Too Early to Tell Whether Uncertainty Driving Down 24 GHz Bids, NTIA Chief Says
NTIA Administrator David Redl said it’s too early to tell whether uncertainty over spectrum rights in the 24 GHz band could mean lower prices in the ongoing auction, as some suggest (see 1903220055). The FCC is similarly looking at selling spectrum licenses that would have to provide protections for DOD incumbents in the 37 GHz band. Gross proceeds were $1.59 billion Wednesday in the 24 GHz auction.
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“This is new territory for commercial terrestrial,” Redl told us after a Hudson Institute event Wednesday. “I can’t speak to" what bidders are thinking, he said: “I’m not inside the companies and don’t know their calculations.”
Redl said all assumptions need to change when it comes to high-band airwaves for 5G. “This is the modern spectrum environment,” he said. “We have to adapt to the fact that not only is the technology changing but the way we look at spectrum use is going to have adapt accordingly,” Redl said. “The assumptions we could make in mid- and low-bands based on propagation, based on reuse, just aren’t the same.”
Part of the administration’s spectrum plan requires all federal agencies submit planning documents, which include estimates of their spectrum needs 15 years in the future, due at NTIA April 23 (see 1903070061). The data is still coming in, and NTIA will look for trends and themes, Redl said. “We have to go where the data takes us,” he said: “It would be easy if I could just say we know what we want to do and then backfill the data to fit it. That’s not how we do work.”
Early indications are some of the agency projections will be conservative, designed to protect their interests rather than give up spectrum, said former and current government officials. “I don’t know that that’s the case,” Redl said. Given the “nature” of the work, if some agencies do a conservative approach, that wouldn’t be a surprise, he said. “They have important missions,” he said. “The last thing they want to do is imperil that mission.”
The planning process has led to lots of conversations within the federal government, Redl said: “This isn’t just give us your data and then we make a decision.”
It's still unclear the how much the dynamic sharing the FCC is requiring in the 3.5 GHz citizens broadband radio service band will be used in other bands, Redl said. “It’s hard to know,” he said. “We’re going to have to take spectrum bands a little bit as they come.” It's unclear whether it will even be the model for protecting military radars like the Navy radars the sharing regime protects. “We’re doing a lot of work on that,” he said. “Right now it’s working … in the lab, but we’re going to have to see it in the real world.”
Technical issues are different than policy issues, said Redl, conceding he’s a lawyer, not an engineer. “As you get up in the different bands, do you have to adjust the model because the propagation is different, because the control of each of the individual devices is different?” he asked. “I don’t know.”
A big part of NTIA’s job is coordinating the positions of other government agencies on spectrum. Redl said his time at the agency made him realize interagency coordination is more complicated than he could have imagined. Redl spent years at CTIA, then as a top House communications aide before being confirmed. “It’s always different to be at the table,” he said. “Everything about the process looks different when you’re part of it.”
During the event, Redl was interviewed by ex-FCC Commissioner Harold Furchtgott-Roth, now at Hudson. Redl stressed that spectrum questions will become more complex and difficult. “The spectrum environment is so much more congested that we’re having to make tougher decisions,” he said. “Our demands on systems are going to be more and more.” NTIA has to move with care, he said: “It’s hard to unwind a bad spectrum position.”
Redl indicated policy on protecting passive systems is evolving. Footnote US246 to the U.S. table of allocations, which lists bands where no transmissions are allowed to protect passive services, is also getting more attention at the FCC (see 1903130057).
Questions on spectrum above 95 GHz remain mostly “theoretical,” Redl said. “We don’t have to choose between passive systems and being first on 5G,” he said. “We can have our cake and eat it, too, but it’s going to take a lot of engineering work and, in the case of some of these bands that are particularly high, some theoretical physics.”