rules in the future, we could have a situation where we expand the capacity of rural households to do just that and then enable exciting things like VR and internet of things on top of that. But no, I don't think we need a dedicated government fund because just historically speaking, that has not gotten us very far. I don't think that will get us very far in the future either. John or anyone who want to comment? I have sort of an ancillary comment to what Ross said. And so it's not taking the question head-on but just kind of looking at this from a manufacturer's perspective. I think Chairman Pye's 5G fast plan and really detailing out his vision for connecting Americans with next generation services as a degree of predictability for manufacturers. And so if I think about what this order does and how this could be replicated in future orders, you had the manufacturing community wanting to deliver a very specific service, getting together and saying, what do we need in order to innovate to bring that service? Whether it was mobile operating systems vendors, access point manufacturers, chip makers. We got together as a group and we said, this is what we need. And working with the FCC came up with a set of rules that would accommodate and facilitate that. And having that sort of process will allow innovators to innovate without the barrier, the roadblock that might stand in the way of what they need to deliver. And what brings this to mind is that we had 160 megahertz channels that were standardized by IEEE in 2008. Fast forward to 2020 because of a spectrum deficiency, we were really never able to truly bring those to Americans for connectivity. And so there's been a wireless deficit. Here, Chairman Pye, working with his colleagues will kind of remove that deficit and it just allows innovators to innovate. The market's gonna get together and they're gonna bring the goods and services that are necessary to meet consumer demand. So I think projecting that out in an overall plan, working closely with industry and working closely with consumer groups like yours is very, very important in putting together a roadmap. Michael, if I could just add some, my two cents. I think the questioner's idea is not a bad one. After all, the spectrum is a public asset. The public owns the spectrum, not companies. But there's also another approach, which if you don't mind me mentioning for EBS, the Educational Broadband Service, that's an opportunity to just, rather than auctioning those and taking a percentage of the revenue, just award those licenses to the schools. I mean, this has always been a historic, the questioner mentioned Sputnik, well, that's when the EBS spectrum was set aside for education. So this would seem to be a prime moment when the schools could get access to those licenses, deploy service quickly in areas where the private sector has not done so. So I'd just suggest awarding those EBS licenses to schools to deploy to serve this need might be another solution that's worth looking at. Right, thanks. Yeah, it sounds like a conversation that will go on. Well, I wanna thank you all for all the panelists, some virtual applause for you all here for joining us and making this all clear for everyone. I mean, it's a long order and I don't, not that you shouldn't read it, those of you in the audience, but I think you've heard it very well summarized, including how we need to improve it going forward with a further notice. So thank you all for joining and I'm sure we'll be having, well, in the short-term webinars on this and hopefully a bit longer term, I'll be back together in person. So thank you very much. Thank you.