NTIA Sees Relocation of 1.3 GHz Band as Key Spectrum Focus
NTIA is making reallocation of the 1.3 GHz band one of its top spectrum focuses under new Administrator David Redl, said industry and former NTIA officials. Language in the Advancing Innovation and Reinvigorating Widespread Access to Viable Electromagnetic Spectrum (Airwaves) Act, (S-1682, HR-4953) introduced in the House and Senate, would require an assessment of reallocation of the 1300-1350 MHz band, paired with the 1780-1830 MHz band, by Dec. 31, 2020. NTIA declined to comment Friday.
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Work has been going on mostly behind the scenes since last summer, when President Donald Trump announced the FAA would look to update its air traffic control system by potentially auctioning the 1.3 GHz band for wireless broadband to offset the cost of a new system (see 1706050051). The FAA said then a team made up of that agency, DOD, the Department of Homeland Security and NOAA had received $71.5 million from the Office of Management and Budget “to proceed with an effort to study the feasibility of making space on the radio spectrum available for auction.” FAA labeled the initiative the Spectrum Efficient National Surveillance Radar (SENSR) Program. The FAA, CTIA and Competitive Carriers Association didn’t comment.
“The 1.3 GHz band is one of those few areas of momentum to try to upgrade legacy federal systems to more spectrally efficient,” said Doug Brake, director-telecom policy at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation. “It is both exciting and disappointing.” SENSR is “leveraging all the tools more or less exactly how people had hoped,” he said. The initiative demonstrates that “maybe with some additional pragmatic, incremental reforms to the Spectrum Relocation Fund and other mechanisms, there are opportunities for freeing up spectrum from federal incumbents,” he said. But the focus is on just 30 MHz on a 2020 timeline, which is “pretty meager,” he said.
“It’s certainly no surprise” Redl “hit the ground running,” said CTIA General Counsel Tom Power. “We know that he and the administration recognize that 5G leadership is a national priority and critical to our economy. Freeing up more spectrum for commercial use will meet that goal and we support the NTIA, the FCC and Congress in identifying high-, mid- and low-band spectrum for next generation wireless.”
A former FCC spectrum official agreed the program is moving at a slow pace. “Why provide until December 2020 for a mere assessment rather than a rulemaking?” the lawyer said. “Yet another stark example of why it takes the better part of a decade to bring new spectrum to auction.”
Former FCC Wireless Bureau Chief Fred Campbell called the band “a good candidate for meeting the Spectrum Pipeline Act’s requirements.” The 1.3 GHz band already is being used for 5G in Korea, officials noted. Korea’s Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning said in January it will share bandwidth in the 1.3 GHz band among the country’s three wireless carriers -- KT, SK Telecom and LG Uplus.
The more interesting question may be whether DOD would agree to move operations out of the 1780-1830 MHz band, said Michael Calabrese, director of the Wireless Future Program at New America. “Back in 2013-14, it was a big debate and struggle to reach agreement with the dozen or so different federal users of 1755-1780 MHz to free that up for the AWS-3 auction by relocating and also compressing up into the top half of that band,” he said. Calabrese, a member of the Commerce Spectrum Management Advisory Committee, recalled that CSMAC members spent a year working out the clearing and sharing arrangements before the AWS-3 auction.
“At the time the DOD expressed the concern that they didn’t want to go through all that trouble if industry was going to come back in a few years and try to push them out of the rest of the band,” he said. “If NTIA and DOD are agreeing to this, it would seem to represent a major change of position. If federal users can further compress or relocate, that would of course be a tremendous boost for the mobile industry since this is very prime spectrum with respect to propagation.” DOD didn't comment.