FCC Examining Bidirectional Sharing but May Produce Few Results

DOD just wants to keep its options open, said a wireless carrier executive. “This topic has been around for a long time and the fundamentals haven’t changed,” the exec said. “Too much sharing is going to hurt our ability to use the spectrum and open ended sharing drives huge uncertainty and reduces efficiencies.” A second wireless industry official questioned whether the Pentagon really needs more spectrum.

Bidirectional sharing is high on DOD’s agenda as the department embraces 5G. DOD’s argument is that it has bases in areas with little population and would like to be able to use frequencies in those areas and could do so without posing a threat to carriers. Carriers have been reluctant to make concessions or create a precedent.

"NTIA looks forward to working with the commission on the report," a spokesperson said. DOD and the FCC didn't comment Wednesday.

Meanwhile, the spectrum rights world is changing. The pending upper 37 GHz band auction is the first in which the FCC will sell spectrum that licensees will hold on a co-primary basis with federal agencies. In the 3.5 GHz citizens broadband radio service band, companies eventually will bid for priority access to a shared band, paying for enhanced rights of access, but not the same rights they had in the past with exclusive-use licenses.

The act directs the FCC, in cooperation with NTIA, to “prepare a report on: the best means of providing Federal entities flexible access to non-Federal spectrum on a shared basis across a range of short-, mid-, and long-range timeframes, including for intermittent purposes like emergency use.”

Economics Matters

“We should not only consider expanding sharing but also use economic markets in more creative ways,” said Mark Jamison, University of Florida professor and a member of the Trump FCC transition landing team. “Markets could be used to add flexibility in relationships between government users and private licensees. Markets can also be used to redefine spectrum rights by, for example, enabling transactions for mitigating interference rather than focusing on rights for exclusive use.”

Technology exists and “is improving rapidly for more-sophisticated sharing of frequencies and minimization of interference,” said Larry Downes, public policy project director at the Georgetown Center for Business and Public Policy. The problem is that government systems aren’t as sophisticated as those deployed by industry, Downes said. “While private network operators have both the capital and incentive to adopt the most efficient and focused sharing technologies, government licensees do not,” he said. “We need to give federal users the tools everyone needs to make the best and highest use of limited spectrum. Having federal users continue to waste valuable bands with antiquated systems, and to propose sharing in any direction based on brute force technologies, doesn’t help anyone.”

The time is right to address bidirectional sharing, said Public Knowledge Senior Vice President Harold Feld. “We have a lot of unused commercial spectrum in areas in the middle of nowhere like huge military installations and weapons testing grounds,” Feld said. “Giving the military access to this spectrum where it is not being used would improve overall spectrum efficiency and reduce military spending where they can use commercially available tech.” Carriers know “full well” their spectrum could be used without harming their operations, Feld emailed. But carriers “hate the idea of anyone else using ‘their' spectrum, even if it is out in the middle of the desert in the Southwest” and “would always rather get paid for something that costs them nothing,” he said.

Some policy calls would be easy, said Michael Calabrese, director of the Wireless Future Program at New America. “The FCC should easily agree that DOD and other federal agencies can operate on any frequency band temporarily if it does not cause harmful interference to licensed operations,” he said: “The FCC has already authorized opportunistic sharing by anyone in two mobile carrier bands where a database can ensure that unlicensed users do not cause interference.” The real “sticking point” is whether DOD can claim “any certainty or rights with respect to licensed spectrum they begin using, such as on bases and in remote areas,” he said. “That’s the precedent that worries private sector licensees.”

Skepticism

Others are skeptical of whether DOD or other agencies need more spectrum.

“The spectrum sharing discussion started, in part, as a way to move inefficiently used federal spectrum to higher value commercial use,” said Scott Wallsten, president of the Technology Policy Institute. Wallsten worries that “instead of making more government spectrum available for nongovernment uses, federal agencies are flipping the script and using sharing as a way to get access to even more spectrum.”

“Agencies and the NTIA have been pushing for this for at least 20 years,” said Senior Research Fellow Brent Skorup of the Mercatus Center. “Those plans have gained little traction to date because of the technical complexity involved and because no user, federal or commercial, likes sharing spectrum with other, incompatible technologies. Until federal agencies are dynamically sharing spectrum amongst themselves in a significant way, I’m skeptical that federal-commercial dynamic sharing would work well.” Skorup said purely geographic sharing could work in some cases.

“From the perspective of the defense community, spectrum-sharing technologies are a way for them to not only keep the spectrum they have … but also get access to even more spectrum by imposing themselves onto commercial bands and forcing those industry users to accommodate the government users,” said Tom Struble, technology policy manager at the R Street Institute. Struble urges a different approach where the government wouldn’t have any set aside. “Government is not an efficient user of spectrum, so why not simply have government agencies lease spectrum access from commercial users, who are efficient users of spectrum?” he said. The federal government followed a similar approach on computer systems, he said.

“All wireless technologies that are currently being used or planned to be used are for single network owners and do not allowed for shared spectrum use,” said Roger Entner, analyst at Recon Analytics. Bidirectional sharing might be a good topic for 6G down the road, he said: “Instead of sharing the entire band, why not set aside a certain amount of spectrum in the areas with little population for military use and clear it in the rest of the country for commercial use?”

In 2016, the Commerce Spectrum Management Advisory Committee approved a report on the topic (see 1606080050). It called for a multiday, multistakeholder workshop.