CSMAC Members Say They Needed More Direction on Spectrum Sharing Reports

CSMAC’s spectrum sharing work was “very important” and provides a model for the future, said NTIA Administrator Larry Strickling, who kicked off the session. “That wasn’t a one-off, what we did on those bands,” he said. “As we continue to focus on spectrum sharing, these kinds of conversations are going to have to become sort of the standard way of operating as opposed to an unusual event."

Strickling encouraged those attending the session to offer advice on how the process could work better next time. “Our challenge now here is to figure out a way to regularize or institutionalize this process in a way that it can run so much more smoothly the next time out and the next time and the next time after that,” he said. CSMAC approved the last of five working groups reports at a meeting in August, though more than half the group’s members also signed an industry statement critical of several of the working group reports (CD Aug 29 p1).

Speakers at Friday’s meeting said the committee’s process was often frustrating, especially given recurring complaints about the slow flow of information from the federal government on how the bands are used by the Defense Department and other federal agencies (CD Jan 18 p1). CSMAC members and members of the working groups complained in many cases they weren’t clear on whether they were supposed to be looking at sharing or exclusive use of the spectrum.

"I don’t think there was agreement as to what we were doing,” said Fred Moorefield, a DOD spectrum official who took part in the CSMAC discussions. “Whether it was more sharing, was it relocation, was it a combination, were we looking at the lower 25 [MHz] or looking at the whole band?” But Moorefield said what NTIA accomplished was huge. “For the first time in history bringing together such a magnitude of people, not just the spectrum guys, we had folks coming in from the field and the program offices, the acquisition folks in the Pentagon, all playing in this,” he said. “Putting all of these folks around the table ... took guts from our perspective and I think at the end of the day it worked pretty well.”

Moorefield said DOD recognizes that industry needs access to spectrum data to make informed decisions. “On the other side, we just need everybody to understand that from a DOD perspective that information has to be protected,” he said. “Opening up the sharing of information with industry at this large scale, when this is the first time that we have ever done this, is going to take time to work through."

The question of “what were we supposed to be looking at” was often unanswered, with some CSMAC members focused on sharing and others on relocating federal users, especially from the 1755-1780 MHz band, said Jennifer Warren, representing Lockheed Martin on CSMAC. “Being clear in what NTIA was looking for would have been very helpful in hindsight,” Warren said. “We spent a lot of time debating, going back to the framework, going back to what the overarching direction is.”

Industry often wasn’t clear on what NTIA’s goals were, said Tom Dombrowsky, representing Wiley Rein. “The reason why there was such a pushback on sharing versus relocation on the industry side was we didn’t understand what was going to be relocated, not going to be relocated, what we were sharing with, what we weren’t sharing with ... the costs that were going to be associated with that relocation process,” Dombrowsky said. Since members of the working groups weren’t constant, the same points were argued repeatedly, he said.

"Was the process smooth, wonderful and just easy to do? Absolutely not, but I think it’s a right direction,” said CSMAC co-Chairman Brian Fontes, CEO of the National Emergency Number Association. “I would hope that the next CSMAC continues in that process because I think it keeps people engaged. I think you get responses earlier on rather than at the very end.” The process CSMAC followed also helped identify “difficulties” that need more work early on, he said. While the process may have been frustrating, “it drives, pushes us to try to find remedies,” he said.

"It was, I thought, a very productive process overall, despite the frustrations and flaws that some CSMAC members have identified, and I'm sure it will be better if we do it again,” said Michael Calabrese, director of the New America Foundation’s Wireless Future Project. “We had a lot of pain in the time when we were trying to get information back and forth between the different groups,” said Rob Haines, with NTIA’s Office of Spectrum Management. “The encouraging part came when we did get information and we started to work as engineers. ... We shared a lot and had a lot of common views on engineering.”

T-Mobile offered written comments for the meeting (http://1.usa.gov/1b2dAos), which said the process was an improvement over similar processes in the past. “The process enabled industry and government collaboration on a wide range of issues affecting the reallocation and sharing of spectrum employed by government users,” the carrier said. “Discussions between government and industry stakeholders provided both with a significantly better understanding of system operation, technical features, and operational requirements.” Similar efforts in the past “often relied on either federal agencies or industry representatives conducting an analysis without the benefit of discussions with the other,” T-Mobile said. “Because neither federal agencies nor industry has complete information about the technical or operational requirements of the others’ systems, these analyses were often inaccurate."

