trailblazer. the first woman ever to chair the powerful house rules committee. speaker ryan saying in a statement this is just jarring. my first thoughts go out to her family, friends and her staff. she was a giant in the people's house. the first woman to ever chair the rules committee. she did not need a gavel to make a place in history. we'll keep you posted on further details. we'll take you live over to a discussion on innovation in the automotive industry in the wireless technology. >> as the invitation indicated the obama administration's proposal to mandate vehicle to

vehicle communication system, a particular type of one in all new vehicles that would go in effect over the next 15 to 20 years. is unlike it. the notice of rule making has been essentially put in a limbo status and the conventional wisdom right now is that the new administration has no appetite for $100 billion mandate for talking cars. and a, you know, i hope of course that everyone watching will realize we're simply, we're not talking about the technological advance to talking cars but a new type of vehicle

safety. vehicle to vehicle and vehicle to infrastructure as well as a way to bring lots of newcomb her shl services to cars. but part of that debate is between the high-tech sector and the auto industry that focuses on access to the increasingly valuable but still vacant spectrum that was set aside back in 1999 for intelligence transportation services and a couple of years after that they put in a channel plan and designated that dedicated short range communication would be the technology to do and that's what the d.o.t. was proposing to

mandate they'll use only a portion of this upper five gigahertz band. d.o.t.'s indecision now stalled the federal communications commission's proposal to pave the roads with super fast wifi by allowing the large but still unused its ban. today's event will touch on both ends of that. what is the trajectory particularly using communications but then how much of the air waves does it need and is there room for wifi which is filling up the adjacent band and is necessary for the mobile devices that you're all so fond

of. so with that we'll have roger that is director of automotive connective mobility at strategy analytics is going to do a presentation to give us background on this. where we are. because there's been recent developments as a potential substitute it's a very important development that really potentially changes the debate. the rest of the panel will come up and the reporter for bloomberg law will guide us in a discussion about where we go from here.

then we'll open it to the audience. think about what question this all raises in your mind and then time for audience q and a and certainly at that point tell us who you are, who you're with. and really invite audience participation. we're not going to spend a lot of time on long introductions but roger is director of auto y automative connected mobility. an expert in this field. roger. i was told i just have to hit this button and we would be good

to go. there we go. all right. i'll let the mystery cursor advance the slides, maybe. should i keep try something that's not working. strategy analytics we look at the mobile and wireless market and the automotive industry and we look at technology adoption and deployment vehicles and we advise our clients the car makers and wireless carriers and the very broad eco system supplying the automotive industry including content providers, et cetera our clients are asking about on a daily

basis. they're making significant decisions right now and it's kind of a situation that's up in the air. so as i thought about what i would talk about in setting the stage for our conversation today the first question is why are we connecting cars? the average person isn't necessarily insisting on or looking for a car with a wireless connection. some people may be looking for a car without a wireless connecti connection. if your a car company you probably want it. you have tens of millions of lines of software code in there and it's ripe with errors and vulnerabilities and you want to be able to manage that data and manage that software and keep it up to date as well as being able to detect if there's any sort of cyber security vulnerabilities or intrusions and have the

ability to respond. we have a huge vehicle recall problem in this country and growing proportion of those recalls are for software flaws in the car. and if they can connect those flaws along the line of what tesla is doing then billions of dollars could be saved by the industry. so increasingly the auto makers are recognizing that this is in their favor. it's a requirement. they need to connect cars. now this is happening in the context of an automotive industry and wireless industry that don't get along well. wireless carriers don't understand car companies and car companies can't stand wireless carriers. there's a lot of cost and liability and unclear value propositions to the consumer.

so that never became a requirement across the car companies. only a hand full did at the time they actually licensed the technology and then they changed their mind and pulled the licenses back. interestingly in a month or two, europe will implemented a man date that will require all approved vehicles to have a function built in. and on star for all companies in europe. so we're doing in different directions. just to give you an idea, a large volume of cars are going up with wireless connection.

we have cars that have wireless connections and the free period expired and people have not renewed. we haven't told it to the consumer yet but it's becoming almost a standard. >> it isn't obvious. why does my car have to talk to the other cars along the road? why is that happening? and i think the anlage to a intervehicle communication would be so that's just based on the smartpho smartphone. so most people would say i'm already communicating with the other drivers. it's going to the server and coming back and it's being interpreted.

it's great help for my navigation but what we're talking about today is collision avoidance. so what kind of progress have we made in the early 20 years of development? not a lot. gm started putting modules in their vehicles which is probably their single lowest volume vehicle and the volume has continued to go down since they made that decision, but it was a way to say we want this spectrum d.o.t. so don't take it away from us. we're putting it in our cars. come to find out they were a little bit surprised that nobody followed their lead in this approach. toyota was before everybody in

deploying in a large number of cars in japan but in a different spectrum and different value proposition and completely different marketplace. volkswagen said in 2019 their new cars will get connections. this is only for europe though and it's important to understand the context here which is europe does not have a man date and the mandate has been beaten back by the industry. and volkswagen's biggest market is china and they're not going to deploy it. please note the energizer bunny. so dsrc won't go away. so no one here is going to tell you it's dead even though i have been quoted saying that. it's not going away. not dead yet.

