Administration Understands Broadband Mobile Spectrum Concerns, Weiser Says
White House aide Phil Weiser told the 4G Americas conference Wednesday he agrees with industry concerns that the U.S. has fallen behind other countries on the amount of spectrum available for mobile broadband. Weiser cited carrier complaints that the German government recently auctioned an additional 300 MHz of spectrum, while the next big U.S. auction could be years away.
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"That’s a situation that should scare us,” Weiser said, citing the German auction. “It should scare us to action.” The U.S. has been a leader in many other areas, he added. “Which country has purchased the most iPhones in the world? It’s not even close, right?” he asked. “Which country has identified the two leading smartphone platforms?"
A June presidential memo committing the government to freeing up 500 MHz of spectrum over 10 years for wireless broadband shows spectrum is a “critical priority” for the administration, said Weiser, senior advisor for technology and innovation at the National Economic Council. “Getting a presidential memorandum is a notable accomplishment, and having the level of engagement that we see may be historic,” he said. He did not offer additional details on the 10-year spectrum plan expected to be released by NTIA in the next few days, which NTIA was required to complete last week. “A lot went into this,” he said of the plan. “It’s not going to be perfect.”
The U.S. can’t afford to get “side-tracked” as the LTE rollout begins, Weiser contended. “We want this sea-change to happen, but we are aware that that is not automatic,” he said. “We are aware that policy can either be an enabler or an impediment.”
The help of Congress is critical, Weiser conceded. Getting any legislation through Congress “is extremely hard work and the challenge is even greater when the topic is spectrum because it’s abstract,” he said. “Only the geekiest among us get excited about freeing up spectrum."
The government must become more efficient, including in how it uses spectrum, Weiser said. He cited a September memo by acting Office of Management and Budget Director Jeffrey Zients on making the federal government more accountable and efficient. “We need to push ourselves … to use this vital resource in the most efficient way possible,” he said.
Standardization and harmonization are important for wireless, Weiser said. “The complement to that is you want to allow experimentation too,” he said. He noted that since GSM isn’t as dominant in the U.S. as it is Europe, Qualcomm was able to develop CDMA for the U.S. market. “If we lived in a hard-wired world … the opportunity for CDMA may not have been reached,” he said. “The next great thing might not be what we expected.”
4G Americas Chairman Neville Ray, chief network officer at T-Mobile, cited a “broadband tsunami” in his remarks at the conference. U.S. broadband demand will see a 72-fold increase between 2009 and 2015, he said.
Ray cited the example of his teenage daughter and how she uses her phone. “She goes home, she doesn’t log onto her laptop, she wants to use her mobile device,” he said. “That’s her life and that’s her main interface with her social community.” Carriers need spectrum to keep up with subscriber demands and they need to use the spectrum they have more efficiently, he said. “As operators, we have to find ways to manage that tsunami and manage it cost effectively,” he said.
Sue Spradley, head of the North American region for Nokia Siemens Networks, agreed with Ray’s tsunami analogy. A typical 21-year old today has exchanged more than 250,000 e-mails or text messages and spent more than 10,000 hours talking on a cellphone, Spradley said. “I don’t know if I'm scared or happy about that,” she said. “The good news is we're using our 4G and 3G networks. … It tells you just how enormously different the world is."
Spradley noted that different applications place vastly different demands on wireless networks. “An average YouTube video, you know the baby dancing wearing the diapers … is equal to sending 500,000 SMS messages in its impact on the network,” she said. FCC officials were surprised when briefed on those numbers, she said.