Mid-band spectrum is the key to unlocking the benefits of 5G for American consumers, enterprises, and innovators. This spectrum constitutes a sweet spot, delivering a balance of coverage and deep capacity essential to 5G services. Certain technical aspects of this spectrum are essential for mobile operators to leverage these bands to unleash the full power of 5G and to ensure dependable, high-performance service. These include exclusive licensing, wide spectrum bands of hundreds of megahertz, and full power radio base stations.
This paper highlights several key 5G use cases: extended reality and the metaverse, industrial IoT, and fixed wireless services, all of which require high performance, low latency, high capacity, and high reliability. In turn, the paper explains in detail how and why exclusively licensed, full power, and wide swaths of spectrum are needed to power robust 5G networks. Finally, the paper notes economic and environmental benefits of such spectrum.
