Data Release Issues Are Tough, But Progress Being Made on Sharing Spectrum, Strickling Says

NTIA is “very pleased” with the progress CSMAC is making, Strickling said. “I know that people have run into a couple of speed bumps along the way, but most importantly we're attacking those issues, we're working our way through them."

NTIA Associate Administrator Karl Nebbia conceded that data release issues are complicated. “We certainly in this process knew we were breaking a lot of new ground,” he said. “We didn’t want to up front try to prescribe all the structural mechanisms that would go into this.” Nebbia said one question CSMAC should start asking is what information the government will have to make available to potential bidders if the 1695-1710 and 1755-1850 MHz bands are ultimately offered in an FCC auction. “I think we should at least give that some thought ahead of time,” he said.

One of the CSMAC working groups having the most difficulty is Working Group 3, on 1755-1850 MHz satellite control links and electronic warfare, based on presentations Thursday morning. “Part of the problem is we haven’t been able to get all of the technical data from the government to complete all these studies and so forth,” said Rick Reaser of Raytheon Space and Airborne Systems, CSMAC liaison to the working group. “The other thing that kind of worries me a little bit … is we still haven’t gotten comments on Phase I yet” from the government, he said. “If there are comments that could be an issue for us."

Reaser, a former DOD official, said his group has concluded that interference to satellite receivers likely won’t be a problem, but the working group has had to rely on data in an NTIA report from 2001 with the results updated to address the differences between 2001 technology and LTE. Even there, the information the group has been unable to attain is sketchy, he said. “We don’t really have a good picture on where all the uplink stations are.” The group has been unable to draw any conclusions on interference to electronic war capabilities of the government, Reaser said. “We are still waiting for the DOD to release its report with its detailed data,” he said. “That’s been something we've been waiting for for awhile, so we're kind of stuck on that."

"The handwriting is on the wall” that the 1755-1850 MHz band will see greater commercial use, said CSMAC member Janice Obuchowski, president of Freedom Technologies and a former NTIA administrator. “That’s really not a debating point.” But, she said, “On the question of how to achieve this, I don’t think … anybody can come away from this saying this is an easy matter. There’s no clear cut way forward.” Obuchowski also said it’s not surprising that the information the working group has was made available in February 2001, prior to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. “I wonder if the same information release would have been made in October of 2001,” she said. “Over the last decade we have encountered numerous cyber incursions, strategic electronic warfare on a global scale. It’s not being mitigated."

CSMAC member Kevin Kahn, a former Intel official, questioned the extent to which spectrum sharing poses a threat to DOD systems. “Honest to God, real-time warfare systems have much greater problems to deal with than handsets, I mean let’s be serious,” Kahn said. “If I can take down a critical warfare system by marshalling 100 LTE handsets, that’s not my concern then with the guys depending on that warfare system, because it is so damn trivial to generate far more interference with stuff that is far less sophisticated than a few damn handsets. … Handsets are not their biggest threat.”

Obuchowski responded that she “wasn’t making that point.” She “was making a point about release of information on satellite parameters,” Obuchowski said. “The release of the information enables behaviors that allow players, far more serious players … to take a shot. I just don’t think it’s an easy issue in this country.” Genachowski said in some cases carriers also don’t want to share network information as part of the CSMAC review. “That’s fine,” she said. “It’s totally understandable. It’s commercially important information."

The point of sharing information isn’t to jeopardize national security, said CSMAC member Tom Sugrue, senior vice president at T-Mobile. “I know you're not suggesting that, Janice,” he said, responding to Obuchowski. “The problem is to find solutions. If this band is being used … commercially around the world for mobile systems, when we share information we first of all can provide the agencies a lot of comfort that the scope of the problem is likely less than they're worried about and they're right to be worried about it. If there are problems, then we can address it here in this country through whatever techniques we have to minimize the interference.” Industry will work out any problems on their own on sharing network information, Sugrue said. “We think we can work it out with our fellows on the commercial side, let me put it that way,” he said. “We'll endeavor to that.”

CSMAC member Jennifer Warren thinks that “we need a larger conversation about releasability of data and a number of the working group reports will be teeing that up,” said the Lockheed Martin vice president. “It’s not a spectrum issue. It’s a security classification issue, it’s a data release issue that has much broader precedent and implications.” CSMAC officials said that to some extent, all the working groups are going to have to rely on “trusted agents” in the government who will have access to data not made available more broadly to members of the working groups writing the reports. But CSMAC members said that trust becomes an issue if industry has to rely on “trusted” agents.

Working Group 4, on sharing with Point-to-Point Microwave, Tactical Radio Relay (TRR) and Joint Tactical Radio System (JTRS) operations, also reported. Point-to-Point microwave is “low hanging fruit,” and shouldn’t present any problems, said Mark McHenry, president of Shared Spectrum Co., CSMAC liaison to the group. “There’s still more work to be done.” The work on JTRS is progressing the most slowly, with little data forthcoming from DOD, he conceded. “We're almost at square one with some of the work that we've done, and we just don’t know enough about these systems yet to make any determination on them,” he said. “We understand that we should get some results within a few weeks."

Working Group 5 on airborne operations in the 1755-1850 MHz band is also running behind schedule, with group members encountering similar problems as Working Group 4, said liaison Bryan Tramont of Wilkinson Barker, former FCC chief of staff. “Today we're probably about six months behind schedule” with a report unlikely before the summer, he said. “The greatest challenge is one that Mark [McHenry] flagged, which is sort of this confidential information, how to maintain confidentiality of non-public information.” The government needs to develop a broader process for how it will treat different kinds of data, Tramont said.

Strickling said for the sake of continuity, current CSMAC members are being asked to stay on the committee for at least another year. “It’s not involuntary servitude,” he joked. “Anybody who wants out can get out, but you will have to come talk to me personally to do that.” Nebbia encouraged CSMAC members to press ahead on their reports. “This is very, very important work and I think it is ground breaking,” he said. “There may be other bands that we may want to use this forum for in the future in a similar way, so we have to keep that in mind."

Meanwhile, Strickling said he was encouraged by a preliminary report Thursday from Working Group 1, weather satellite receive earth stations at 1695-1710 MHz. The report is the furthest along of all the working group reports (CD Oct 5 p1). “We now have a statutory obligation to report to the president in February about this band and what I'm taking away from your report is that at this point you see no reason for us to do anything other than to continue on with our recommendation to repurpose this top 15 MHz,” he said.