Strickling Says Clearing 1755-1850 MHz Band Won’t Work
NTIA Administrator Larry Strickling said reallocating the 1755-1850 MHz band for wireless broadband would cost “too much” and take “too long,” in an episode of C-SPAN’s the Communicators set to be shown this weekend. Meanwhile, NTIA has suspended, at least temporarily, funding for the 700 MHz waiver recipients seeking to build out early public safety networks in the 700 MHz band, government officials confirmed.
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If anything, Strickling appeared to take a stronger line in arguing that reallocation of the spectrum won’t work than he did when a long-awaited report on the band was released last month (CD March 28 p1). Strickling said NTIA didn’t want to concentrate on just the 1755-1780 MHz band, the primary target for wireless carriers. “Our goal here is to find 500 MHz of spectrum as the president asked,” he told C-SPAN. “Indeed, we're hearing from industry they think the need is going to be greater than that.”
NTIA continues to have “an overall good relationship” with the FCC, Strickling said. Some commission officials were sharply critical of the projections in the 1755-1850 MHz report, which they see as nearly ruling out an auction of any of the band anytime soon (CD March 30 p1). The report estimated that the 1755-1850 MHz band would cost $18 billion and take 10 years to clear.
The federal government needs to find a “new paradigm” that leaves some of the federal users in place while allowing sharing with commercial users, Strickling said. “We think we can make the spectrum available faster and more cheaply if we follow that approach,” he said. “We're about to sit down with industry and with the [federal] agencies to have those discussions.” Clearing the band in some cases won’t work, he said. “That’s the way we've always done it in the past,” he said. “We just don’t have the ability to do that much any longer.”
The Department of Defense is a “very large user of the band” with “very complex systems” in place, Strickling said. The needs of federal agencies for spectrum in general are increasing, he said. “Unmanned aerial drones are a good example of a system that didn’t even exist as a spectrum user 15 or 20 years ago,” he said. “We have to find a way to coexist here and allow industry and federal users to use the same spectrum.”
Strickling said NTIA has fulfilled its responsibilities on LightSquared. He declined to answer questions on the company’s proposal to offer terrestrial service using mobile satellite service spectrum. “That’s now a matter before the FCC,” Strickling said. The fight over LightSquared shows the importance of addressing receivers, he said. “If we're going to run into situations where the receivers prevent us from utilizing spectrum, such as the LightSquared spectrum ... we're going to have a very hard time meeting the president’s [spectrum] goal.” LightSquared presented “a very unique set of facts and a unique situation,” he said.
The Los Angeles Regional Interoperable Communications System (LA-RICS) Authority, one of the 21 waiver recipients, disclosed the NTIA has cut off reimbursements, in a report filed at the FCC. The NTIA notice cited uncertainty over the waivers in light of February’s spectrum law that provides money for a national first responder network, government officials confirmed. LA-RICS is slated to get a grant from the Broadband Technology Opportunity Program (BTOP) to pay much of the cost of building out a regional network. But LA-RICS said in the report (http://xrl.us/bm3jh5) that NTIA recently notified it of a “partial suspension” of BTOP grants “for the purchase of LTE equipment.”
The authority has before it applications from two companies seeking a contract to build the network, LA-RICS’s FCC filing said. It said the system initiated negotiations on contract terms and conditions on March 20, it said, but had to suspend “contract negotiations for at least two weeks, with additional extension of the suspension predicated on further action by the NTIA."
"Our focus now is on ensuring these much-needed investments remain in their communities and that the projects proceed in a manner that supports a single, nationwide interoperable public safety broadband network,” an NTIA spokeswoman said. “We will work with our grantees to achieve this. We obviously want any jurisdiction working on a broadband public safety network, regardless whether they are one of our grantees, to be prudent with investments they make before FirstNet develops its blueprint for the nationwide network’s architecture. The objective is to avoid investments that must be replaced if they are incompatible with the nationwide network.”