Both Federal and private sector spectrum leaders emphasized today the criticality of spectrum policy, keying on the government’s need to prioritize the technology as a national security issue.
Brendan Carr, a member of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) since 2017, warned that the United States is falling further behind adversaries, like China, and if the government fails to act now, the gap will continue to widen as other countries outpace the United States in 5G and beyond.
“America’s leadership in wireless is part and parcel of our geopolitical leadership. When we are freeing up spectrum, it puts a wind at the back of America in terms of where investment goes,” Carr said during a CSIS webinar today. “We are really starting to fall behind other countries.”
“Right now, we’re about on average, somewhere nearer to 300 megahertz or more behind other countries when it comes to the availability of licensed, mid-band spectrum. With China in particular, it’s almost 700 megahertz, by some studies, that we are behind,” Carr said.
The Biden administration released its National Spectrum Strategy last month, pledging to “guide decisions about how to allocate limited spectrum resources and ensure these decisions are made through a rigorous, transparent process, which is more important today than ever, as new technologies create increasing demands for spectrum.”
One key of the new strategy is to adjust existing spectrum allocations by studying over a two-year period the possible repurposing of 2,786 megahertz of spectrum and creating “guiding principles for near-term” spectrum allocations by soliciting stakeholder input and employing data-based analytics.
Carr noted that President Biden’s pledge to only study the possible repurposing of more than 2,000 megahertz of spectrum is where the strategy “fell quite short.”
“It doesn’t free up and it doesn’t commit to freeing up even a single megahertz of spectrum even though we are so far behind at this moment,” he said. “During the Trump years at the FCC … we freed up something like 6,000 megahertz of licensed spectrum in addition to thousands of megahertz of unlicensed spectrum.”
“Six thousand actually freed up compared to just studying a fraction of that at 2,800,” he added, “so, we are behind, and we need to catch up.”
Keith Krach, the former under secretary of state for economic growth, energy, and the environment from 2019 to 2021, said that leadership today needs to treat spectrum policy as they have treated semiconductors.
“If you look at semiconductors as foundational strategy, for example, for 5G and 6G, look at spectrum as the fundamental foundation for deploying those technologies,” Krach said. “We’ve got to put the same type of emphasis and urgency – because in high tech the ultimate weapon is speed – behind spectrum allocation, spectrum alignment that we are doing in the chips area, and we can certainly do that.”
Both Sen. Todd Young, R-Ind., and Rep. Bob Latta, R-Ohio, called on their congressional colleagues to pass legislation that will bolster the nation’s spectrum, and ultimately global security.
“We all know that spectrum is not only a valuable resource, but unfortunately it’s also a finite resource,” Sen. Young said during the CSIS webinar. “Spectrum is the valuable lifeblood that has enabled and will continue to enable massive technological advances that change our lives for the better.”
He added, “Congress must reauthorize the FCC’s spectrum auction authority and send the commission on a congressionally directed spectrum pipeline.”
In addition to the FCC’s spectrum auction authority to bolster the nation’s spectrum management, Rep. Latta called for the reauthorization of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration today.
The CSIS webinar today highlighted key findings from a series of CSIS reports on spectrum modernization to ensure national security and mitigate cyberattack scenarios on critical infrastructure.
James Lewis, a senior vice president at CSIS and co-author of the recent reports, noted that Congressional action should also include modernizing the Defense Department and being more transparent about where spectrum is actually used.
Ultimately, the panelists agreed that the United States’ spectrum modernization will come down to optimization and leadership.
“I really believe it boils down to [leadership],” Krach said. “A key thing is to get our agencies, our military, our private sector, and our allies all working together because that’s the only way that we’re going to preserve our freedom and our democracy.”
