Clearing Government Users from Key Band Will Be Complicated, NTIA Official Warns

A spectrum working group of representatives from all the affected agencies has been holding monthly meetings to discuss their use of the spectrum and possibilities for relocating elsewhere, Nebbia said. The group will finalize a report in late September or early October, “so that we know what direction we're heading,” he said. “I certainly would be interested in anybody that can point to a nonfederal band that mixes radio systems the way we do in this case,” he said. “We generally don’t mix on the commercial side things as widely as we do here.”

The government has made about 3,000 assignments for frequencies in the band, though that number is down almost 1,000 since 2001 as some fixed point-to-point operations were moved elsewhere, Nebbia said. Fixed point-to-point systems still in the band are “all obviously movable,” though doing so will take some time, Nebbia said. “This is not what we see to be a critical or difficult case."

Mobile video surveillance by the FBI and other federal agencies use five 18 MHz channels in the overall 1755-1850 MHz band, Nebbia said. These agencies have already lost use of channels in federal spectrum converted to the AWS-1 band and sold in an FCC auction. “If you get down to the field guys, they will argue that they have had to not conduct certain operations for lack of a channel,” he said. The band also contains high-resolution surveillance video links including cameras mounted on poles and buildings. Federal agencies, not just the Department of Defense, use the band to operate unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), for everything from border surveillance to flyovers of disaster areas, Nebbia said. “This is certainly an expanding area of development within the government,” he said. “Probably if there’s any area where federal [agencies] are saying we have an increased need for spectrum, this is it. They want to do more things remotely.”

The government uses the band for aeronautical telemetry, though it’s not the primary band for that use, as well as for remote land-mobile robotics used by bomb squads and to handle hazardous material, Nebbia said. DOD uses the band for tactical radios for communicating in the field and needs up to 90 MHz for major operations, he said. The radios can be tuned, only within a limited spectrum range, he said. The military similarly uses the band in aircraft, including for training exercises over the U.S., and for precision guided munitions. Some federal agencies use the band for satellite control links, Nebbia said. “These particular control links ... give instructions to a satellite as to what they're to do,” he said. “From time to time they have to crank up the power of these transmissions in order to get a satellite back into its proper function."

CSMAC members peppered Nebbia with mostly technical questions about the federal uses of the spectrum. “Focusing on 1755-1780 MHz is probably the right priority,” said Tom Sugrue, CSMAC member and senior vice president at T-Mobile. “There’s 25 MHz sitting over at the FCC on a shelf that could be paired with that immediately” in the AWS-3 band, he said. Nebbia said the 1755-1780 MHz band is NTIA’s top priority, but the agency needs a broader focus. “The reason we're looking more broadly is that these agencies need a long-term direction,” he said. “Law enforcement agencies are still groaning under the last change.” Slides from Nebbia’s presentation are at http://xrl.us/bkpsec.

A key focus of CSMAC should be on sharing between government users and industry, Nebbia said. Many of the questions posed by NTIA for consideration by the group relate to sharing. “I'd like to see us talk about some specific places where we can do sharing, preferably some specific bands,” said CSMAC member Larry Alder of Google. Without specifics, the committee’s work might not move beyond theory, he said. Jennifer Warren of Lockheed Martin said CSMAC should be concerned about not freezing in place technology used by the government or companies willing to share. “How do we make sure that we continue technology innovation on all sides?” she said. “That’s important to at least address up front.”

Enforcement and making sure users of the band abide by the rules of the road are critical, said Janice Obuchowski of Freedom Technologies, former NTIA administrator. “A lot of things can be done with both money and good manners,” she said. “In my experience, people use interference as a competitive tool unless they're confident that the government is going to make sure that companies abide by the spectrum commitments they've made."

"I think you're right on point,” said CSMAC Co-Chairman Brian Fontes of the National Emergency Number Association. “That’s historically been an issue.”