so the news in this space is the voices coming from move in europe and usdot in the u.s. is technology neutrality. so we're not going to put our thumb on the scale anymore. the significance of that is that when we have the smart city challenge in the u.s. for example all the proposals required dsrc. it looks like that's going to go away. some states have said, state levels have said they're going to continue to push it but not all 50. maybe about 18. but it's not a unified front at this time. so the regulators and government are taking a step back and saying maybe the quicker path to market is to get out of the way. i'm not going to get into the

details here but i want to highlight a couple of things about what many of you may be hearing about for the first time. cv text is offering almost identical if not superior capability. so you're having the same but also high bandwidth. it can operate without network assistance. i can't tell you how many senior industry engineer executives with far more advanced degrees than i'll ever see in my life telling me, well, the carriers will never allow direct communications without access to the network. you're going to have to communicate with the network and there's going to be too much for this to be a safety relevant application. that's simply not true and i don't know why the confusion persists but i wanted to make sure that we're all on the same

page. they're using the same spectrum. the lower left is saying there's no path forward. so what are we seeing? what does it mean to the average consumer? hopefully that we're going to save lives because vehicles will be able to communicate with each other. the problem you can probably surmise is that if no other car has it the only car the cts can avoid colliding with is another model year 2018 cadillac cts. that's a problem. and volkswagen is going to have the same problem. a volkswagen so equipped model year 2018 or model year 2019 will only be able to avoid colliding with another volkswagen model year 2019. so the value proposition really

only works once all cars or some would say a certain percentage of cars are so equipped. there is a day one capability that would be relevant though and that's vehicle to infrastructure. traffic lights enabled with the technology they would be able to communicate with the cadillac cts but that would have to be developed and the likelihood is that it would be a very small number of traffic lights because it's way more expensive. so you're got going to go with the more expensive round. but that would be a day one application. ford was one of the early advocates so for them to say they're doing it is a big deal and others are very likely behind them but they come out in

particular in the forefront and said we're doing this. samsung and qualcomm say car companies are adopting 5g. that doesn't exist yet. how are they doing that? typically car companies have been three or four years behind each evolution of the wireless network. when we were getting 3-g, cars were getting 2-g until they discovered like gm when we went from analog to digital when analog got turned off all the cars got turned off and suddenly they had a class action lawsuit on their hands. so they want cars with the latest technology at day one. especially because that device will begin there for 15 years. you don't want to be saving

pennies on an old network that's not going to be around. so the evolutionary path, though, so they're saying, cv to x will be forward compatible with 5g where as dsrc is only compatible with dsrc. i haven't heard this confusion a lot but there's a little confusion about interoperability. there's not any with these. they have to decide one or the other. they won't communicate with each other but it will work on a 5g network in the future and you'll have capability with this kind of technology and traffic and other value propositions taking

advantage of the network as well as working where there is no netd wor network. i wanted to double down on this message. the interface that allows that between vehicles and infrastructure that is not translated to our current wireless network but will be available in a network that's cv to x and eventually 5-g. we have many issues to talk about today so the mandate and functional equivalents between the two technologies, wider spectrum, business model costs, consumer acceptance, these are the issues we will be discussing today. >> great background. we'll invite the panel to come

up. and he'll take over. >> thank you all for this conversati conversation. i'm going to briefly interview each person and let them give their own introduction of what they're working on and where they are on this topic. we have got michael, the director of the project. we have mark with the competitive enterprise institute. senior fellow. we have mary brown. we have daniel and vice president and associate general council. and finally we have roj who has generously given us the great background on the subject.

so michael, i'll start with you. >> thanks for doing this and you know as roger said, it's looking increasi increasingly unlikely that there will be a man date for dsrc as the specific technology or any mandate for a vehicle to vehicle safety signaling and if there's no mandate the fcc should use the opportunity to take an immediate look at the highest and best use of this fairly large and increasingly valuable spectrum that lays empty because, you know, and this should be clearly obvious, quite a bit has changed since 1999. when it was first allocated.

i'll mention a few of those first. there is a revolutionary new auto safety technology to avoid most serious accidents. it's just not radio communications technology. as auto makers develop automated vehicles they're already incorporating and rapidly improving sophisticated crash avoidance technology and on board sensors such as drowsiness protection. it won't be proven or effective for 15 to 20 years or longer, even if it's mandated because it takes at least 15 years for the entire vehicle fleet in the united states to turnover. and by then we'll be living in a very different transportation world. second cars will be connected.

just not by dsrc. so even if dsrc was mandated for vehicle to vehicle signaling, soon all new cars will be connected to the general purpose mobile networks for all kiens of other purposes. that should make safety more cost effective. if it's part of the general purpose network but it also means the band can be reorganized to maximum the public interest. since this would be starting fresh. there's a distinction between real time safety of life applications which must be uniform interoperable and commercial or informationark l

applications. such as getting an ad flashed on your windshield when you stop at a red light near mcdonald's or downloading maps or swapping videos with other cars and we can use other spectrum for that purpose. when the commissioners spoke here on this topic two years ago and nothing has really changed since then he particularly emphasized that the noncritical safety use of this should be shared with wifi. it's starting from scratch today so now is the time to decide how it will use the public airways. there is likely spectrum with

better propagation and closer to carrier bands that should be used. they condition operate at the top of the band and allow wifi to share the rest. finally, public interest must factor in the enormous and growing value of wifi. wifi bands are congested in busy places and in a 5-g world consumers will need much wider channels of shared spectrum that appear available only in the 5 and 6 gigahertz bands. right now the car ban is a vacant desert island in the middle of what will be the core band needed to make wifi more available, fast and affordable for consumers so it's really time for a fresh look.

