Dear Reader,

in November 2019, the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) that would repurpose more than half of the 5.9-GHz band - which had been reserved for vehicle-related Dedicated Short Range Communications (DSRC) - to unlicensed operations such as Wi-Fi.

People in the transportation community who have long advocated for V2V communications based on DSRC have been extremely worried that the crash avoidance use case and the technology will wither away. The prospect of a US government mandate requiring carmakers to embed V2X in vehicles is a thing of the past. This latest challenge by the FCC to its dedicated spectrum could be the final blow.

But an idea buried in the plethora of comments submitted in response to the FCC's NPRM could well rally DSRC advocates. An alternate approach suggested by Sanford B. Klausner, CEO of public benefit corporation Transbase.US, PBC, has sparked their interest: As it was explained to me, few people know about the "hidden gem" that was built into the DSRC specifications written in the early 2000s. DSRC has the ability to do Internet protocol transport. Internet protocol transport and other capabilities were tested more than a decade ago, with results published in 2009. Transbase.US has developed techniques for creating access points that can receive short-range Internet communications from a moving vehicle. Passengers would thereby get fast access to the Internet and carmakers could upload reams of ECU data to their back offices.

According to estimates, 60% of vehicle hours of operation could be covered by existing 5-GHz Wi-Fi access points. Transbase.US would provide the firmware update to the access point operators as executable code. Such a system could be brought to market sooner than C-V2X.

Cordially,

Paul Hansen

Editor

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