DoT SEES NEED TO REVAMP FEDERAL GOVT. SPECTRUM PROCESSES

President Bush’s executive memorandum created an interagency task force to examine issues related to federal spectrum management (CD June 6 p1). The group has a year to come up with recommendations for improving process and policies. Along with a forum for some private sector involvement, the Presidential directive called for legislative and other recommendations on modernized and improved spectrum policy changes to create incentives for more efficient use. Besides DoT, the task force includes officials from the departments of Agriculture, Defense, Energy, Homeland Security, Interior, Justice, NASA and others. The effort comes as participants in policy decisions such as making spectrum available for 3G, for Wi-Fi at 5 GHz and for ultra-wideband (UWB) in some cases have criticized the process as taking too long. The General Accounting Office earlier this year called for an independent federal commission to examine U.S. spectrum management, citing past govt. difficulties in resolving disputes among users (CD Feb 4 p2).

“From the Department of Transportation’s perspective, the federal government’s existing spectrum management systems and protocols are not well-suited to handle the developing challenges,” Szabat said. “The FCC and the NTIA manage users, not spectrum. So the potential that we have under the current system is for conflict.” In the past, conflict between commercial users and govt. operators had been avoidable in some cases because adequate spectrum allocations had been available for each. “The only thing that is preventing conflict now is the good will between the FCC and the NTIA. That’s not a model that you want to see going forward,” he said. Among the recent decisions that have brought different perspectives to the fore between govt. agencies and the commercial sector is an order adopted by the FCC in Feb. 2001 on UWB. Aviation interests, including FAA and NASA, and the GPS industry had raised some of the loudest concerns about UWB’s potential to interfere with critical safety-of-life systems. “The DoT’s position was that this created the potential for interference with our safety-of- life systems and the FCC disagreed with that and thought this was a fair balance,” Szabat said.

“The Department of Transportation will be very keen to look at what structural changes ought to be made to better realign our statutory requirements and also our duty to protect the public safety, at the same time recognizing that the FCC is in a difficult position,” Szabat said, citing emerging technologies that used broad swathes of spectrum: “We are looking for a way to balance those 2 needs.” Protection of safety-of-life navigation systems, new Enhanced 911 services, intelligent transportation systems and automatic identification systems for ships and for ports must be balanced against robust development of new commercial technologies, he said.

Szabat said he didn’t “underestimate” the challenge the FCC faced in opening the door for new technologies while protecting existing systems. At the same time, he said “the importance of GPS cannot be overstated… This is a utility that we provide to the world free of charge and we don’t expect at the end of this [interagency] review to be changing that… Our challenge has to be to establish a spectrum management system that allows new entrants, but not at the expense of the safety and security of the United States.”

One aspect of spectrum policy covered by the President’s executive memorandum was the efficiency of govt. users. “There is a great deal we can do within the federal government to rationalize our use of spectrum and we should certainly be doing that,” Szabat said: “We are looking at tools that would provide incentives to government agencies to better use their spectrum.” That doesn’t necessarily mean that incentives that would work in the private sector would translate directly to govt. users in all cases, he said. One difference is that in the public sector there sometimes is a distinction between effective use and efficient use, Szabat said. As an example, he cited the spectrum used for the President to potentially activate the nuclear command system in the rare event that it might be needed. “By any measure of efficiency it’s incredibly inefficient to have bands of spectrum dedicated to something used so infrequently,” he said. But regardless of their infrequent use, that spectrum must be dedicated, so it is an effective use while not necessarily “efficient” by traditional measures, he said.

Szabat declined to elaborate on specific tools under consideration by the task force for more efficient govt. spectrum use, saying it was too early in the process. One idea likely to be examined is a thorough examination within and among federal agencies of potential overlapping or underutilized spectrum uses, he said. The FCC already has undertaken updates of spectrum in certain bands, with its Wireless Bureau, for example, conducting a survey of private wireless and public safety licensees below 512 MHz, pulling back unused call signs and updating its database.

Asked about the potential impact of the interference temperature idea that the FCC’s Spectrum Policy Task Force outlined last fall, Szabat said: “Our role here is to protect safety-of-life services for Americans that are on the move. While we respect the FCC’s direction that they have been going in, one concern about any one-size-fits-all proposals concerning emissions limits is that engineering and science don’t always support that,” he said. The “interference temperature” concept suggested by the FCC’s Spectrum Policy Task Force would put a ceiling on the noise environment in which receivers would be required to operate. To the extent such a ceiling in a particular band wasn’t reached, a user that operated below that limit would gain additional operating flexibility. The FCC plans to open a proceeding on interference temperature by year-end.

In general with such issues, Szabat said: “This is a question of philosophy. Do you walk in with the assumption that new services will not interfere with existing services and put the burden of proof on incumbents?” he asked. “Or do you do the reverse,” and stipulate new services not be permitted as overlays until there is evidence they don’t interfere with incumbents, he said.