>> thanks for hosting us here today. so i'm going to cover, i guess you could say two categories here. first, i'm going to discuss some specific problems in the national highway safety administration's noticed of proposed rule making that was publish about a week before president trump took office and has since been moth balled as a long-term action. first, so dsrc exclusive approach would have required they estimated nearly 20,000 roadside assistant units to be built up along the national highway system but as they quickly noted they don't have funds to build a network.

they don't have authority to regulate and manage the network so when they were talking about mandating this specific vehicle technology that would have required a brand new nationwide network, they basically said, we'll figure this out later. and you'll see this is sort of a theme. they thought they could just figure this out later rather than actually presenting an actual proposal to the public to comment on. >> this one here and would result in litigation but they left a large glaring hole. so encrypt the basic safety messages that would be transmitted between the cars and also you'd have a way to replenish security certificates over time.

we'll figure this out sometime but lawyers couldn't look at this and engineers couldn't look at this to see what may be going wrong with their approach toward cyber security. they would have needed to implemented supplemental rule making and open up another comment period so commenters could evaluate that. another problem. it's also noted that it likely doesn't have the authority to mandate that users accept critical updates for the replenishment of security certificates. what that would mean is that a

user uses critical updates the device becomes incop rabboperab. they could have tried to mitigate that, this kind of thing not including an off switch but also installing a light or a chime that would annoy users into accepting these wireless updates. but another problem since they can't mandate, they accept these updates, the privacy conscious or even just the apathetic. i like to call this the apathy rate but given that we have 10% of cars on the road today that display a check engine, mostly people don't care and they have taken the meaning to not be worth very much in terms of the safety or the operation of the

vehicle. but if you have privacy conscious people that might be actively hostile to this forced connectivity all they would have to do is refuse updates and then the device on their vehicle becomes incoperative. and then finally, on the deficient sis and really what michael was saying, the trump administration staked out a deregulatory approach. executive order 13771 which was the order that also required cost neutrality and given that the regulatory impact analysis published along with this proposed rule estimated a $5 billion annual cost and $108 billion total cost by 2060, that would give the trump d.o.t. a

lot less maneuverability in pursuing other goals if they were going to add this. it would have been by far the most costly auto safety regulation in a number of years. so i think part of it is practical because they would have an issue in pursuing their priorities as well. and then quickly, i hope we touch on this more but automative vehicle developers and google self-driving car project, tesla, mercedes benz, bmw all weighed in and were strongly negative of this proposal and i think from the perspective of an automated vehicle when they were looking at this and remember, this is only hazard so this is going to alert the driver of an imminent hazard. it's not going to actively intervene to stop a crash.

so the best case scenario would be while they have to install this useless device that may display some annoying ones that riders can't respond to. if you were in a self-driving vehicle and see this alert you might realize a car is about to hit you but you can't do anything about it so you'd be terrified going into a crash. but the worst case scenario that they -- and they repeatedly weighed in on this in the comment period was, well, if they didn't resolve the cyber security issues, what happens if there is some sort of a link between the b2b device and the did technology, the automated technology correcting the core vehicle functions. what if we have a malicious attack on that. their point was that without any additional information from the

federal government, all they were doing is increasing the number of attack vectors and there's really no point if you're trying to promote safety and then finally i would say that a top down mandate could divert resources they're currently spending on automation technology shifting into this. i like to think of it as sort of the connected vehicle technologies that sounded really great. they may have had a case back in

2005. the time is long past. >> before i hear very top line thoughts i want to mention that i'd love to return to this idea of consumers having to update the system and i just imagine some government entity forcing people to update their iphones. the country would collapse. nobody does those on time. and the check engine light, how often do we all ignore those? probably too often. so love to return to that. >> thanks for having me today. first, why is this sitting in front of you? i think it's because everyone involved in this debate is either a customer or a partner and we are trying to figure out what is going to happen.

this is one of the oddest issues in my 35 years of public policy. two decades ago the department of transportation had the bright idea to take radio technologies and you could introduce them into the transportation sector to generate efficiencies and make it safe and probably render some environmental benefits to boot. and today what the transportation department has done is by a measure some what complete. with every passing year, the views about what should happen to this idea of using radio to make us safer has become increasingly splintered and i now count five mutually exclusive, some of which you already heard today but first it is and should remain the

intelligent transportation technology of choice. some auto manufacturers, the national highway transportation safety administration care to agree. more recently state highway departments added their voice to this for us. that said, they have not mandated the use of vehicle to vehicle technology. yet it remains significant rule making. it's a key part of the strategic plan and more infrastructure deployments are happening at the state level. new equipment is being introduced by vendors and just last week they stood up in a study group to refresh and update the standards. it doesn't feel dead to me. second position, cellular vehicle to everything should be the designated technology of choice. this late to the party

technology challenger uses exactly the same spectrum as dsrc but is not interoperable with it. as weright? it was created by the global cellular industry in response to china's decision to move to a cellular based system to do this. we're still in the united states in a very early days. it has not been tested anywhere near the level of dsrc and not been tested by government. it may well be a great technology. it may well be a better technology than dsrc, but that's a proof point that needs to be developed along with some explanation of what the business model might look like. because that may have different implications for automanufactures and state highway departments and most importantly, consumers. third position, its has too much spectrum devoted to it and that

