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WASHINGTON — Federal regulators said Wednesday that they will allow certain new wireless devices to use a portion of unlicensed airwaves now used largely for Wi-Fi, a move aimed at ending a long-running dispute between industries.
The Federal Communications Commission said it would open up currently-unlicensed airwaves for use by new 4G LTE wireless devices known as LTE-U (for “unlicensed”). The move will allow wireless providers to deliver mobile broadband service while “sharing the road” with Wi-Fi, FCC chairman Ajit Pai said in a statement.
Pai added that industry testing “demonstrated that both these [LTE-U] devices and Wi-Fi operations can co-exist…This [announcement] heralds a technical breakthrough in the many shared uses of this spectrum.”
LTE-U will provide customers with another option that offers the extra capacity of unlicensed spectrum, but also the added security and faster speeds of LTE, a wireless broadband technology. Both Verizon Communications Inc. VZ, +0.49% and T-Mobile US Inc. TMUS, -0.19% , said on Wednesday that they would launch LTE-U network capabilities and devices in the spring.
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