U.S. agencies should share spectrum with wireless firms, feds say
— With public airwaves getting crowded, the Defense Department and other federal agencies need to share a swath of valuable government spectrum with wireless companies to help meet rising demand from smartphones and other mobile devices, the Commerce Department says.
Sharing the spectrum would be a new approach and would involve finding ways to prevent commercial systems from interfering with key government functions, according to a 155-page report released Tuesday by the Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration.
Those government functions include directing precision-guided munitions, operating unmanned drones and tracking satellites and other space systems.
“The writing is on the wall — spectrum is a finite resource in growing demand, and we need to find new ways to maximize its use,” said Lawrence E. Strickling, assistant Commerce secretary for communications and information.
He said the agency would begin discussions with wireless companies about sharing a prime piece of wireless spectrum now used by the federal government, though he wouldn’t estimate how long those talks would take.
“This will be getting people on both sides … to think about this in a different way than it’s ever been thought about before,” Strickling said.
CTIA-the Wireless Assn., an industry trade group, said it recognized that some limited government operations would have to remain in the swath of airwaves “beyond the near term,” but it was eager to get access for commercial uses.
“We look forward to seeing the maximum amount of this spectrum cleared as soon as possible,” said the group’s president, Steve Largent.
The National Telecommunications and Information Administration said it could free a key chunk of the airwaves as it has with other swaths of government-controlled spectrum in the past. Some of the airwaves are only in government use in parts of the country, allowing for an easy switch to commercial uses in those markets.
But the report said sharing the spectrum would make it more quickly available for commercial use and at less cost to the government.
The Obama administration launched an initiative in 2010 to double the amount of commercial wireless airwaves by 2020 as more consumers rely on tablet computers, smartphones and other mobile devices to surf the Internet, stream movies and communicate.
But federal agencies, particularly the Pentagon, also rely increasingly on wireless communications, making it more difficult for officials to shift their systems to other government spectrum.
The 95 megahertz of airwaves in the 1755-1850 MHz band targeted by the report is used by about 20 federal agencies, with more than 3,100 individual frequencies in operation.
The report estimated that the cost of shifting all federal users from that spectrum would be about $18 billion. That risks violating a law that requires the costs of shifting federal government users to be covered by the amount raised from private companies in auctions of leases for those airwaves.
In addition, some federal agencies said they would need continued access to some of the airwaves. For example, the Defense Department said it needed indefinite access for emergency situations involving satellites, as well as for some development, testing and training of electronic warfare systems.
“Due to the scarcity of spectrum, the complexity of federal operations and the time and cost of relocating federal users, the old approach alone is no longer feasible,” the National Telecommunications and Information Administration said.