amount should be reduced. it is certainly true that wi-fi needs more spectrum and that spectrum has not be used and sitting there fallow today. some parties urging nhtsa not to mandate technology for safety saying the technology is good enough. my own view on that based on the studies i have seen. whatever radio technology you talk b.dsrc or cellular based, both see beyond autonomous technology and would give the car more information to help keep the passengers in that vehicle safe. and i think the automanufactures would contemplate whatever system that is. ultimately comes into use and that information would be integrated into the awe thon mouse systems. being another data input and

leave the radio solution to the market. what is less clear is how would the market resolve the very real network effects problem? namely, we have to be on the same or interop rabble radio technology to attain the benefits. splintering is never good for public policy decision-making. you want to bring parties together. i see this debate going in the opposite direction and i hope we can discuss more about the implications of all of this as we move through discussion and q and a. thanks. >> great, thanks mary. danielle, let's hear from you. >> i want to talk about things that haven't changed or more recently when the fcc first opened the five gigahertz proceeding.

i'd like to talk about changes in the spectrum vierlt and like to start by highlighting that the need for wi-fi has not diminished in the last 5 years. it is becoming more acute and seeing fast paced growth for wi-fi. there's been a couple of important studies using different methodologies that conclude that consumers will need over a gig gigahertz, we may need more than that when it comes to enabling new and innovative technology. remains the best option for additional mid band unlicensed spectrum suitable for wi-fi. why is that? it is aed jdjacent to the uni-b.

and important economies of skill and more broadband to the market more quickly. despite the rhetoric that it is around the corner after nearly 20 years, these dsrc services remain in the pilot phase and may not see wide spread commercial deploilt. so there's none that is underutilized. today they are providing giga bite broadband to homes. lacking the wide 160 mega hertz channels they need to deliver to consumers. that's how many of us experience the internet. there's been a lot of change in the last few years, there's been a shift from dsrc to -- and others mentioned this is really shifting industry interest away from dsrc to cellular

technologies and that means argument this about cost or the current channels are suspect. now we heard from a couple of folks that the cv -- can be used to cv to x applications this is a new technology that may not be the case. we heard that cv to x has a path forward to 5g and maybe appropriate to think about it and accordingly. doesn't mean less spectrum, i do think it is right for them to take a step back and think about the spectrum needs for the shifting landscape in automotive communications technology. what is the right spectrum home for these different options? we heard some expect that the licensing spectrum might be a bepter chose for the safety applications than the model.

i want to talk about changes in the spectrum environment since they first conceived as -- in that time the lower uni-band has seen wide spread deployment. millions on millions of unlicensed devices in the united states. upper adjacent bands, the six gigahertz band right now adjacent to ddrc. and looking at -- so as michael mentioned, it may no longer be an island of autosafety that might not be a good engineering choice to have an automotive safety band there. take a step sbak take a fresh look and the fcc issue of

further notice of proposed rule making and designate the full spectrum for unlicensed use to help meet that growing demand on wi-fi and seeking comment on what the spectrum needs are and change in nature since 1999 and even in the last five years and to examine whether there are suitable spectrum for the automotive communication technology. >> thank you. roger you're next. >> i already said enough, but i did want to comment on some of the statements made here and some of the things i didn't mention. so i wanted to highlight what michael was saying about the fact that there's a lot of technologies entered into the market since the conversation about dsrc. so come ameras did not exist as safety tool and radar were in the early stages and too expensive in most cases. and we weren't hearing about lie

dar. they went from one 50. and enhance driving safety dare i say without wireless connection on the car. what we haven't talked a lot about on the panel here is well, we're working towards the industry is autonomous driving all of the safety technology experiencing with no driver. and 5 g is going to play a role. what you have seen recently, the need for remote control of the vehicle. okay? now weave seen hackers do that. now it may become, not only a sae standard which is being defined for another level of autonomy and may become a requirement. if the vehicle or something going wrong, you want to have a

fall back of some kind of remote control m. the wireless connection of 5g provides that. and companies are doing it today with lte. believe me, i'm a skeptical as anybody about these scaleability of remote control of large numbers of vehicles. it not only being contemplated but it may be required. finland's law provides for the driver that there must be a driver but the driver doesn't have to be in the car. draw your own conclusions on where this is leading. so i'd be the first person to say most of the autonomous vehicles on the readen don't have a wireless connection and they are perfectly safe. in the future, we're going to want to have all of the technology at our disposal that we can have. a belts and suspenders approach

to autonomous driving and wireless technology will play that role and it will be cellular. satellite 2018 conference in d.c. yesterday and satellite wants to play a role in this game as well. i think the points were covered very nicely and with very little overlap by the other speakers so back to you. >> well, roger thank you for that. and i do think it is important to talk about the role of at autonomous vehicles. i wonder if we are going to use the phrase behind the wheel in terms of somebody who is in control, we are no longer behind the wheel literally in our cars. moving on, it is clear that this debate in some ways is quite old in a sense that some idea of intelligent transportation and spectrum has been in the works for decades. but it's very knew with things

like self-driving cars. so i want to shift gears. partly intended pun. and ask michael, should there be a mandate for vehicle to vehicle communications? >> okay. well, we haven't focused on that on the safety -- we're not claiming to be safety experts exactly. and mark should weigh in on that. i think, you know, really some of the considerations i mention in the beginning are very important which is given the cost and given how long it would take to become effective, i think the administration really needs to look at how much of a difference will it make. and i think it was just mentioned, roger just mentioned, the tra jektry of driver-assist

