Today, the DC Circuit Court issued its ruling on the Federal Communications Commission side reallocating a portion of the 5.9 GHz band. It’s a big win for the FCC and a big loss for the auto industry, which has promised to use the airwaves to improve safety through a technology called “vehicle-to-vehicle” (V2V) or “vehicle-to-everything.” (V2X) to improve ) communication.
The problem, as Judge Justin Walker hilariously put it, is that this technology never really existed. It was one of those “just around the corner” innovations that were always promised but never really delivered. It was a fantasy, and today the court is basically saying that.
The problem, as Judge Justin Walker hilariously put it, is that this technology never really existed
But first, a little history lesson: In 1999, the FCC agreed to allocate 75 megahertz of spectrum in the 5.9 gigahertz band for so-called dedicated short-range communication services (DSRC) to be used to improve traffic safety through V2X technologies.
Broadly speaking, V2X allows vehicles to send and receive messages about road conditions, such as: B. speeding cars, weather or traffic jams. It could also help prevent accidents by using this information to make decisions, e.g. B. the initiation of emergency braking.
Some experts say widespread deployment of the technology could help accelerate the adoption of autonomous vehicles, which could use V2V communications to bolster their ability to “see” their surroundings and make better driving decisions.
But the auto industry was slow to develop V2X technology and adoption has been piecemeal. Mercedes installed V2V equipment in both the 2017 E-Class and 2018 S-Class. General Motors also introduced V2V in the 2017 Cadillac CTS. Other automakers began to look closely at a newer technology called Cellular V2X (C-V2X), which uses existing cellular networks to send communications.
The auto industry has been slow to develop V2X technology and adoption has been piecemeal
In 2017, the Trump administration announced it was scrapping an Obama-era mandate that would have required new cars to be equipped with V2V technology. And last year, tensions escalated when the FCC unveiled a new plan to use some of the spectrum reserved for V2X to extend Wi-Fi instead. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai called V2X “an unfulfilled promise” and suggested making the lower 45MHz of the band available for unlicensed applications like Wi-Fi and dedicating the upper 20MHz to C-V2X.
Automakers campaigned against the decision, arguing that Wi-Fi’s use of parts of the spectrum would harm connected-car technology. Their argument basically boiled down to this: We want to deploy V2V technology – the Alliance for Automotive Innovation has promised 5 million pieces of V2V technology over the next five years – but we can’t until the FCC promises part of the spectrum to use WiFi.
Looking ahead to the year 2022, no vehicle on the road today uses V2V technology in any meaningful way. “Over the next twenty years, intelligent transportation systems did not evolve in the way the FCC had hoped,” Walker writes in his decision. “As of 2020, ‘no commercially marketed vehicles’ used the 5.9 GHz band to provide vehicle safety features.”
The petitioners in this case are the Intelligent Transportation Society of America and the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, and they advocate keeping 5.9 GHz for transportation purposes only. They allege that the FCC has violated the Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century, which they say gives the Department of Transportation veto power over the FCC’s frequency allocation board. But Judge Walker dismisses that argument.
The judge addresses the petitioners’ claim that they need more than 30 MHz of spectrum
Walker also supports the FCC’s statement that the remaining 30MHz of spectrum is sufficient for intelligent transportation systems, while noting that new technologies such as “radar, lidar, camera and sensors” will help make up the difference.
And addressing the petitioners’ claim that automakers and technology companies need more than 30MHz of spectrum for these “not yet available technologies”, the judge notes that “the petitioners have not yet alerted us to any significant developments in this area – to-arrive technologies.”
I can’t tell you how many times we’ve been told that V2V technology is coming. At every CES for the past decade, the promised innovations have been demonstrated: cars that can see through walls!; Cars that can talk to traffic lights!
But as the FCC argued and Walker acknowledged, those promised innovations never materialized. Thankfully, there’s still time to get something on the road – and a smaller portion of the spectrum to do so.