PCAST Sharing Report Has Unusual Amount of Support at White House, Furman Says
Jason Furman, chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, said Friday the July 2012 spectrum sharing report (CD July 23/12 p1) by the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) is important because of its implications for the economy. Furman said emphatically that President Barrack Obama cares about spectrum, in a keynote at a New America Foundation event on the PCAST report.
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"There’s an awful lot of reports that get written, including maybe even some great reports by PCAST, and this one has really had a lot of champions in the administration,” Furman said. Obama also is committed, he said. “I go to a lot of meetings on a wide range of topics with the president and I don’t there are any meetings that are more exciting and energizing for him than PCAST meetings.”
The PCAST report has led to a fundamental rethinking of the government’s approach to spectrum, said Tom Power, deputy federal chief technology officer, who also spoke at the event. “The PCAST report just reflected sort of a basic observation about what happens when you have increasing demand for a finite resource,” he said. “The traditional approach had been that we find bands that are appealing to the commercial sector, you pick up the federal systems, move them off the band somewhere, drop them down."
The PCAST report asks fundamentally whether there’s a better way to approach spectrum, Power said. Spectrum clearing “obviously doesn’t create more spectrum, it just sort of moves the pieces around the chessboard and it takes a lot of time and it costs money,” he said. Carriers pass the costs on to subscribers. Power said much of the report is already bearing fruit, including the FCC’s announcement this week that the commission will vote in April on a rulemaking rededicating the 3.5 GHz band to sharing and small cells (CD April 3 p1).
The administration is still very interested in bidirectional sharing in which federal agencies would share commercial spectrum, Power said. “The commission raised that for the 2155 [MHz] band as part of AWS-3 rulemaking,” he said. “I think it’s a live option, but NTIA did ask that the commission defer on that for now.” Power also said a quantitative analysis of federal spectrum use underway at the government (CD April 1 p10) will focus first on bands that may have the greatest potential for commercial use.
Power said there have been many bills introduced in Congress and much discussion of making agencies account for the spectrum they use since the PCAST report was released. “I find it interesting that we are seeing so much activity being brought to bear on this issue of incentives,” he said. The administration’s spectrum policy team will make recommendations “later this year,” he said. The administration must weigh carefully expenditures aimed at making government spectrum use more efficient, Power said, saying changing systems is hugely expensive and difficult. “You can’t do a truck toll to the satellite,” he joked. “Well, you can, but somebody has to be there between 10 and 2 on Thursday to let the guy in.”
The administration wants the Defense Department and other agencies to think about ways to make their systems more flexible, Power said. “If an agency says, ‘I want to invest in and procure a new system, it’s going to be $100 million, but for $125 million I can get added spectrum flexibility,’ the folks at [the Office of Management and Budget] and on the Hill, the appropriators, have to think about that,” he said. “That’s $25 million that could be going to deficit reduction or something else.”
NTIA, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and the FCC are all looking at part of the PCAST report that proposes a “test city” that would serve as a real world environment for trying out new business models, applications and services, Power said. “It seems like a lot of the tools are in place,” he said. “Through experimental licensing, for example, industry could today go and try and set this up, maybe do a [memorandum of understanding] with the right city who is willing to collaborate to be very flexible in allowing installations on rooftops and bridges and so forth. We want to try to convene and kick-start that and make sure we've got all the right stakeholders thinking collaboratively.” Furman said Obama is particularly interested in pushing forward on “the test cities concept.”
John Leibovitz, deputy chief of the FCC Wireless Bureau, said the agency is taking steps to implement the PCAST report, highlighted by the 3.5 GHz rulemaking, launched in 2012. “We are getting to the point soon where we will be able to … implement some rules and start to see these ideas in action in a new way and we're very excited about that,” he said. Leibovitz said FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler was one of the invited experts who helped shape the PCAST report.
Wheeler has made clear the report is a “very high priority for him,” Leibovitz said. “He really believes in the ideas and that’s why those of us who work for him are working hard on it.” The FCC hopes to dedicate 150 MHz to sharing in the 3.5 GHz band, not just the 100 MHz recommended by PCAST, he said. “The more spectrum you have, the more powerful the proceeding can be in the long run.”