Federal Communications Commission board member Michael O’Rielly gave a frank and honest presentation to the assembled media at the show as he participated in an armchair conversation with John Vincent, a senior reporter at U.S. News & World Report. He spoke at length on the subject of C-V2X, which utilizes cellular technology to provide the link between the vehicle and the rest of the world, including other vehicles and the traffic control system. He contrasted that with DSRC, or dedicated short-range communications. In the US, DSRC is contained in a 75 MHz segment of the 5.9 GHz band. It is used for direct communications between moving vehicles and depends on neither the cloud nor cellular infrastructure.
Responding to questions, Commissioner O’Rielly, who has served on the board since 2014, said that he has observed technologies for nearly 20 years and over that time there has been little progress, resulting in the agency’s decision to open up some of the available bandwidth originally set aside for the auto industry. “There’s a constant fight for bandwidth,” he said.