CBRS Rollout Will Test Efforts to Incentivize Federal/Commercial Sharing, NTIA Head Says

A big test of NTIA efforts to incentivize spectrum sharing between industry and federal agencies and the agencies maximizing their use of their spectrum assignments will come over the next few years with the rollout of the 3.5 GHz citizens broadband radio service band, said NTIA Administrator David Redl Wednesday at Satellite 2018. NTIA is looking at the 3450-3550 MHz band as a candidate for potential commercial use, Redl said (prepared remarks here). He said DOD plans to ask for money through the Spectrum Relocation Fund to study the band (see 1802260047). Redl said appropriations have been provided to study proposed reallocation of the 1300-1350 MHz band. Many think reallocation of the 1.3 GHz band is probably a top NTIA priority (see 1802230052).

NTIA and sister agency National Institute of Standards and Technology are working on a smart cities and connectivity deployment push, Global Cities Team Challenge, with NTIA having started conversations about satellite participation in the rural portion of that effort, Redl said. He said NTIA is preparing for June's meeting of the International Telecommunications Satellite Organization and for ITU's Plenipotentiary Conference this fall and next year’s World Radiocommunication Conference. He said a major item on the WRC-19 agenda is benchmarks for "bringing into use" filings for non-geostationary orbit satellite mega-constellations.

Trying to balance spectrum needs of federal agencies with growing commercial demands for spectrum, NTIA is crafting a variety of spectrum management techniques aimed at more sharing between commercial and federal users, Redl said. Those techniques include technical assistance being provided to NOAA as it looks to buy an interference monitoring system for its ground stations, he said.

NTIA can play a role in creating an environment for the U.S.' ongoing domination of the satellite services and satellite manufacturing marketplace, Redl said. The parent Commerce Department has made the commercial space industry a priority, with the agency moving the Office of Space Commerce to his direct oversight an example. Commerce backs streamlining related policy and regulations, he said.

Redl also repeated his support (see 1803080058) for American Doreen Bogdan-Martin, chief of ITU’s Strategic Planning and Membership Department, as director of the ITU Telecommunication Development Bureau. Chairman Ajit Pai also endorsed her at the satellite conference (see 1803130029).

DARPA has funded a consortium, Converge, that will start work within a couple months creating standards for on-orbit satellite servicing, said Secure World Foundation technical adviser Brian Weeden. NOAA oversees the imaging portion of on-orbit servicing, but the actual servicing activities aren’t overseen by anyone, he said. The National Space Council recommendation that various space activities fall under Commerce (see 1802210019) except for launch- and re-entry and spectrum-related issues would change that, though it's “kind of unknown" what that looks like, said Tahara Dawkins, NOAA director-Commercial Remote Sensing Regulatory Affairs Office. She said any such formerly unregulated areas would face “light-touch” regulation. She said the five commercial approvals NOAA granted to allow on-orbit servicing all came after the agency in 2016 crafted policies allowing the imaging that previously had been prohibited. She said Commerce is working on the permission process to try to improve it.

Aerospace Corp. Director-Commercial Programs Lisa Kuo said servicing missions such as fueling operations are a partial step toward a more eventual goal of on-orbit manufacturing and integration, and regulatory and policy talks need to take that into account. Weeden said that eventuality raises interesting challenges about what the licensing state is for a satellite created in orbit by various components.

Faced with statistics showing plummeting commercial geostationary orbit (GSO) satellite construction, satellite manufacturing executives largely disputed whether that's a valid measure of industry health and said net throughput bandwidth isn't down at all. The industry is "clearly at an inflection point," but satellites being turned out have much longer design lives than historically, and high-throughput satellite satellites have the capacity of multiple satellites, said Lockheed Martin Space Systems Executive Vice President-Space Systems Richard Ambrose. He said rapidly evolving satellite technology inherently means sales will be "more erratic." SSL Group President Dario Zamarian said space-based communications architecture is less GSO-focused, as operators increasingly intertwine GSO with low earth orbit satellites. He said unlike during the downturn of the early 2000s, driven by the dot-com bubble and broader business disruptions in the telco space, the telco industry this time is far healthier because of insatiable broadband demand. So Zamarian said the current downturn thus mightn't be as deep or long.

U.S. dominance in space is "increasingly fragile," with China and Russia "nipping at our heels," said House Appropriations Committee member Dutch Ruppersberger, D-Md. He said the Trump administration's reconstituting the National Space Council (see 1710050042) and its proposed budgetary increase for national security space "is a start." He also said the government needs to support and invest in emerging space areas such as alternative launchers and smallsat capabilities.