Sharing Remains Poor Substitute for Exclusive Use Spectrum, CTIA Says

"There is no substitute for licensed, exclusive-use spectrum,” Largent wrote in a six-page letter. Much of the administration’s spectrum focus has been on sharing since the release of President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) spectrum sharing report in 2012 (CD July 23/12 p1). OSTP had specifically sought a Science and Technology Policy Institute (STPI) report identifying approaches to providing incentives to federal agencies to share or relinquish spectrum (http://bit.ly/1oG93Br). “The sharing approaches proposed by STPI -- shared access to federal spectrum through short-term leases, prioritized shared access to spectrum, and PCAST’s spectrum ’superhighways’ proposal -- are particularly problematic,” CTIA said. “They raise complex challenges that are unlikely to ensure the efficient use of spectrum by federal users and will not produce spectrum that can be used by commercial wireless broadband providers on an exclusive basis.”

Unlike most public comments, those sent to OSTP were not put online by the government. However, some industry players provided them at our request Friday. OSTP has yet to post industry comments, which were due Thursday, but will do so after vetting them to make sure no sensitive personal or proprietary information is disclosed, a spokeswoman said.

AT&T said federal agencies need a push to give up spectrum they're not fully utilizing. “Agencies do not operate in accordance with a profit motive. Nor should they -- each has a public policy mission to accomplish,” AT&T said. Government agencies are also not well positioned to determine which bands are well-suited to carrier use, AT&T said. “Relying on individual agencies to determine which frequencies should be made available to commercial users is likely to result in band fragmentation, which would limit both the utility and value of any spectrum ultimately offered to commercial users."

The FCC is in a good position to assess the utility of spectrum from the standpoint of industry, AT&T said. “To ensure that cost/benefit decisions take into consideration all factors, including the need for commercial spectrum and the importance of spectrum allocations to the accomplishment of important federal goals, free (to the extent possible) of political pressures, it also may be useful to consider whether an independent commission, perhaps like the Defense Base Closure and Realignment Commission, might be best suited to consider how best to resolve the competing demands for spectrum between public and private sectors in a way that is both fair and fiscally responsible.”

The Competitive Carriers Association said it supports making federal agencies accountable for their spectrum, but opposes an approach “that assigns spectrum property rights to agencies, as granting complete discretion for spectrum relocation decisions to Federal agencies is unlikely to spur voluntary relinquishment of spectrum.” Competitive carriers need better access to spectrum, CCA said. “Allocation of additional spectrum for commercial use is particularly important to competitive carriers that seek to become stronger rivals to AT&T and Verizon, because spectrum is a critical input and a precondition to the provision of mobile wireless services,” the group said. “The need to efficiently allocate spectrum resources grows more urgent as the two largest carriers continue to dominate the secondary market for spectrum and aggregate the lion’s share of critical low-band spectrum."

"Verizon still believes that the best approaches are those that encourage more efficient use and result in clearing spectrum for flexible, exclusive-use licensing,” the carrier said. “This continues to be an important national policy goal.” But Verizon said it’s willing to examine the opportunities presented by sharing. “Over the past two years, Verizon Wireless has invested considerable resources in the work of the Commerce Spectrum Management Advisory Committee (CSMAC), as well as other efforts to study how sharing in certain bands of spectrum might take place,” Verizon said. “Verizon has been working closely with government and other stakeholders to examine sharing and ways to repurpose the 1755-1850 MHz and 1695-1710 MHz bands. In particular, we worked closely with [the Department of Defense] on its ‘roadmap’ for making 1755-1850 MHz available for commercial broadband use. We are committed to this ongoing work with the Administration, Congress and other stakeholders in the wireless market."

T-Mobile said it supports requiring federal agencies to account for the spectrum they use through a user fee. Federal agencies today pay a small amount for the spectrum they use, which supports NTIA, but it’s too small to figure into agency planning, T-Mobile said. Last year, “NTIA was authorized to collect a total of $26,629,916 from 46 agencies, resulting in a $108 fee per frequency assignment for all agencies,” the carrier said. “Because agencies pay NTIA a fixed amount yearly, the more assignments a federal agency obtains, the lower the actual cost per assignment. So, instead of paying more for increased use of spectrum, agencies actually pay less per assignment."

The government should also make certain that agencies actually use the spectrum they are assigned, T-Mobile said. “In order to ensure spectrum does not lie fallow once it is authorized for federal use, agencies should be subject to an annual review to demonstrate that they are using and will continue to need their spectrum,” the carrier notes. “In the commercial context, the FCC has established performance requirements to encourage spectrum use and efficiency. For instance, AWS licensees are required to make a showing of ’substantial service’ in their license area by the end of their license term."

The Public Interest Spectrum Coalition, which represents public interest groups, did not file comments. “It was too short a notice period with too many other things going on,” said Michael Calabrese, director of the New America Foundation’s Wireless Future Project.

Public Knowledge Senior Vice President Harold Feld, also a PISC member, told us carriers need to accept that unlicensed spectrum and sharing are the new norm. “Until about 2008, CTIA and its members actively opposed Wi-Fi and saw it as a threat,” Feld said. “Carriers required European manufacturers to disable Wi-Fi chips before selling their phones in the U.S. Today, Wi-Fi offload is critical to the profitability of the wireless industry. Nevertheless, CTIA and many of its members still can’t break the old way of thinking that somehow more sharing means less licensed. It’s like the MPAA and online streaming. No matter how much money studios make from online distribution platforms, they still think of the Internet as ’the enemy.’ CTIA and too many of its members are stuck in the same kind of self-destructive ideological behavior loop. Do these guys think that if they didn’t have a government enforced monopoly in the form of a license that they couldn’t survive as a business?"

Among other groups that did file comments, the Telecommunications Industry Association said the spectrum policy should be based on predictability, flexibility and efficiency. TIA posted its comments on its website (http://bit.ly/1gQxLwE). “TIA has long-advocated for realizing the broadly-expressed national policy goal of making more spectrum available for commercial use,” the group said. “This will create hundreds of thousands of jobs for Americans while improving U.S. technological competitiveness. It will enable the mobile industry to meet the demand for high-speed wireless applications, and will help drive the U.S. economy, both near-term and long-term."

"It is apparent from a review of Federal spectrum management over the past 30 years that current policies do not create incentives for efficient Government use, nor do they bring any market forces to bear on Federal users,” Mobile Future said (http://bit.ly/1g9uPeS). “New incentive mechanisms should be structured so that agencies not only recover the costs associated with the relinquishment or sharing of Federal spectrum, but also receive additional financial and/or operational benefit from such efforts. In addition, the focus should be primarily on incentive mechanisms that promote relinquishment of Federal spectrum for exclusive commercial use.”