Trump Spectrum Policy Seen Likely Consistent With Previous Administration's
The Trump administration’s policies on spectrum and sharing may not be that different from those of the Obama administration, a top White House aide said Tuesday at an NTIA spectrum policy summit. The administration is looking more closely at developing a national spectrum strategy (see 1804250063), promised by NTIA Administrator David Redl in April. During the Obama years, Republicans sometimes criticized the emphasis on sharing over exclusive-use spectrum.
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“Generally thinking, I don’t view spectrum as a partisan issue,” said Kelsey Guyselman, policy adviser to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. One change is that, unlike the Obama administration, this White House isn’t focused on spectrum targets, she said. Guyselman noted the new focus is on high-band spectrum. “The amount of spectrum that’s being freed up … is just massive compared to what we were talking about eight years ago,” she said. The Obama administration focused on a goal of providing 500 MHz of additional spectrum for commercial use by 2020.
Redl said this administration is putting more emphasis on an “all-of-the-above approach” on spectrum. “We have to make sure that we have every tool in our toolkit,” he said. The biggest change over the past 18 months is that making more spectrum available keeps getting more complicated, he said. “We certainly are focused on sharing.”
Finding spectrum for broadband will become only more difficult, Guyselman agreed. “There are fewer and fewer opportunities for just outright clearing and reallocation for exclusive use.” The administration has had to “pivot” to refocus on what is available, she said. “While there are still bands that can be cleared, those are going to be expensive and take a significant amount of time,” she said. The administration wants to build on what the previous one did, rather than “undoing what was done,” she said.
Spectrum is “a lot more about physics than partisanship,” said Tom Power, general counsel at CTIA, who worked for the Obama administration. “Eight years ago, millimeter-wave spectrum was not something we were thinking about,” he said. “Technology evolved, standards evolved and suddenly we have these much greater opportunities.”
Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, opening the meeting, said 5G is about the economy and jobs. “We cannot be complacent,” he said. “While the United States leads the world in the application of 4G wireless technology, China and South Korea are trying hard to position themselves to dominate the next generation of 5G.”
Ross and others said spectrum for 5G is important, but agencies from the FAA to the DOD to the intelligence agencies also have growing needs. Commerce will make sure federal agencies “have access to the spectrum needed to support their missions to protect the public, foster economic activity and advance our scientific enterprises,” Ross said.
Space exploration, drones, smart cities, the IoT and autonomous vehicles depend on spectrum, Guyselman said. “Demand is great, but we’re only on the cusp of what we’re going to see” and the U.S. needs a national policy, she said. The conversation over spectrum is just getting started, she said.
People getting on an airplane shouldn’t have to worry about safety, said Carl Burleson, acting deputy administrator at the FAA. Discussions like this one are critical, he said.
“DOD is going to do our thing because we have to,” said Air Force Col. Frederick Williams with the Pentagon's spectrum office. “We’re going to need to learn a lot about each other, interagency and across that line of federal/nonfederal.” The same technologies that Americans are using in a mobile world can be used to wage war, he said. “We’re got to get past thinking about things in terms of primacy, co-primacy,” he said. “We’ve got to stop thinking about … exclusivity.”
“With 5G on the way, we share the sense of urgency many of you feel,” Redl said in a keynote. The Mobile Now Act requires the identification of more spectrum for 5G and the president’s budget for FY 2019 includes a proposal to authorize NTIA to administer leases of federal spectrum to nonfederal users, he said. “This is still very much a proposal at this point, and many details need to be sorted out, but it has great potential.”
The government will protect federal agencies even as it looks for more spectrum for broadband, Redl said. “While commercial needs are extensive, we must balance that demand against government’s expanding needs for national defense, public safety, aerospace and other vital missions.”