safety technologies. again, the radars, lasers, light cameras they are improving and it makes each car safer and makes the whole driving environment safer for everyone for each new car. the problem with dsrc that nhtsa was frank about and notice of rule making. it will take at least -- first of all, it will be a few years before they start really doing it if they adopted it tomorrow. and would take 15 years, they said -- even though if it will be effective. you have to have a turnover in the vehicle fleet which takes about 15 years. and it just seems that we're changing the nature of driving so radically over that same time period and these things are so

interactive with each other as somebody mentioned. that it probably -- it probably is better to leave it to the market but within you know, obviously within certain bounds. >> roger, you wanted to weigh in? >> from a mandate perspective, i thought you were going to say, you didn't quite say it, even if we were going to go forward which will probably be eight years before anything took effect, the back-up cameraman date, that took eight years and there's research that had to be done on top of the research from before to determine exactly how it would be implemented and et cetera, et cetera and comment periods and phase-in, et cetera, et cetera. and what we saw in the obama administration was a shift to the industry. boy, we should mandate automatic

emergency braking at low speed but again, if we pursue a mandated approach, it would be eight to 10 years before we save life number one. so they took a voluntary approach to get everybody to commit that we are going to put these on the cars by a certain date, without the -- seems to be fundamentally flawed in the regulatory mandated process where there isn't a flaw i think. i could be mistaken, i'm not a fleet commercial vehicle industry expert. i think nhtsa has more authority to implement mandates in a that sector rapidly and we might have a different conversation today if the approach was not to see dsrc implemented in the commercial segment. and today, we would have commercial vehicles with the technology and added advantage to protect large vehicles around

you. you would have a valuable proposition. but, i think there's something fundamentally flawed in the regulatory process to get to a life-saving proposition. >> mary. >> yeah. so i want to point out that the notion that michael raised about the amount of time it's going to take to roll radio-based technologies into the fleet that is all the cars that we drive, is a concern regardless of what radio technology you pick, right? the average american is now olding onto their vehicle for more than 10 years. so it takes time for any new technology to be deployed whether it is semi-autonomous, autonomous or radio-based. the question is, does radio-base capability for safety, does that -- is the increment of safety

you're going to get off of that from semi-autonomous technologies in new cars today or autonomous technologies. is the benefit you're going to get from that worth the cost? what we saw in the nhtsa and notice of proposed rule making from the end of 2016 when they did the cost-benefit analysis. they were concluding yes. i will be the first to say that technology moves fast and before you go to a find rule you would have to do the analysis again to find out -- regardless of the radio technology you pick, is the benefit worth the cost? >> the estimate was 1,200 lives would be saves or something. >> the high-end was up towards 1,400. that was at 2060. >> i don't know if that was right, i'm assuming the the connection between the rf selection and the vehicle

controls. >> that was assuming -- >> a hazard. >> a warning. >> assuming warnings and the automanufactures say they would integrate that data into their semi-autonomous and autonomous technologies. >> the ones that don't actively oppose the mandate. >> regardless of the technology. if you assume a radio technology, it's going to be apart of that system. >> the main difference between automated safety technology and a radio technology is that you can start providing safety benefits immediately once that automated technology is deployed. it doesn't matter what other cars are equipped with. and then the case of the v2v mandate from nhtsa, they were looking at a cost-benefit break even point a decade after the phase-inbegan. a decade after the mandate started to take effect. i think the point is that the lower levels of automation

technology take automatic emergency braking which is promising now and we see it deployed in the vehicle fleet today. we can save just as many lives as the probably overly-optimistic regular la tear impact analysis from nhtsa from v2v, doc in just a couple of years as opposed to waiting decades to reap the benefits under the nhtsa's vision from v2v. i think -- i don't disagree that in the future we're going to see automated connected vehicles cooperative automated vehicles. that's not what nhtsa is talking about right now. and if you look at all of the discussion and everything that is in that rule-making proceeding that is still open and it's a very little next to nothing on automated vehicles. it is all focused on hasrd

warnings. finally, just to point out. i think there's been, even though there's a rule making sitting out there open and designated as a long-term action meaning that nhtsa didn't expect to work on this for at least 12 months. we have seen other things maybe not as clear, but we saw the 2018, 2022 strategic report gut all references to dsoc, v to x. strategic plan. and also we've seen guidance pulled back at federal highway administration. so i think there is, i don't think the administration has finished its work on this topic. i think there are in addition to the redesignation of the rule making proceeding status,s i think we've seen other -- that

they are moving in a different direction than the previous organization. >> anybody else? >> i would like to add from a regulatory over hang perspective with the mandate out there and to the back burner. it is problematic for everyone invol. for the automotive sector where it is headed to the technologies. and it is problematic from a sort of a political perspective and trying to permit the fcc to move forward and finally get to a place regardless of the decision, we get some more efficient use of that band. >> i'm interested in the perspectives here on what we are fundamentally looking at. that for the first time talking about using cellular for an act of safety function in the vehicle which is quite radical,

