FEDERAL AGENCIES CALL FOR SPECTRUM POLICY CHANGES, URGE CAUTION

“We are interested in having some more certainty and predictability,” said Badri Younes, Defense Dept. dir.- spectrum manager. “You cannot accomplish this without a national plan for spectrum… We have created boundaries between federal and nonfederal spectrum that have to come down.

NTIA held the forum to solicit feedback for recommendations being drafted at the direction of an Executive Memo President Bush signed in May. He created a task force on how to stimulate more efficient spectrum use by federal operators. The interagency task force, including the Departments. of Defense, Energy, Homeland Security and Justice, have been meeting to assess federal spectrum use and areas for reform. Bush called for legislative and other policy recommendations by May 29. The NAS’s Computer Science & Telecom Board has been assessing wireless technology trends and spectrum policy, sponsored by the National Science Foundation. The forum was organized by the NAS’s Committee on Wireless Technology Prospects and Policy Options and sponsored by NTIA.

Younes said possible changes that would help federal users included: (1) A testbed for new technology, which he said could help assess new systems in an “incubator” environment by evaluating issues such as interference much more quickly than under current regulatory processes. Several agency officials also cited the need for a testbed for new technologies. (2) Spectrum sharing, which he said DoD was interested in: “We do it to some level now and we need to do more of it.” (3) Technology development, including more joint R&D efforts focused on more efficient spectrum uses.

A key objective of the interagency task force has been to examine efficient spectrum use by agencies. Discussion on possible incentives for increasing efficient use has turned to the possibility of spectrum user fees. But several panelists warned against focusing on efficiency at the expense of how effectively agencies were using their capacity. “The effectiveness of each agency must remain a primary focus in decisions regarding federal use of spectrum, not efficiency,” said Justice Dept. Spectrum Mgr. Merri Jo Gamble. Efficiency should be an outgrowth of how well agencies use spectrum and “should not be a result unto itself,” she said. Gamble also said there was a need for a national spectrum plan, including information from agencies on new technologies they were considering and a timeline for when they might be used. The national strategic plan for spectrum should include a priority list of spectrum usage that “could be used for the purpose of making decisions on how to allocate spectrum when competing interests are vying,” she said.

Acting NTIA Dir. Michael Gallagher raised questions for the participants to consider in forming recommendations: (1) How much spectrum use was controversial. He said 80,000- 90,000 frequency assignments were made each year and a relatively small number “rise to this level of focus.” “Help focus our work on these key places where we need to pay attention,” he said. (2) What resources were agencies dedicating to achieving sound spectrum policy goals. “It’s not just money -- it’s political responsibility and it’s leadership,” he said. Gallagher said the chief technology officer of Intel recently told him that 3 or 4 years ago, there were zero jobs at the company focused on spectrum and now there are 2,000. (3) How was testing for new spectrum technologies being done, where did the money come from, who did it, what did it cost and what were the motives behind it. (4) What was the role of IT and how much IT was focused on spectrum policy oversight.

Gallagher said attendees had been exposed to the “matrix” of spectrum policy as they hashed over buzzwords such as “harmful interference” and “noise floor.” While there was general agreement on the need for better spectrum policy management, those terms could be used “manipulate” the results of a particular policy discussion, he said. “These are all engineering terms and the challenge is they are all being manipulated by the lawyers. And they are preaching to an audience of political people like me. That creates a very interesting dynamic and environment,” Gallagher said. “I would ask that you… pierce through the matrix.”

In the future, the Office of Management & Budget is likely to play a key role in federal spectrum decisions, said Deputy Asst. Transportation Secy. Tyler Duvall, who has been involved in the interagency task force discussions. “The Office of Management and Budget is going to be an extremely important player in rationalizing spectrum use across federal agencies in the same way they rationalize all other budget decisions currently in the federal government,” he said.

“The demand for much greater efficiencies is accelerating at the same time that the [spectrum] needs are,” Duvall said. The Dept. of Transportation remains concerned about a shift in burden for proof of interference from new users to incumbent users, he said. DoT was among the federal agencies that weighed in heavily when the FCC resolved interference concerns in its ultra-wideband (UWB) proceeding in 2002, with aviation interests worried about UWB’s potential to interfere with critical safety-of-life systems. In general, there’s a push by the private sector to use spectrum for new technologies, Tyler said: “We need a framework for answering the question how do we deal with this push and this drive without inhibiting” new technology.

As part of the interagency group’s work on spectrum changes, NASA Chief Technologist Scott Pace said he also was worried about the “burden of evidence” shift for new technologies. The Telecom Act directed the FCC to enable new technologies to go forward unless they were shown to be harmful, he said. “That’s a perfectly sensible and perfectly feasible statement in the world of commercial systems,” he said. “However, if you are a NASA person and you need to prove that something is safe before you launch,” that can pose a problem if operating in shared bands

One challenge for public safety agencies is that technology life cycles run about 2 years while the life cycle of systems at the state and local level is about 40% longer, said David Boyd, deputy dir. of the Dept. of Homeland Security’s Safecom program. Safecom was designed as an “umbrella” organization for federal wireless public safety communications. Over the next 18 months, the program will be working on a baseline of interoperability in the U.S. “No one knows how interoperable we really are,” Boyd said. The point is to collect clear information on interoperability levels, data that now exist in some states but not nationwide, he said. The program also is drafting comprehensive public safety statement of requirements, which will be published next month. Boyd said the requirements would be used to design national programs to support public safety interoperability. In other areas, Safecom is working on a standards process, to be aligned with the National Institute of Standards & Technology.