FCC Chairman Pai and 5 GHz Spectrum Sharing

Ajit Pai is a name we’re going to hear often in the years ahead, and he will have significant influence over the Dedicated Short Range Communications (DSRC) space. Prior to being President Trump’s pick to head the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), he served as the senior Republican Commissioner on the FCC after being nominated by President Obama and confirmed unanimously by the U.S. Senate in 2012.  As FCC Chairman, Pai will be in a position to set the FCC’s agenda and schedule, including over the pending proceeding on proposed spectrum sharing in the 5 GHz Band allocated in 1999 for DSRC.

Pai takes a strong pro-business approach with a focus on encouraging more innovation, more investment, better products and services, lower prices, more job creation, and faster economic growth. He believes the FCC should do everything it can to ensure that its rules reflect the realities of the current marketplace and basic principles of economics, especially given the rapid growth of the communications sector in recent years.

“Going forward, it will be important for OmniAir, its members, and the broader DSRC community, to engage pro-actively with new Chairman Pai to ensure that he fully understands the tremendous safety benefits of DSRC and the need to protect safety communications from harmful interference in any spectrum sharing structure under consideration by the FCC,” said Mark Johnson, regulatory and legal counsel to OmniAir.

During his time as an FCC Commissioner, Pai has supported the FCC opening up more of the 5 GHz band for unlicensed use. When the FCC allocated this spectrum for DSRC operations at the end of the last century, he noted that they could have never predicted that this spectrum would be tailor-made for the next generation of high-speed, wireless broadband.  He has stated that making available more spectrum in the band will mean more robust and universal wireless coverage for consumers, more manageable networks for providers, more test beds for innovative application developers, and other benefits that have not yet been conceived.

Although Pai advocates sharing in the 5 GHz spectrum, he has acknowledged DSRC’s potential to enable wireless communications to promote safety for both vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure purposes, thus improving highway safety and saving lives. 

“OmniAir will continue to reach out to the FCC and Chairman Pai as a recognized voice for the promotion of DSRC,” said Jason Conley, Executive Director of OmniAir Consortium. “Our goal is to protect the safety protocols laid out by visionaries nearly two decades ago, to ensure we have a dedicated or protected spectrum that enables effective and reliable communication of data and improved highway safety that saves lives.”