The struggle for co-existence: communication policy by private technical standards making and its limits in unlicensed spectrum

ABSTRACT

Huge increase in the demand by the wireless sector to use the airwaves has trained focus on the classic policy problem of resource scarcity in the field. This article illuminates a part of wireless communication – unlicensed spectrum – where a particularly fractious debate over the future usage of such space has developed between incumbent Wi-Fi interests and new entrants from the field of licensed mobile communication. The case is novel in that private technical standards making has become a site aimed at resolving what is a contest for co-existence in unlicensed spectrum. In its conceptualisation of private technical standards making processes as communication policy activity, the article illuminates both their affordances and limitations. It also shows the enduring utility of public regulatory steer in what are, in effect, private self-regulatory processes aimed at creating solutions to problems with a complex socio-technical character.

KEYWORDS:

• Spectrum
• policy
• standards
• co-existence
• multiple streams

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 The regulation of the bands falls within FCC’s Part-15 Rules, stipulated in Title 47 of the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR).

2 Created in 1999, the Wi-Fi Alliance has provided interoperability certification and approved backward compatibility of Wi-Fi CERTIFIEDTM products (Wi-Fi Alliance, 2016). As seen further in this paper, the Wi-Fi Alliance has been particularly active in the planning of technical tests for measuring fair coexistence between LTE and Wi-Fi devices.

3 Founded in 2003, the Wireless Broadband Alliance (WBA) focuses on next generation Wi-Fi, connected cities, wireless innovation and testing, as well as on trials of LTE devices in unlicensed spectrum (WBA, 2016).

4 Specifically, the 802.11ax project aimed to increase traffic throughput per user by a factor of four in dense user contexts through ‘implementing mechanisms to serve more users a consistent and reliable stream of data (average throughput) in the presence of many other users’ (National Instruments, 2017, p. 1).

5 Interestingly, Ericsson (as a company) has since proposed the ED/PD option to be defined as an ‘exception’, but the proposal seems to have been refused by ETSI BRAN (IEEE 802.11 Coexistence SC, 2017).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Economic and Social Research Council [grant number ES/M00953X/1].

Notes on contributors

Imir Rashid

Imir Rashid holds a PhD from the Communication and Media Research Institute (CAMRI), University of Westminster, in the area of European Communications policy. Between 2015 and 2018, she worked as Associate Research Fellow on the ESRC-funded project ‘International Professional Fora: A Study of Civil Society Organisation Participation in Internet Goverance’. Her current research interests include debates in licence-exempt spectrum for wireless broadband communications.

Seamus Simpson

Seamus Simpson research interests lie in European and global communications policy. He is author of ‘Regulation, Governance and Convergence in the Media’ (2018, Edward Elgar), with Peter Humphreys, formerly of the University of Manchester. His work has been funded by the ESRC and the European Commission. He is a Senior Editor of the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Communciation (Oxford University Press).