The Federal Communications Commission on Tuesday freed up further spectrum for wireless backhaul as part of an order that an agency official said will make it easier to roll out infrastructure that will support mobile services.
The FCC is making available as much as 650 megahertz of spectrum, especially in rural America, wrote John Schauble, an FCC official in the Wireless Telecommunications Bureau, in the agency’s official blog.
Wireless backhaul facilities carry voice and data communications from cellular sites, wireless Internet access points and other facilities to the public switched telephone network and Internet.
“Finding new opportunities to use wireless backhaul, and ways to use it more effectively, will help to solve the broadband capacity puzzle as more Americans use smartphones, tablets, laptops, and other devices to browse the Web, use email, and download applications wirelessly," Schauble wrote.
Without freeing up additional spectrum for mobile broadband services, demand will soon exceed supply, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said in a statement.
That’s little surprise considering that smartphones use 24 times as much spectrum as traditional feature phones. Tablet computers, a relatively new technology, use 122 times the spectrum of a feature phone, Genachowski added.
“Backhaul is the skeleton supporting broadband, and wireless backhaul is often a very efficient means of transmitting data among cell sites, or between cell sites and network backbones," Genachowski added. “Spectrum, in other words, can be an important part of the “middle mile" of broadband networks."
The FCC took a number of other actions in its wireless backhaul Report & Order. For example, the agency is allowing broadcasters to use microwave links more freely by eliminating a specific rule and permitting microwave licensees to use “adaptive modulation" under a decision that will enable licensees to use modern technology in order to ensure the reliability of crucial links, Schauble said.
The agency also is seeking comment on proposals that Schauble said would make “microwave communications more flexible and cost-effective."
“The FCC’s actions are pretty technical in nature," Schauble wrote, “but they will help all Americans by making it easier to deploy infrastructure that is needed to support the mobile services that we all increasingly rely on."
