Clyburn, Utilities Fix on Utilities’ Access to Spectrum

The 2014 incentive auction of broadcast TV spectrum is “on track,” with big implications for public safety and how officials and companies respond to natural disasters, FCC acting Chairwoman Mignon Clyburn told utility stakeholders Thursday at a meeting hosted by the Utilities Telecom Council and the Department of Energy. Billions in revenue from that auction are slated for FirstNet, she said, describing how seriously the FCC takes its responsibilities toward the national public safety broadband network and the agency’s goal in “conducting a successful auction that will raise revenue for the network.” Spectrum is finite, she said. “We've seen an explosion in the demand for spectrum.”

This need for dedicated utility spectrum has national security implications, said Paul Stockton during a lunch keynote. He’s former assistant defense secretary for Homeland Defense and America’s Security Affairs and now managing director at advisory firm Sonecon. He painted a nightmare scenario focused on the New Madrid fault line, including “large-scale threats to public safety and public health in this environment ... that’s going to dwarf what we experienced in Sandy.” There will be firefighting problems, electrical outages for weeks and months, and roads where “cars are bricks,” he said, creating a bigger need than ever for reliable, resilient communications to coordinate utility crews. He issued a “call to arms” for utilities to ensure functioning communications networks: “Communications are the critical enabler.” The federal government should step up and create more opportunities for public-private partnerships, he said.

Clyburn said the 4.9 GHz public safety band remains underutilized. A year ago, the FCC sought further comment on future use of the band (http://fcc.us/123n9mN. “We are specifically examining whether, and to what extent, critical infrastructure industries, such as utility companies, should be able to hold these licenses, and if so, how we can best accommodate a variety of uses in the band by reevaluating existing coordination procedures, spectrum sharing mechanisms and technical specifications,” Clyburn said. “There is a wide range of bands and services that have been actively used by utilities, or that we expect could be useful, to meet the industry’s varied needs -- whether on a licensed or leased basis.”

Clyburn recounted the FCC’s concerns about last year’s Superstorm Sandy and derecho. A common link was power grid failure, she said. “Massive outages are simply unacceptable.” The Thursday summit highlighted how communications has evolved among utilities, Durcsak said, with the advent of smart grids -- telecom “has moved out from the shadows and into the forefront of the utility of the future,” she said. “Today’s summit really is in my wheelhouse,” Clyburn said, referring to her background that combined a focus on telecom and critical infrastructure. The interconnected nature of utilities and telecom didn’t surprise her when she started at the FCC, she said. She paid close attention to the National Broadband Plan’s section on harnessing high-speed Internet to improve energy efficiency, she said. She also recounted “personal” interest and cited 1999’s Hurricane Hugo, a time when she was “balled up in a corner” and hearing “the first trees I ever loved being broken like toothpicks.” She called on utilities, in a time of so many natural disasters, to help “do this thing right."

Yet the FCC’s recent decision to approve Progeny, a controversial emergency communications service that promises better 911 location information, is a “total disaster,” said F.H. Smith, an IT infrastructure architect for Chevron. He also expressed concerns about maintaining reliable communications. “We need something that is absolutely rock solid.” Stakeholders are “talking by each other, certainly in the dialogue with the Commission,” he said, calling for someone, whether Congress or the FCC, to step up and play the “parent.” That parent needs to “stop this craziness,” he said.

Federal and state officials described how they responded to disasters, such as Sandy, as did utility representatives. “No one knows that better than the industry,” said William Bryan, deputy assistant secretary for infrastructure security and energy restoration in the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability. He described bringing industry in the room to look at “low-hanging fruit” that could help in such recoveries. Ron Hewitt, director of the DHS Office of Emergency Communications, emphasized his office’s assistance in getting the 56 states and territories to develop interoperability plans. The government should be “bringing the CEOs to the table,” said DHS Assistant Secretary for Infrastructure Protection Caitlin Durkovich, describing efforts to bring utilities together. Her office has evolved from confronting terrorism to being more “all hazards focused,” she added. The U.S. tendency toward public-private partnerships “is a model for our foreign partners ... amazed at what we are able to do in a voluntary framework,” she said.

One major threat to these networks is cyber, panelists said. State commissions are becoming more proactive in this sphere, said NARUC President Philip Jones. Cybersecurity is the theme of his presidency, he said. “I don’t think the states are interested in setting up 50 different standards,” Jones said, though NARUC has not passed any formal resolution on standards. “The burden lies with the utility.” NARUC has sought to educate different state commissions, visiting 28 of them over the last six to seven months and holding cyber-focused workshops, he added. Commissioner Terry Jarrett of the Missouri Public Service Commission, also chair of NARUC’s critical infrastructure committee, advocated for state regulators asking the right questions of utilities. “As state regulators, we're never going to be experts in cyber,” Jarrett said, but described a necessary “paradigm shift” in the relationship between regulators and utilities, requiring “a lot of collaboration.”