NTIA Will Be Responsive to Industry Calls for Action on 5G, Redl Says

NTIA will be responsive to industry calls for government action to promote 5G deployment, Administrator David Redl said in a speech at a Commerce Department export conference. The U.S. wireless industry “is already making significant investments in preparation,” and is looking for government action, Redl said: “We need to heed their call.” Redl noted he has been passionate about spectrum policy. “Advances in technology are enabling innovations that we couldn’t even imagine just 10 years ago,” he said in the Monday speech. “Yet there’s still so much we don’t know about how spectrum is actually used.” The 3.5 GHz citizens broadband radio service band is likely to be a key component of 5G and NTIA’s Institute for Telecommunication Sciences in Boulder, Colorado, is “working hard with our Office of Spectrum Management to put forward an exciting sharing model” in the band, he said. “To ensure America’s 5G leadership, the entire government must work in a coordinated fashion to support the industry’s 5G push,” Redl said. “From our perspective at NTIA, this support will take four forms: making spectrum available, removing obstacles to deploying infrastructure, ensuring we have a collective strategy to secure 5G networks, and collaborating on the global standards.”