The FCC announced the conclusion of the 3.45-3.55 GHz band frequency auction. This band will be used for "flexible use" and 5G. They have taken the 3.45-3.50GHz range away from amateur radio, forever. The amount of money the FCC is selling this 100 MHz of spectrum for is staggering. It looks like the auction totals to over 22.4 BILLION dollars. AT&T Holdings is the highest bidder for some of the spectrum at $9,079,177,491. Yes, this is over 9 BILLION dollars from a single bidder. We have 275 MHz of bandwidth in the 5650 MHz band, 500 MHz in the 10 GHz band, and 250 MHz of bandwidth in the 24 GHz band. I wonder how long it will be before all of our lower microwave bands are taken. DA 22-39 can be found online at, https://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-announces-winning-bidders-345-ghz-service-auction/attachment-a . 73, Ed, KI6R
Not forever. We could get it back when the lease is over and if it is no longer needed by industry, if we ask the FCC nicely. shrug. Same way we got 2200m and 630m back. We just had to wait 80 years.
Wait, we EVER had 630 and 2200m?? I mean, before recently? I thought from the beginning of allocations we were put on "200 meters and down, they'll never get out of their back yards with that." How many hams are actually operating in that part of 3 Ghz? Heck, how many operate anywhere above 1.2 GHz?
This is prime RF real estate, which is largely ignored by hams. I'd like to see us hang on to a few MHz of space in these bands to experiment with, but having 500MHz sitting unused in one band is silly. I have licensed spectrum in 6, 11 & 18 Ghz, and coordinating 30 Mhz channels in 6 can be challenging, and WiFi 6 might mean we need to move anyway... Use it or lose it. You could build some multi-gigabit links with that kind of spectrum, but there is little use for that in the ham world.
It will be interesting to see how long we can hang on to the rest of the band (3300 to 3450 MHz). The pressure from carriers and Congress is immense but the NTIA really doesn't want to give it up. The next ham band to be targeted by carriers will be 10 GHz.
that just goes to show you.." use it or lose it ". I keep telling our local amateurs to get on the air, get active or we'll lose our RF LAND !
Even if we used it we still would have lost it. Which is more attractive to the fcc, $20 billion or a bunch of hobbyist?
Sorry to say, but I dont think so. Here in Europe for about three or four years french politicians started a discussion about the 2M band for to lose it in hamradio and to give and use it for issues of the aircontrol. The IARU with some share- and stakeholders stopped that! So that the sentence, use it or lose it, is the central core. And when I try here in Germany to be on that kind of bands in the Ghz sector, I will only find datastreams. But not really activity like SSB talks and so on. Time to wake up and start the needed traffic.
But how are the HF bands today? To me it seems like they are less and less frequented by commercial traffic. But the 60m area is a bit of a hotspot because military communication uses it due to the consistent properties of that band. Now there's a lot of digital traffic on 5.357 USB, and I assume that some military people are a bit annoyed by that, but they can of course also use that to hide their own digital traffic.
I am curious, after seeing the news today, that with the alleged problems this is going to cause the FAA if maybe the 5G planned buyout of bandwidth changes. While I may be a new ham, I more than understand the safety claims of the FAA and their concerns. I grew up around military planes half of my life and my first father-in-law was a career air traffic controller. Certainly I don't want to see hams lose any of the spectrum but I believe the "powers that be" need to take a more in depth look at the safety risks that could affect a countless number of lives in the air and on the ground. But hey, that is just my two cents worth of opinion. 73 KO4YXV
This is a different band. The current troubles with the FAA and radar altimeters is with the "C-band" frequencies at 3.7 to 3.98 GHz. The 3.45 to 3.55 GHz band is used by government and military high power radars. Really high power. Since high power radars on this band currently coexist with radar altimeters, much lower power 5G nodes will not be a problem.
