GAO Urges FCC, NTIA to Improve Spectrum Policy Coordination, Update MOU

The FCC and NTIA should develop their MOU update to “address identified gaps (such as the lack of clearly defined goals and agreed-upon processes for making decisions) and develop a means to continually monitor and update this agreement,” GAO said. The report recommends the FCC and NTIA “clarify and further identify shared goals or outcomes for spectrum-management activities that involve collaboration and ways to monitor and track progress.” The Commerce Spectrum Management Advisory Committee approved a proposed MOU update in January (see 2101140048).

GAO said both agencies should seek a State Department review of its guidance for U.S. participation in ITU and Organization of American States spectrum standards-setting talks. The report urged the FCC and NTIA to develop procedures to “help guide the design (including selection of acceptable assumptions and methodologies) of spectrum-sharing and potential-interference studies intended as U.S. contributions to” World Radiocommunication Conference technical meetings. GAO recommended NOAA “clarify and document” its “internal processes for identifying and raising concerns about potential interference to NOAA satellite instruments.”

Neither the MOU nor State’s guidance has been updated in “almost 20 years,” which “affected collaboration” during the 2019 WRC, the report said. “Disputes among the agencies and the inability to reach agreement on U.S. technical contributions challenged the U.S.’s ability to present an agreed-upon basis for decisions or a unified position.” The “lack of consensus on” the design of a study on 24 GHz interference and “specific procedures to guide the design of these types of studies” hindered “U.S. efforts to prepare for the 2019 WRC,” GAO said. “The U.S. did not submit its studies on certain key issues to the final technical meeting, resulting in some stakeholders questioning whether the corresponding U.S. positions were technically rooted.”

“We need a coordinated, whole-of-government approach to spectrum management which enables U.S. telecommunications leadership without threatening earth and space science observations,” said House Science Chairwoman Eddie Bernice Johnson, D-Texas, in a news release with ranking member Frank Lucas, R-Okla. “This approach must assure the integrity and availability of spectrum for the next generation of weather forecasting and radioastronomy, as well.” Lobbyists told us Johnson and Lucas are already exploring potential legislation on spectrum coordination. Senate Commerce Committee ranking member Roger Wicker of Mississippi and other panel GOP leaders filed the Improving Spectrum Coordination Act (S-1472) earlier this year to address the situation (see 2104290078).

“It’s critical that we have a workable process in place to manage disputes about how we allocate spectrum frequencies, but this GAO report makes it clear that there are significant gaps in how federal agencies work together to resolve these conflicts,” Lucas said. “All stakeholders … need a spectrum allocation process that is fair, transparent, and provides certainty for decision making, particularly as we negotiate internationally over spectrum issues. This report provides a good framework for the actions we must take to ensure we’re taking a deliberative and scientific approach to balancing all of our spectrum needs.”

The FCC “broadly” agrees with GAO’s view that “the agencies must engage in proper coordination through the proper channels and that we can work to clarify all parties’ roles and responsibilities where there is confusion or misunderstanding, and look forward to working with our colleagues at NTIA to further evaluate” the recommendations, said Office of Engineering and Technology acting Chief Ronald Repasi, International Bureau Chief Thomas Sullivan and Wireless Bureau acting Chief Joel Taubenblatt in a letter included in the GAO report. “There are positive benefits in ensuring” the MOU is updated, but it remains “a high-level document that has served both Federal and non-federal spectrum management well for the past two decades.”

“We are always mindful that there is room for improvement” in collaborating with the FCC and other agencies, but “the unique nature of the electromagnetic environment for each frequency band and its incumbent and proposed new uses will raise unique challenges that cannot be fully predicted or made to fit into a fully standardized process,” said Assistant Commerce Secretary-Administration Wynn Coggins in a letter attached to the report. Discussions on the 24 GHz band were difficult partly because of “the complexity of agreeing on the appropriate technical analysis for determining the potential for harmful interference from new systems to incumbent systems operating on the same or nearby spectrum.” Applying “our national priorities can be difficult, particularly when the decisions inevitably involve balancing equities that depend on critical technical analyses, which themselves depend upon iterative and time-intensive efforts to home in on an optimal solution,” Coggins said.