typically the interaction with the cellular industry by the automakers, things for detain meant. automatic -- safety, that a group of guy that is take a look at the wireless industry. i'm curious on how the rest of the panel thinks about that fundamental shift. >> that's a great question, roger, mary, do you have any thoughts? >> as i said in my opening. i think -- we're lacking a couple of things. obviously, we're lacking an nhtsa administrator that can articulate which way the wind is blowing in the ago sency. we don't have one. we don't have anybody but an acting person in good faith pursuing the agenda she's been given. on this question, i think there's been a complete lack of

clarity around the business model of a cellular v to x system. who would run it? do the carriers want to accept the liability of being the providers of a vehicle to vehicle crash avoidance system? would they prefer the automo automanufactures to take the responsibility and what would be relationships be from the perspective on how is the band used? to what end is the greater throughput going to be used for day tachlt what are the business relationships there? and i don't think we are clarity. and i'm curious to know if anybody saw. >> this i haven't seen clarity coming out of the carriers. they are interested in exploring the technology to see what it can do. which is good. i haven't seen clarity on how

the business model actually works. the one thing i will say, dsrc, there's a clear business model. and it involves the consumer paying nothing. once you buy the car. once you buy the car with the radio in it, you don't pay anymore. there's a consumer angle that needs to be clarified. >> mary, you make a great point about the reliability. that's a running theme in 5g. once the network has every part of the consumer's life on it, who is liable when that -- you know, device doesn't work or when something bad happens? i know michael wanted to make a point. >> one thing i mentioned in my opening was that the fcc commissioners who have been speaking out on this issue over the past couple of years, o'rielly in particular, they have been emphasizing that there is a distinction between v2v or

v 2 x is real time safety. it has to be available to everyone or it is not going to work. this is a technology that is completely dependent on the network effect on every car having this. and it all being you know, every car able to talk the same language. there's a distinction between that and the other car applications. perhaps, using alternative you know, radios on the same chip. and what i've been hearing recently from mobile carriers is an acknowledgment of that distinction. it is important. they're saying that oh, look, for you know, the government is going to have to tell us and say

that -- that every car for safety purposes, every car has to have -- and even if there's not a mandate, if you are going to have a safety signaling, it must be the same interface. it has to be interop rabble. and they are saying that has to be a peer to peer communication. we're not talking -- for safety, we're not talking about the way it works on your smart phone. it's not going to go through cloud or back to each of the competing carriers different networks. this has to be, for safety, the basic safety message has to be peer to peer. directly between the cars. and they are saying that it can be -- basically, use the same 5g radio and probably it is something that the automakers put in and operates and nobody knows who is in charge of it

yet. where all of the other things you would do from v 2 x is what each carrier innovates around and competes on and goes back through their own networks. so it is two different things. >> michael, i wanted to follow up and on safety, how much spectrum is needed? >> well, it's not -- well. needed and then also you know, required. so what nhtsa the public of transportation has in their notice of rule making. it has been true from the beginning. the requirement that all vehicle to vehicle signaling must be on a dedicated single channel of 10 mega hertz. they require that all that real time safety signaling be on

10-mega hertz. and to set aside a second channel for first responders because it can be at a higher power level. and in europe, what the european union decided on, they think that safety requires 20-mega hertz and going to have a third channel so up to 30 mega hertz as a contingency. like cars commuting with stop lights and things like that. even though that is not always time-critical, it could be on this third channel. so europe is going with up to 30-megahertz. and one of the proposals it looked like they were going to be mandated. they had a proposal to segment the band saying let's give safety its on exclusive 30-mega

hertz at the top so wi-fi can share the rest. so the commercial applications can share between dsrc and wi-fi. the emergence of cellular v2x throws in this wild card. can we do it the same way and should we still do it the same way? on the one hand. since it is starting from scratch, it's easy to use the top of the band for safety and on the other hand it is less clear how well they can coexist with wi-fi or if it makes sense because each mobile carrier will have their own 5g networks and separate spectrum. >> how much control would nhtsa have over the mega hertz and how it is divided up?

>> maybe i can jump in on that. it's important to remember that the vehicle to vehicle mandate, we were looking at one ten mega hertz channeling. sometimes, there's a misperception that it is dot spectrum, it is commercial spectrum governed by -- it has an important role to play. in safety technology, it's not the expert agency when it comes spectrum provisions. i think that's why it's time for the fcc to step up and step forward given the changes in the marketplace and think about the spectrum needs in the new environment and take a fresh look at the band. >> just to apply some technology gloss to the statements here. the dsrc technology was designed

with a vehicle to vehicle channel. that is 10-mega hertz, dependent upon the vehicle to infrastructure channel so they can obtain the security certificates that we heard about earlier. and there's also a control channel at the top of the band and there was a channel that state highway departments were going to use. in a dsrc proposal, you can't isolate 10-mega hertz. they need something else. when the cellular v 2 x came along, they took the same model and put if cellular technology, right? so they -- they also need some way to communicate with the radio that's on board the vehicle. whether that absolutely needs to be in the band, or it could be

that communication link could be in another band, is a question. it's a valid question. but that's how it was designed. it was essentially designed as a se cellular version of dsrc. >> taken from the discussion during his presentation that highlighted the various sides and i'm no expert but there's a piece that they are thinking about the band for and they contemplate the cvx to the communications. given that kind of unique nature and the fact things are still developing, i think now is the right time to be thinking about the spectrum needs and for the fcc to take a look. >> most of them will say that's using the same spectrum and can use the same protocols and deliver the same