But T-Mobile also said the process could be improved. CSMAC operates as a Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA) committee. While this was intended to ensure transparency, FACA rules “proved to be an impediment to sharing necessary technical and operational information, based on concerns by the Department of Defense ... and other Federal agencies that potentially sensitive information would be broadly released,” T-Mobile said. The carrier noted that the working groups were in some cases given too narrow a focus. “This guidance unnecessarily limited the scope of discussions,” the carrier said. “In many cases technical analyses were limited to evaluating the potential for interference between co-channel operations only, an unproductive exercise when it became clear early in the process that co-channel operation would not be feasible.” The process would have worked better had working groups participants had access to technical analyses as they were being developed, T-Mobile said. “In cases where DoD conducted a technical analysis, particularly for Working Groups 4 and 5, the analysis was subject to an extensive DoD review process prior to being made available to industry. At that point, it was difficult or impossible to make adjustments, in order to get to the most accurate results. This process was vastly different from the process used for Working Group 1, where the initial results were thoroughly shared and discussed.”

In an afternoon meeting, CSMAC members plowed into the issues the group will address before its charter expires next year. CSMAC has six new subcommittees: Enforcement, Transitional Sharing, General Occupancy Measurements/Quantification of Federal Spectrum Use, Spectrum Management via Databases, Federal Access to Non-Federal Bands and Spectrum Sharing Cost Recovery Alternatives.

The Enforcement Subcommittee will look at bands including 1695-1710 MHz and 3.5 GHz, said a preliminary report posted by NTIA (http://1.usa.gov/JnxV23). “Interference detection, identification, measurements and collaborative activities that result in interference resolution activities are not particularly enforcement functions,” the report said. “Enforcement functions are required when there is a probability of illegal spectrum activities that cannot be managed by those that control spectrum utilization, e.g., applicable Federal agencies and telecommunication carriers.” The report noted that there are differences between bands in terms of what constitutes harmful interference. The subcommittee said it also plans to examine the “Harm Claims Threshold” that has been a focus of the FCC Technological Advisory Council, the group formerly chaired by now-FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler.

Enforcement a Tough Issue

Enforcement will become increasingly difficult, said CSMAC member David Donovan, president of the New York State Broadcasters Association, who noted that there may be more illegal FM radio broadcasters in New York City than licensed broadcasters. “It is a business making a lot of money,” he said. To address the problem “is incredibly complex,” he said. “You find the transmitting antenna and now you got to go find the actual illegal operator and that’s not easily done.” The FCC has to work with the Department of Justice to get warrants and prosecute bad actors, said Donovan.

"There’s a lot stuff behind this that as a result overall lends itself to a lack of enforcement,” Donovan said. “It seems that the more we open up bands for sharing with federal systems and commercial systems ... the greater the probability that we may have bad actors, and the current enforcement scheme at the FCC was really designed to take care of folks who want to play by the rules."

"With enforcement, I think, still there remains a tough, gray area between the good guys and the flat-out bad actors,” said CSMAC member Janice Obuchowski, president of Freedom Technologies and former NTIA administrator. She cited Nextel, which put together a network in the 800 MHz band that led to a multi-year rebanding process. “They weren’t doing anything wrong, but they were maximizing out their utilization of those bands and, frankly, it was not in their own enlightened interest to back off,” she said. “Ultimately, they got a preferred result, better spectrum, by pushing matters to the limit."

Enforcement is based on well defined property rights, said CSMAC member Bryan Tramont of Wilkinson Barker. “Undergirding any conversation about 3.5 [GHz] or these other issues is clearly defined rules by the agencies so that there is something to enforce,” he said. “It’s fundamental to any effective enforcement regime."

CSMAC member Dale Hatfield, a former FCC and NTIA official, noted that detecting interference is also tough. Hatfield said a few days ago he rode along in an FCC enforcement van. “It’s really kind of state of the art ... but it’s not made for a dynamic spectrum [environment] where you have these complex digital signals and so forth,” he said. “We're going to need to have more sophisticated equipment."

The chairs of most of the other subcommittees said they were only getting started on their reports. Most cited “CSMAC fatigue” following work on the spectrum sharing reports.

Government Sharing

Obuchowski said the bi-directional sharing group has made progress, but the questions raised are difficult. The group is looking at the government sharing of commercial bands. “What happens it seems in every one of these working groups is that when you get down into it, you automatically kind of get into this taxonomy question,” she said. “The question of how to access commercial bands by federal users has a lot of possible answers.” One big question the group will address is whether federal agencies have to pay to share spectrum even if it was originally allocated to federal use, Obuchowski said. The reaction in some cases from the government is paying to share is “painful,” she said. “It was our band, we've turned it over and now we're expected to pay even if the other guy doesn’t have any rapid deployment, particularly in rural areas."

The subcommittee needs more information from NTIA “on time period, size of area, demographics, spectrum required, and nature of use,” said an interim report from the group (http://1.usa.gov/18FJxpR). “Bi-directional sharing is likely to increase in visibility as the commercial auctions are completed, the opportunities will require a comprehensive rule set based on best practices.”

NTIA Associate Administrator Karl Nebbia noted that DOD does much of its training in remote areas of the West of little interest to carriers. Nebbia asked whether it would make sense for the FCC not to auction the few remote areas of most interest to DOD. “DOD gets to continue to operate in those few [license areas] that are unlikely to produce any income and unlikely to see any deployment,” he said.