Administration Sympathetic to Industry Spectrum Needs, Strickling Says

Strickling said NTIA has not made any findings about how much spectrum the industry will actually need for 4G deployment. Asked about the 800 MHz suggested by CTIA, he replied: “I'm sure CTIA is trying to impress upon everybody, every policymaker, everybody who touches this issue, how dire they think the situation is. I don’t know and I can’t speak for them as to whether or not they truly believe 800 MHz is achievable in the timeframe they're discussing.”

Strickling got several questions about the 800 MHz number during a question and answer session. “We're talking 800 MHz, you obviously don’t need that,” Ken Carrigan, a Navy spectrum official, said. “Of course they're going to come in and say they need that. They don’t need it. … It’s commercial hype.”

“What it does say, directionally, is there is a need for spectrum on the civilian side,” Philip Verveer, U.S. State Department coordinator for International Communications and Information Policy, said of the CTIA claims. “There’s no debating that point. The civilian users needs more as they go to 3G and 4G … and the defense communicators also urgently need spectrum.”

Strickling also said the administration supports the “concept” of a spectrum inventory, though the national security agencies have concerns about the disclosure of some information. “I assure we will work with you to protect national security information,” he said. “I also want to assure you that we are committed to making sure that all obligations relating to an inventory fall equally on both federal and commercial users of spectrum.”

The rapid growth of smartphones like the iPhone is stimulating demand, Strickling said. “Obviously, downloading YouTube videos or participating in video conferences or looking up information on the Internet utilizes much more bandwidth than mobile voice calls, and we can expect that the projected volumes of mobile data traffic is going to grow exponentially in the future,” he said. “These facts have led the commercial mobile industry to review to the current state of affairs as … the looming spectrum crisis.”

Strickling said Attorney General Eric Holder’s comments last week at the International Association of Chiefs of Police conference on the 700 MHz D-block were not the administration position. Holder had said he “strongly” supports allocating the band directly to public safety. “I was surprised to see his comments,” Strickling said. “I have spent no time myself focusing on 700 MHz yet. That’s all I can say about that.” NTIA is the administration’s principal advisor on telecommunications. “I think this administration would expect that any positions taken at the FCC would be transmitted by us,” he said.

Strickling also said no decision has been made on whether to consolidate the remaining two Broadband Technology Opportunities Program funding rounds into a single round. “We've recommended that it be collapsed into a single second round,” he said. “More to come, hopefully soon.” The first awards should be announced in early- to mid-November, he said.

The Commerce Spectrum Management Advisory Committee will begin meeting again this month, but its goals remain unclear, Strickling said. “We welcome your input as to which of the activities you have found worthwhile and want to see continue, and just as equally we're interested in those you would tell us to stop spending time on.”

DOD Spectrum Managers Urge More Efficient Spectrum Use

Department of Defense officials said the U.S. military’s need for spectrum continues to grow quickly because of the requirements on the modern battlefield. But they said they keep making progress using the spectrum they have more efficiently.

This year’s conference comes at a critical time. There’s growing pressure from telcos to shift government spectrum to commercial use because of growing demands on their networks as they move to 4G. Congress is considering legislation that would order an audit of government spectrum. With no major auctions on the horizon, carriers maintain that they need hundreds of megahertz of additional spectrum. Several officials at the conference said this is a vulnerable time for Defense because the administration has yet to appoint an assistant secretary of defense for networks and information integration, traditionally the top advocate for the department regarding spectrum. The office has been vacant since John Grimes left the administration in March.

Spectrum “is a precious commodity that right now is affecting us in Afghanistan and Iraq,” said Ronald Jost, deputy secretary of defense for C3, space and spectrum. “It is the communications that’s involved. It is the networks. It’s the radar. It’s the situational awareness. It’s electronic warfare.” But Jost said the military is making progress in using spectrum more effectively. “We're trying to actually better use [the spectrum] and, by the way, spread our networks across it. … We don’t own the majority of the spectrum. We'd better effectively use it because in the commercial world their demands are increasing too.”

Jost said Defense faces challenges unknown to wireless carriers. “I am quite often [told], ‘Commercially we do this,'” he said. “Commercially, your adversary is not trying to defeat your network. Spectrum is used against us as much as [it is] an enabler for us. … We need that resource. We need every hertz that we can find.”

Jost pointed to huge growth in U.S. military use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV). “We're going to have to consider other bands to put our UAVs on that are much higher in frequency, less occupied and less in demand,” he said. “That has to be a shift that’s done soon, not 20 years from now. Soon. There are major UAV, C-band and other band problems. It is one of the most limiting aspects that we have right now in our communications spectrum.”

Jost said U.S. policymakers are under great pressure to make the right choices. “Our decisions, the decisions that we make on how spectrum is used, what bands, what layers, what networks, is what our allies in the rest of the world follow,” he said. “We are the leader and we have to start using our precious resource more effectively.”

“We're spectrum dependent,” said Maj. Gen. George Allen, the chief information officer of the Marine Corps. “The closer we get to the front lines, the more spectrum dependent we are.” For the modern war-fighter, the major use of wireless now is data, Allen said. “The reasons we have all those wireless systems is to pass along electronic data to show digital photographs of where the enemy is, or videos.” During the first war against Iraq, the typical Marine battalion had 40 radios, he said. “We now have over 600 radios because of those data requirements.” In the first attack on Baghdad, “we used every piece of spectrum that we possibly could get our hands on, all of it, everything that we could do and we didn’t have enough,” Allen said. “Now we have more [spectrum] and we still don’t have enough because of the burgeoning data requirements that we have.”

David Weddel, deputy to the deputy chief of naval operations, said only 7 percent of the spectrum at 0-30 GHz is dedicated to government use in the U.S. and 30 percent to nongovernment use only, and the rest is shared. “The allocation for spectrum for the Department of Defense is clearly not tremendously large and our goal is to be able to utilize that most effectively,” he said.