Rural carriers interested in partnering with FirstNet, but urban/suburban opportunities appear limited, CCA’s Berry says

Furthermore, panelists noted that the migration to 5G likely will be very different than previous transitions between generations of wireless technologies. Although 5G has not been defined, early indications are that the focus of the platform will be to create a seamless user experience that leverages all available technologies—be it LTE or Wi-Fi—in the most efficient manner possible, as opposed to introducing a dramatically new technology that requires a comprehensive forklift replacement of existing infrastructure.

“I see the 4G life cycle as quite long,” Anderson said. “We haven’t hit the peak on 3G yet, and we’re talking about 4G and 5G. I think the same thing is going to happen on 4G.”

Panelists said that sharing spectrum will be critical to wireless communications in the future.

“Let’s face it: After the 600 MHz auction scheduled for next year, there’s no clear, greenfield slice of [U.S.] spectrum coming available in probably the next 25 years—600 MHz is critical to every carrier that wants coverage, because not all spectrum is created equal,” Berry said.

“So, shared spectrum is going to be a reality in every carrier’s life, as well as for every consumer and every Wi-Fi provider.”

With this in mind, efforts such as the 3.5 GHz sharing initiative recently approved by the FCC to introduce new methods of sharing valuable airwaves using technologies like LTE Licensed Assisted Access (LAA) and LTE for unlicensed (LTE-U) will be monitored closely, Pearson said.

“We need to look at these opportunities as a way to learn and grow from it, because there’s not a lot of spectrum out there, and we have a lot of demand out there,” he said. “We need to look at technology evolution—and technology revolution, as well—and we need to look at spectrum. Shared spectrum is going to be one of the opportunities, and we need to make sure that we do it right, that we learn from it, and are able to use it.”

Anderson agreed, noting the need for spectrum-sharing opportunities to be developed in a manner that is fair to everyone and that real-world deployments should be done before major policy changes are enacted broadly.

“That’s going to be a technical challenge,” Anderson said. “I don’t think we should rush into it. We need to do it right.

“It’s going to take some experimentation, though. We’ve got to get it out there to work with it, because simulations aren’t going to be sufficient. You can simulate the technology to prove ‘X,’ or you can do another simulation and prove ‘Y,’ because there’s such a diverse environment. We’re going to have to look at a broad set and some experiment, but fair sharing—inter- as well as intra-technology—is what we need.”