Spectrum Sharing Essential to Alleviate Crunch, Government Officials Say
"We are at a key moment on addressing the spectrum crunch and now is a key time,” said John Leibovitz, deputy chief of the FCC Wireless Bureau. Capitol Hill aides and an NTIA representative also speaking at an event Tuesday hosted by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation made their case as to the need for a comprehensive spectrum inventory and greater commercial/federal sharing of spectrum. The next frontier of the commission’s approach to spectrum will include more testing of band sharing, small cell use and receiver performance, Leibovitz said. The FCC is particularly eager to “move the ball” on the federal sharing of the 1755-1780 MHz band, he said.
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"We have to be more efficient in the way we use federal spectrum,” said Neil Fried, senior telecom counsel to the House Commerce Committee Republicans. “The reality is we have to rethink how we allocate spectrum for federal and commercial use.” Fried said he aims to bring in more stakeholders to help members of the committee and their aides understand the challenges with reallocating federal spectrum. “We have to look at the opportunity of pairing” the AWS 3 spectrum with the 1755-1780 MHz band, added House Commerce Committee minority counsel Shawn Chang. Spectrum sharing was a major topic at last week’s CTIA show (CD May 14 p2).
Aides to Sens. Mark Warner, D-Va., and Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, urged the government to conduct a full and comprehensive spectrum inventory. To embark on long-term planning, “we absolutely have to have a sense of what the spectrum inventory looks like,” said Snowe telecom aide Matthew Hussey. “We are kind of shooting in the dark,” he said. “It certainly is concerning … the key issue is network capacity and spectrum is a key component of it.” Warner senior policy adviser Neeta Bidwai agreed: “It’s important to have a real sense of what a spectrum inventory would look like. We would love to see more of that discussion on the government side.” Bidwai said policymakers are going to have to “ask tougher questions moving forward,” particularly with respect to clearing federal spectrum: “Sharing has a lot of value to it, but I would hope we got both sharing and clearing of federal spectrum.”
The NTIA continues to urge more exploration of commercial sharing of the federal government’s use of the 1755-1780 MHz band, said Deputy Associate Administrator Karl Nebbia. The agency reached a “conundrum” during its analysis of federal spectrum when it realized it was going to take “a fairly significant period of time” and money to remove government systems from the band, he said. NTIA’s recent report on reallocation said it would take five to 10 years to move the government’s aeronautical systems from the band at a cost “somewhere in the $18 billion range,” he noted. “So the idea that the government can go off in a closed room by itself and make decisions to just move out of spectrum without a clear path of where to go at a high cost was not realistic.”