value-proposition fundamentally. that seems to be -- >> and we just had a white paper from ag america released that says that. cellular vendors and operators saying it is the same spectrum. >> where does wi-fi fit into this whole equation. we mentioned it and several of you have. i want to focus in on it for a second and talk about where it fits in to this spectrum-policy discussion. >> michael, do you want to take the first crack? >> go ahead. >> i think i said my piece on this. i think we're see ago great demand and growing demand for wi-fi technologies. so seeing increase consumer demand and congestion on the network in peak hours. and you've got a great new wi-fi standard, which is now in

development for the next one and both rely on wide 160-megahertzen channels. we have one in the u.s. to support everybody. it is really -- i should say it is not restricted by dynamic frequency selection rules. the so under kind of, most favorable wi-fi rules, you have -- to get the country's first contiguous 160-mega hertz wi-fi channel, it is the only place teed up here today. so i think this band is important for wi-fi use and to meet that growing demand and the wi-fi speed that is carriers are delivering into the home. >> yeah. i would add that it's -- if wi-fi is going to keep pace in a

5g world, it's going to need wider channels more spectrum. so we often talk -- we talk about 5g as if it is a mobile, just a mobile carrier technology and network. but it will be even more diverse and decentral lieized than the current 4g wireless world. so currently. we have 4g but i'm sure all of you on your smart phones are sending about 80%, roughly, that's some of the carriers set up, 80% of the mobile device data traffic is not touching the network. it is going a short distance over unlicensed spectrum via

wi-fi. people believe you pay too much. you would have farless data if everything went to the carrier network. because it is going via wi-fi into the water line that -- wir few hundred feet. that makes your mobile broadband more available and considerably faster particularly indoors and a lot more affordable. so when 5g comes along, the same process needs to happen. so the mobile carriers are using millimeter waves. more spectrum to have wider channels for faster networks. and we'll enjoy that. except, that will be too expensive unless wi-fi can keep pace with that. right now, the only place for channels is in the 5-gigahertz

band below and adjacent to the car band. fcc proposed to make 750-mega hertz available back in 2013, it found among other problems, that the military said, we can't -- you can't share with a certain kind of radar in the middle of the band. and now we're running into this issue of this band we're talking about today, 5.9-gigahertz. that's the only place we know in the upper 5-gigahertz band and 6-gigahertz band so that the entire 5g system will be robust m the license and unlicensed side of it. >> mary. >> so i concur with a substantial part of what michael

said, but i will elaborate further. 5g is the first time that the cellular industry is going to have a radio access network. the edge radio that is agnostic to technology and one of them are going to be wi-fi. so anyone thinks who thinks it is not part of 5-g it is going to be part of the 5-g system and going to be apart of the demand spectrum. i personally, and many of us in the wi-fi industry have become t is painful to watch the 5-9 proceeding and 5-9 activities not advance as quickly as we like. the spectrum is sitting there unused. cisco had a proposal when dsrc was the only horse in the race

to try to share. now we are not sure if dsrc will end up prevailing. the it is sitting in the incumbents chair. it is painful to watch. and i think, at least at cisco, we are spending far more of our time and energy and mind share at opening spectrum at 6 because we don't see a way to move the 5-9 along any kind of resolution. whether it be dsrc or cellular v to x. how much spectrum will we need? it doesn't seem a way to move it forward? >> we are hopeful we are going to move forward. it is painful to see it sitting there underutilized. i think 6-giga hertz. there might be a discussion for

another panel but certainly, we're hopeful that there's a way to share in the 6 gigahertz frequency. why aren't we saying it is the best near term for wi-fi. one reason is that the proceeding isn't advanced yet. we kicked it off last summer. i'm not willing to give up on it quote. in addition, there may be, technical rules that have to be worked out and restriction that might not be present in 5.9 in terms to operate. hopefully optimistic about 6-gigahertz and believe that 5.9 is the best near term option. >> this is why this is an awkward conversation to take place in nhtsa. i'm getting an education on the wi-fi side of the issue. so it is not a rational

discussion it becomes emotional, political and religious and then it comes to we spent $700 million on this technology. we've come this far which takes it completely beyond a business-model discussion as mary is trying to bring it back to and the technical issues that are at strak ask implications that touch everybody not just car drivers. so this is just what everybody has just heard is the untold story of this debate. what the wi-fi piece is all about. >> i'm certainly glad we could she had some light on an untold story. should we move to q and a or are we running a bit short on time? any final thought this quickly from anyone before we -- >> let's go right to questions. >> sir. >> hi, my name is matt i'm a

transportation consultant. i've enjoyed the conversations so far and i wanted to ask you -- [ inaudible ] and i thought the conversation was going to be about -- [ inaudible ] >> i have seen it is promising and the substitute. -- [ inaudible ] >> the television needs a microphone. >> all right. so my point was simply wouldn't it be helpful to first establish if we should be moving to toward the objectives of dsrc whether it is dsrc or cellular v to x

and discuss bandwidth second? >> i think a main problem that we have right now is that -- what danielle referred to earlier, a regulatory over hang at nhtsa that not only is presenting this regulatory unsternt in the automotive industry over what technology is going to be used but also having negative impacts over at the fcc and on the wireless industry and the equipment manufactures. until d.o.t. gets its act together and i think it is moving in a good direction. until it chooses a path and does so clearly, all of this other stuff is still going to be left on resolved and it should be resolved. >> so i think the logical order of resolution is the one you suggested which we ought to figure out about what do we need to do about safety first and

