At least two telecom trade associations and one carrier have issues with aspects of the FCC’s push to open up high-frequency spectrum for 5G. The Competitive Carriers Association and CTIA – The Wireless Association, urged the agency to remove requirements that companies disclose their network security plans in their 5G plans.
Both CCA and CTIA asked the FCC to rethink the cybersecurity disclosure requirement, saying it violates the Administrative Procedures Act because the agency didn’t provide adequate notice and comment opportunities. CTIA calls the requirement “procedurally defective and flawed,” and says it should be rescinded. The agency also did not provide a “reasoned explanation or support” for the requirement, says CTIA in its Petition for Reconsideration.
The requirement that licensees in the millimeter wave bands must file a Cybersecurity Statement with the Commission prior to the deployment of their networks “is burdensome, unnecessary, and discriminatory, and was adopted without notice and an opportunity for comment,” says T-Mobile in its Petition for Reconsideration. “It should therefore be eliminated.”
“The only justification the Commission provided for the imposition of the Cybersecurity Statement requirement is that it hopes to ‘facilitate multi-stakeholder peer review and earlier development of devices and a commercially viable market for the service,’” notes T-Mobile; it adds the R&O doesn’t say who the “peers” are, how they will provide feedback and what the FCC would do with that information.
“Providers of wireless communications services have ample incentive to ensure that their networks are sufficiently protected. There is no need for the Commission to unnecessarily insert itself into network design,” says the carrier.
December 20, 2016
Reader Interactions