Communications Resiliency Following Disaster, Cybersecurity in TAC’s Crosshairs
The FCC’s Technological Advisory Committee will look closely at communications resiliency in a broadband world as a major focus over the next year, TAC Chairman Tom Wheeler said at the start of the advisory group’s meeting Monday, TAC’s first meeting of the year. FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski stopped by the meeting to say the charter of the TAC had been renewed so it could continue its work.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
If your job depends on informed compliance, you need International Trade Today. Delivered every business day and available any time online, only International Trade Today helps you stay current on the increasingly complex international trade regulatory environment.
Wheeler said communications during disasters has been in the news repeatedly following the derecho, Superstorm Sandy and other recent events. Wheeler said TAC should ask “how do we deal with power outages” because “you pull back the onion and you always find that.” He teed up some questions a TAC working group also should consider. “Are there a set of capabilities that should be maintained during large-scale emergencies and if so, what are the policies and mechanisms that are necessary to do that?” he asked. “What kind of goals should there be about portability of communications during [disaster]? Do we expect there to be normal, quote end quote, communications during a disaster? Are wired and wireless interchangeable service where you're just migrating back and forth?”
David Clark, who represents the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on TAC, said the group should look at resiliency “in the face of a number of issues,” including cyberattacks. The “capabilities that you would require especially if it was an attack specifically directed at the infrastructure itself, the kind of flexibility and recomposability of the parts in real time [are] exactly what you need,” he said.
"I think they're called disasters for a reason,” said TAC member Russ Gyurek from Cisco Systems. “You can’t anticipate everything.” There’s a lot of technology for battery backup and backup generators at cell sites and other telecom facilities -- the question is “how much money do you want to spend,” he said. “If policy forces it to be airtight, people aren’t going to build plant in that area."
Dale Hatfield, former FCC and NTIA official, said TAC should look at cell jamming as a broader part of the discussion. “As we depend more on these wireless networks ... especially where you have a single technology, it’s like not having diversity in a biological sense,” he said. “Now you've really bet an awful lot on a particular thing.”
Another focus will be on receiver performance issues, an issue left over from last year, Wheeler said. “Should you be recommending one or more bands to trial an interference-limits kind of policy?” he asked. “How do you plan for the plan, if you will, to define a multistakeholder group that can roll something out? What are the kinds of obstacles to adoption that get addressed in an interference ... limits approach? How do you enforce it? Can we develop some hypothetical enforcement use cases?"
Wheeler laid out other broader topics to be addressed by TAC. First among them was “where are the spectrum frontiers and how to get there,” the “reality that not all wireless is CMRS” and cybersecurity.
Wheeler said TAC should follow the example of hockey great Wayne Gretzky as it tackles the issues before it. “You may see a pattern in these topics,” he said. “All of these topics are very real today. We're trying to, however, do a Gretzky and skate to where the puck is going to be on these issues” rather than where it’s already been.
Genachowski had high praise for the work of the TAC. “It’s just really first-rate work that’s very positively affecting our work and the agenda at the commission,” Genachowski said. “This experiment has clearly been a success.” Genachowski highlighted the TAC’s work on small-cell deployment in the 3.5 GHz band. The FCC approved an NPRM on small cell deployment in the 3550-3650 MHz band in December (http://bit.ly/12IOZqS). “We both before and since have been working with our colleagues at other federal agencies to make that happen,” he said. “I think we're on track to do something big with 3.5 GHz.”
Genachowski credited the work of the TAC for the creation of the agency’s Technology Transitions Policy Task Force, which will hold a workshop at the commission March 18. A visit to the MIT Media Lab last week convinced him that machine-to-machine communications, another TAC focus, “is coming, it’s coming fast and it’s going to present tremendous opportunity from an economic perspective when you think about areas like energy, healthcare,” he said. “It’s also going to present a world of new challenges.” Genachowski said TAC’s white paper on interference policy “may be the single best work product on these issues that has been produced anywhere."