FCC/NTIA May Be the Best US Has to Resolve Spectrum Disputes, but Expect a Bumpy Road

Experts agreed “the process is not fundamentally broken” and “we don’t need wholesale change to the structures,” said Redl, now CEO of Salt Point Strategies. “At bottom, while the FCC and NTIA may not be perfect” they're “the least, worst option available,” he said. But difficult questions remain, he said. “If you’re for one signal in a very broad swath of spectrum like an inceptor radar, how do you address … efficiency?” he asked.

Panelists agreed “one-stop legislation is not the end all, be all” and “subsequent legislation should always be developed consistent with the reports that are developed by FCC and NTIA,” said Graham Stephenson, a Silicon Flatirons student researcher who also presented some findings. Lawmakers "should look beyond revenue-based approaches and consider a wide variety of factors in addressing understanding efficiency and the highest and best use of spectrum,” said Stephenson, who attends University of Colorado Law School.

“We had a pretty robust discussion about when things worked and when things don’t,” Redl said. One consensus was that developing the rules for the AWS-3 auction was the “high-water mark for cooperation among the federal agencies … and Congress,” he said: “We realized that that was lightning in a bottle, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t strive to create the conditions for additional lightning.”

Spectrum policy “is all fights among existing users about interference,” said SpaceX Satellite Policy Senior Director David Goldman. “It’s a cage match,” he said: The rule for most non-geostationary orbit satellites is “you guys share it and you guys figure out how you’re going to do it yourself. There is no other rule. And when you get in this fight, do it in good faith. That’s it.”

“There’s a lot of fighting the last war going on,” Goldman said. “I’m a little worried that we’re not looking out into the future,” he said: “We need to think more about how do we set up the right incentives going forward.” People “don’t want to show” up for a proceeding where “their only outcome is loss,” he said. “So many times, the only thing we’re doing is asking people to come to the table so we don’t hurt you as bad,” he said. One of the problems for government agencies is the money comes after an auction, “but they’re asked to clear before,” he said. One incentive would be to give agencies not just replacement gear, but better gear as the result of moving, he said.

“It’s not just the satellite world where things can be so cutthroat they have their own agenda item dedicated to them at every World Radiocommunication Conference,” said Jonathan Williams, National Science Foundation spectrum manager. Interference problems “are not solved,” he said: “The problems are being identified. [Policymakers] try to fix something and then a new problem crops up.”

There are always “examples of things that didn’t go well,” said Julius Knapp, former chief of the FCC Office of Engineering and Technology. “There are far more examples of things that you might not have liked the outcome, where we got out ahead of it, collectively,” he said.

CBRS Success

Knapp cited the citizens broadband radio service as a success story. “That didn’t come out of the blue,” he said: “A lot of folks forget about all of the work that had gone on for 12, 15 years before.” Military systems had to be protected, he said. “Working through how is that going to work took time,” he said. The FCC had to address the concerns of unlicensed advocates and carriers that wanted licensed spectrum, he said. “You had all of these folks together to work out the problems, and it took time,” he said.

Knapp said he “looked down the road” and some conflicts that are coming are easy to predict. “We’re going to be wrestling with the passive services, which are in a lot of places,” he said. For years, all regulators needed to do was identify the source of interference and the victim, he said. “It’s much more complicated now,” he said. There are adaptive antennas that change where they’re pointing and varying power levels, he said. Adding up out-of-band emissions “has become such a key argument,” he said: “I don’t know that we’ve enough work to look at the models and see do they really match reality, and you’re going to have more and more arguments.”

“What happens to recommendations?” asked telecommunications consultant Paul Kolodzy, who headed the FCC’s Spectrum Policy Task Force 20 years ago. “The receptiveness of the audience is actually the most important part of recommendations.”

Notebook

DOD has been working on 5G for the past several years, “setting up the early stage research and work,” said Thomas Rondeau, principal director-FutureG/5G. DOD is focused on high-band spectrum, Rondeau said. “There’s a lot of hope for millimeter-wave, and so far a whole lot of disappointment,” he said. “How do we create the new technologies that are going to make the amount of capacity, amount of resources in the millimeter-wave bands useful for us at DOD.” Spectrum sharing and understanding open network architectures are also a focus of DOD, Rondeau said. “One thing that we’re really good at is software and services in this country,” he said. DOD is trying to figure out how to get more involved in standard-setting, he said: “How can we actually help in the right ways, and there’s a lot of nuance to that.”