Better Satellite Tech Leading to Better Weather Forecasting, NTIA Says in Blog Post

Despite competing demands for spectrum for everything from wireless communications to weather data, NTIA is "confident we can continue to find the right balance to ensure the United States maintains its commercial wireless leadership, while enabling federal agencies to do important work on behalf of the American people," it said in a blog post Friday. Written by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Undersecretary for Oceans and Atmosphere Kathryn Sullivan and NTIA Administrator Lawrence Strickling, the post said that since Hurricane Katrina a decade ago, NOAA is "better positioned to deal with these types of disasters" due to better satellite technology and more investments in supercomputing, all allowing for improved forecasting. At the same time, with the Obama administration pushing both innovation in the wireless industry and maintaining that federal agencies must have the spectrum needed to perform their jobs, NTIA is working with those agencies and the industry "to identify, clear and relocate federal users from bands, where possible, for use by the commercial sector and by promoting spectrum sharing between nonfederal and federal users where that solution is the best option," Strickling and Sullivan said.