CSMAC Subcommittee Looking at Combining FCC and NTIA

The Commerce Spectrum Management Advisory Committee’s Spectrum Strategy Governance Subcommittee plans to release this summer a report on potential major changes to federal oversight of spectrum (see 2001270046), members said Wednesday. One focus remains combining the FCC and NTIA. The meeting was delayed 30-plus minutes as members struggled to get online during the group’s first meeting in the COVID-19 era.

The first phase of the study looked at options, including creating a new super spectrum agency, said subcommittee co-Chair Mary Brown, Cisco senior director-technology and spectrum policy. “We still have not figured out … whether this is an independent agency in the vein of the FCC” or a separate agency like the EPA, she said. “It’s not a small problem” to stand up a new agency, she said.

The option “folds the entire NTIA and FCC into a new Unity Agency,” said an update: “This would include both spectrum and non-spectrum functions. To borrow an analogy from private sector merger and acquisition parlance, functions within the NTIA and FCC would become subsidiaries of the Unity Agency and would be characterized as ‘offices’ of that new Agency.”

The subcommittee is also examining giving NTIA or the FCC broader authority, creating a new spectrum resource agency, and less sweeping options. The goal of the final report will be to highlight benefits but “not to hide some of the negatives,” Brown said. “We’re not trying to analyze the non-spectrum issues that would come up,” she said: “There’s no perfect answer to reform.”

The subpanel is looking at additional options not in the original proposal unveiled at the January CSMAC meeting (see 2001280060), said subcommittee co-Chair Jennifer Manner, EchoStar senior vice president-regulatory affairs. One gap is almost no research on revising U.S. spectrum management, she said.

Finding spectrum that industry can use for 5G is “a high priority goal of this administration, as well as Congress,” said Charles Cooper, associate administrator of the NTIA Office of Spectrum Management. NTIA is hopeful the citizens broadband radio service auction will start July 27 as planned, he said. Reimbursing DOD for its costs in sharing the spectrum is important to “ensuring critical military radars” are protected, he said. Cooper highlighted the FCC’s work on a C-band auction and unlicensed use of the 6 GHz band, set for commissioners' vote Thursday.

NTIA is still looking at 5G in the full 3.1-3.55 GHz band (see 2001080035), Cooper said. The initial focus has been on the upper portion (see 2003240031). Frequencies below 3.45-3.55 “while not off the table present far more challenges that would need to be overcome,” he said.

“Most of our employees are teleworking, but we have maintained a full continuity of operations across our offices,” said acting Assistant Secretary Doug Kinkoph. “We have been working with the businesses, federal stakeholders and the FCC to make sure our response to connectivity needs remains flexible.” Networks are all facing increased demand because of the pandemic, he said: Federal agencies can help “by enabling additional sharing of spectrum to provide short-term capacity for commercial services.” NTIA has been working with the FCC on various requests for temporary sharing grants, he said.

CSMAC also got updates from its other subcommittees (see here, here and here).

The Unmanned Aircraft Spectrum Subcommittee is finding there can’t be a single approach to spectrum since the many types of drones pose different problems and have various communications needs, said co-Chair Andrew Roy, Aviation Spectrum Resources director-engineering services.

Both control and non-payload communications and command and control spectrum are “critical for safety and enabling safe integration of UAS into the national air space,” said co-Chair Carolyn Kahn, Mitre principal economics and business analyst. NTIA and the FCC “need to be informed of the various spectrum requirements,” she said. “This does require coordination.” The U.S. also needs “access granting mechanisms and service rules,” she said. The report is due in March.