Power Says Administration Still Open Minded on 1755 MHz Band

Power said the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) put a huge amount of work into its spectrum sharing report, which was released Friday (CD July 23 p1). “It does not rule out auctions, it doesn’t rule out revenues to the government from commercial entities who would get this access,” he said. “It doesn’t rule out clearing. I think the 1755 [MHz] process is at the point right now where the [NTIA] report already said we see opportunities for clearing within five years that would make sense from an efficiency standpoint."

The PCAST report does not examine spectrum assignments and whether federal agencies are using spectrum as efficiently as possible, which should be a topic for further discussion, Power said. NTIA does not ask those questions today, he noted. “In saying that somebody could be reviewing that, I'm not suggesting that the agencies aren’t acting in good faith and don’t have a lot of good people working on this,” Power said. “It’s just that in any context, in any environment, having a second set of eyes is always a good thing. … The PCAST report acknowledges this situation, but it wasn’t one of the challenges, I think, they set out to solve."

Power said he understands the questions that have been raised about the PCAST report. “I think the biggest challenge to all this is simply the fact that it creates a little uncertainty, and uncertainty always make people a little defensive, whether you're on the commercial side or the government side,” he said. “There is not 100 percent satisfaction with the current approach on either side, but when you introduce change and you don’t have all the details figured out, people tend to assume the worst as to what’s going to happen to their interests.” The administration needs to hear from all interested parties on the report, Power said. Sometimes “good ideas don’t succeed because of the way people go about trying to implement them,” he said.

Power defended the decision of the administration to look at the entire 1755-1850 MHz band, instead of just focusing initially on 1755-1780 MHz, as many wireless industry companies had urged. “I think we felt like we're going to get to 500 [MHz], we've got to get to 500, why would we not look at all of this and then figure out a way to perhaps do it in stages if we can vacate different pieces at different times, or figure out sharing approaches in different parts of that band and auction it in segments,” he said.

The work of the Commerce Spectrum Management Advisory Committee (CSMAC) (see related story), now focused on the band, will be critical, Power said. “Now the challenge is to really dig in and figure out what we've got,” he said. “It’s going to take some months to do this, but I think we'll get a really realistic picture of this and be able to get to some solutions.” Power said he was encouraged by industry work on sharing, by T-Mobile and Verizon Wireless in particular. “There’s a lot going on there,” he said. “Really, all options are on the table, whether it’s clearing or sharing.” Sharing has “become a very popular word these days,” Power said. “We're kind of used to sharing in the sense of exclusion zones, or protection zones, basically drawing a ring around federal installations to permit commercial use outside of that. But we're seeing more advanced and more efficient use of sharing, with white spaces and smart antennas and cognitive radios all coming into the mix.”

The FCC has the expertise to make an incentive auction of TV spectrum work, Power said. “Obviously, these things take time, but they've got the right team and the right experts in place,” he said. The February spectrum law allowing the auction to go forward also made important changes to the Commercial Spectrum Enhancement Act, which sets the rules for clearing federal users from spectrum converted to commercial use, Power noted. “This was really big,” he said. “On the commercial side, it’s kind of easy. Folks get incentives, whether it’s the individual getting a big bonus for success or the CEO getting rewarded when the share price goes up. We don’t have those mechanisms in the government and we always talk about why can’t the government act more like the commercial side.” The legislation gives agencies money for planning and an allowance for them to upgrade their capabilities as part of a transition to other spectrum, providing an incentive to be relocated, he said. “There’s a real upside there,” he said. “Not just a lot of work to get back to status quo."

Power said making agencies pay for the spectrum they use, one proposal considered by CSMAC in the past (CD Sept 22/08 p7), wouldn’t work. “I guess if we were starting over, maybe we could do that,” he said. But some agencies use a lot of spectrum, he said. “Their budgets would just increase substantially,” he said. “Going to Congress and going through the process with the Office of Management and Budget that disciplines the budget process and asking for a huge increase in your budget is not a real appealing approach these days. … I can just tell you politically that would be a hard sell.” PCAST recommended the use of spectrum currency, a “shadow” budget “recognized on a pro forma basis on a separate set of books” that would over time be translated into “real currency for the agencies,” Power said. “I think if nothing else, that kind of approach shines a light,” he said. “It would give us all a good education as to what the relative uses and values of the spectrum are from the various agencies.” The approach makes agencies a “little nervous,” he conceded. “They think they're being asked to put a value on video surveillance of bad guys or put a value on air-combat training, unmanned aerial vehicles. Some of those things can’t be valued, it’s fair to say. … But it would at least give us some idea of what the opportunity costs are.”