WISPAPALOOZA 2019 Show Daily Day 3

4 WISPA PALOOZA SHOW I OCTOBER 14 - 18, 2019 www.bekabusinessmedia.com L Z OO 2019 03 DAY 01 AY 0 DAY 3 “We are seeing a newfound recognition from policymakers,” he continued. Overall, WISPA’s focus, said Aiken, is to find ways to “make your business better,” and help WISPs get more out of their networks. That includes efforts surrounding WISP workforces and human resources, as well as obtaining capital (i.e. today’s keynote by Michelle Chris- tian of the Small Business Administration) and fighting for less onerous mapping and broad- band data collection. But arguably more than anything is the battle WISPs face in accessing spectrum, particularly as the 5G hype monster gobbles up resources. It is these efforts where WISPA has arguably made the most progress within the last year. In the area of TV white space, for starters, the FCC recently granted WISPA’s request to increase the allowable fixed white space device antenna height above ground level from 30 meters to 100 meters in less-congested areas. This will help expand the service areas of those members using this technology. WISPA also successfully opposed efforts to impose unnec- essary and costly regulatory burdens such as requiring white space devices to automatically determine their antenna heights. Over in the C-band (3.7 - 4.2 Ghz), there is 500 MHz of underutilized spectrum used by the satellite industry for programming. WISPA helped initiate a call to open the C-band to flexible use and sharing. WISPA’s plan is for 200 MHz to be auctioned and cleared for mobile, and 300 MHz to be shared with earth stations for WISPs. Turning to 2.5 GHz EBS, the FCC elimi- nated educational use and other restriction for existing licenses. The FCC originally proposed a 100 MHz/13.5 MHz band plan and no bidding credits, but WISPA was able to modify the plan to split the 100 MHz chunk in half and secure rural and small business bidding credits. WISPA expects a number of WISPs to be able to take advantage of this resource if/when it becomes available. And in the CBRS 3.5 MHz space, there have been tremendous milestones with initial commercial deployments, said Aiken. The FCC expects auctions in June 2020, and WISPA is working to make sure its members have mean- ingful access there. WISPA also is pushing 3.65 GHz waivers so folks aren’t stranded without certified equipment. Elsewhere, WISPA has launched or is preparing to launch several member initia- tives. These include a new affinity program for members through Abenity, a new legal guidance program, a WISP news brief service, the inte- gration of the industry political action committee into WISPA, and a brand-new member web site. Aiken and his newly expanded staff certainly have a lot of work to do in 2020 to top the efforts of the last 12 months. m Know You Network: Oversubscription Ratio (Continued from page 1) N o WISP can afford to provision enough bandwidth from the edge to the transit point for every subscriber to use their entire plan rate at the same time. The busi- ness model simply doesn’t work. So, in most networks, some amount of oversubscription is normal. For example, as Preseem points out, a wiring closet switch may have 20 1G ports with a single 10G port to the core network. This results in a 2:1 (sum port rates / uplink port rate) oversub- scription ratio. Preseem’s “2019 Fixed Wireless Report” provides some insight into how much WISPs oversubscribe their wireless access networks. The formula Preseem used to calculate oversubscription is simply: sum of subscriber plan rates on access points/ typical throughput for that access point model and channel width. For example, if the WISP has sold 20, 10 Mbs plans on an access point that typically achieves 50Mbs, then the oversubscription ratio is 20 * 10 / 50 = 4. Like all the data in the Preseem report, the typical throughput is based on access points of the given model as seen across all Preseem customers not the marketing spec sheets. Preseem’s data shows that almost 25 percent of access points are between 1 and 2 times oversubscribed. As Preseem notes, oversubscription in and of itself is not bad. “However, higher oversubscription ratios generally lead to lower subscriber throughput during peak and therefore a poorer subscriber experi- ence,” said the network monitoring and optimization provider. m Source: Preseem