figure out the spectrum consequences, i agree with that. one of the solutions it is still early days. there was a recent announcement by ford and other players that they were going to set up a test-bed in california. i certainly hope they share the data off that. so people can begin to see, is this technology living up to the marketing hype that we've been hearing about for six months or a year? that would be helpful. and i think it would be important for folks to tell us what they think the business model looks like so that can be compared to dsrc. we don't have that information or data-proof points and clarity around the two yishissues. that's the right pursuit. >> if we get ahead of them by reallocating the bandwidth -- [ inaudible ] >> i certainly hear that concern and i think this is a challenge

that the federal communications commission faces often in th environment because they are in a position to designate bandwidth and allocate it many years before. it should not take 20 years but certainly, in order for technology to take off, it needs to have spectrum security in place. so the fcc needs to make some of the decisions fairly quickly for some of the technologies on the table. >> it appears, i should add that you know, this is where it got stalled at the fcc. i believe they have been waiting for the department of transportation to make at least, a fundamental decision about what safety is needed. you know, and -- because it is not even so much a choice between dsrc and cellular v2x as the interface technology because they will probably use about the

same spectrum for the same amount of spectrum for the purpose of safety. but they really -- they really just need to decide, is there going to be a mandate and what are they mandating? so already in europe as i mentioned earlier, they decided that 30-megahertz is about as much as what would be needed for the safety side of this. and if they could make a decision like that, you know, then that would -- i think allow the fcc to have more confidence in allowing sharing of the additional -- of the other spectrum that might be for non-real time safety applications. >> certainly, a lot of open questions and speaking of which, anymore from the audience? no. good, well thank you -- oh, go

ahead. >> we have time for one more. >> hi, my name is jack, unaffiliated. on the safety angle, what do the insurance companies think of all of this? do they see it as a big deal or not at all? >> the insurance companies are still finding out if the blind spot or lane departure warnings are reducing claims. they may have recently come to the conclusion that that is the case m the insurance industry moves slowly and they focus on history. so they don't forecast the efficacy of different safety technologies. so as far as tesla was concerned, you were not paying a fortune because they were taking risks. the underwriting was based on miss store call data. so the insurance industry will

be careful and slow to react. >> yeah. i don't think the insurance industry is going to play in this debate. you see the car manufactures competing and volva's goal is to get to zero and they are trying to move in that direction. i think that the autoindustry itself is trying in various ways this good faith to try to eliminate eliminate fatalities and reduce them as a whole by which technology is best. >> i've heard interest about. >> this related to how it may interaction with automated technologies. insurers have been engaged on that. has far more dramatic implications for crash numbers when compared to v2v dsrc hazard

warnings and the business models shifting toward the manufactures to the end-user. if the end user is no longer directing the vehicle in traffic. so where they talk about this, they would -- they are concerned about cyber security aspects and as it relates to automated technology, they are less interested in it as a hazard warnings. >> i think we have time for one more quick one. ma'am. >> thank you. lauren smith from the future of privacy forum. you had a section that talked about the privacy protections that could come into play for v 2 x not in play for dsrc and i heard it discussed often and the

v2v mandate was built and creates risks. why is that cellular technologies or 5g would be more privacy projective. >> the community has prided itself on privacy protection. it's a message they have challenges to see if people can find and identify a car from provided and automiezed data. i believe -- my sense of it is that it would be kwequivalent. maybe more consumer control with satellite. maybe opt in or out. instead of the mandated protocall that is announcing your location 10 times a second. my understanding of the ultimate roll out of dsrc would be an

auto miezed. that's my understanding anyway. so presumably, you can argue it would be superior to cellular in terms of the preservation of privacy. that would only be in the context that cellular would have an opt-in or opt-out proposition. for the safety, i suspect it would be the same protocol as dsrc. should be identical. i would have to check the slide again. it should not show a difference i don't think. >> thank you all for a great conversation. and that i think you guys for joining us. [ applause ] ♪

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our live coverage will continue on c-span 3 in about 20 minutes. on the environmental and societal impacts on the proposed cuts to climate and research. coming up at 2:00 eastern live on c-span 3, the flags at capitol hill in memory of louis slaughter who died today, the oldest member of congress and severed on the committee as a ranking member and severed her district, new york for 31 years. her office said that she was hospitalized after suffering a concussion in her home earlier this week. vice president mike pence tweeting sad to hear the passing of my friend. the congresswoman was a passionate advocate for her

beliefs and a valued member of the u.s. house of representatives. -- severed with her for a dozen of years. we will take you live again the event on capital hill coming up on 2:00 eastern until then, washington's journal. >> assistant editor with education weekly here to talk about school safety legislation. what did they pass? >> so the stop school violence act is about training school employees and others who work in the smool community including law enforcement to identify potential threats to school. incluting funding for crisis intervention teams to spot students raising red flags who may pose a threat to students or themselves. so the house bill along with the senate bill revives the previous grant program to fund those

activities. and can fund anonymous reporting systems. tip lines to help people report to the proper authorities someone who they think may pose a threat to the school community. >> so this will be a federal initiative with federal money? >> yes, the house bill will authorize $50 million a year. which is not a lot and could help so many districts with the training programs. >> so who will lead the efforts? what government entity will be doing the work? >> the department of justice not the department of education will oversee the grants. a lot of the training would be undertaken by local groups. sandy hook promise founded by parents in 2012. they do training around the country to helpen communities prevent gun violence and it