National Spectrum Strategy RFC Intentionally Left 'Open Ended,' NTIA Official Says

NTIA faces questions about its request for comments released last week about a national spectrum strategy, which experts said appears to show work on the strategy at an earlier stage than expected. Several groups issued comments thanking the administration for moving forward, but former FCC Commissioner Mike O’Rielly said the RFC was more like an FCC notice of inquiry than an NPRM (see 2303150066). O’Rielly said the document released offered less direction than expected, based on earlier comments by Scott Harris, tapped to lead work on the strategy.

The questions, by design, are “somewhat open-ended,” Harris said at an Information Technology and Innovation Foundation event Monday (see 2303200043). “We do not identify specific bands for comment, we do not suggest the proper licensing framework for specific bands or even for specific situations,” he said. In general, the RFC doesn’t cite specific technologies for sharing, he said.

The lack of specificity wasn’t an “accident, nor does it suggest we don’t have our own ideas on these subjects,” Harris said: “We made a conscious decision that we did not want to channel the discussion into one path or another, based on our preconceived notions. We didn't want to put … our thumb on the scale, encouraging or discouraging particular approaches.” The goal is to identify at least 1,500 MHz of spectrum for repurposing, he said.

The RFC at least gets the process started, Joe Kane, ITIF director-broadband and spectrum policy, told us. It's important to watch how much White House support the process gets, Kane said: “The same process flaws in interagency spectrum policy that occasion the need for a national spectrum strategy could also threaten the development of that strategy if the White House isn't backing up NTIA.”

“Ideally, the NTIA would have some idea about what spectrum might be on the table, but it appears it does not,” said Phoenix Center Chief Economist George Ford. It’s “encouraging” NTIA is moving forward, but “the vague RFC foretells a long process without any clear guidance as to the landing,” he said.

The RFC lacks “clarity and even more importantly urgency,” said Recon Analytics’ Roger Entner, who does work for the carriers. He called the RFC a “pie in the sky, what do we want in 15 years” kind of inquiry. If wireless data consumption continues to grow at current rates, providers will run out of assigned spectrum in less than five years and that’s without consumers adopting “data heavy applications like augmented reality,” Entner said.

Like an FCC NOI

O'Reilly is right that the RFC is more like an NOI than an NPRM, but that's “exactly where we should be at this stage,” countered Public Knowledge Senior Vice President Harold Feld. The RFC asks a wide range of questions, and the NTIA is “going out of its way to seek input from a wide-range of stakeholders,” Feld said: “This is a far better approach than popping out something precooked and asking ‘So, what do you think?’”

The RFC is aimed at developing “an actual, long-term, real national spectrum policy, rather than simply try to find more spectrum to auction or try to decide between sharing or exclusive use,” Feld said. That's “a good thing, and requires collecting a wide range of data and questioning long-standing assumptions,” he said.

The RFC shows “the ball has moved very little, if at all, toward an actual strategy,” said Free State Foundation Director-Policy Studies Seth Cooper. More than halfway into the Biden Administration, “it would have been much more encouraging to see an RFC on a proposed outline or thumbnail sketch for a national spectrum strategy along with some defined principles for how to evaluate spectrum use and repurposing challenges and opportunities for different bands,” he said.

It’s “amazing” the U.S. has been a wireless leader “without a definable strategy,” emailed John Strand of Strand Consult, suggesting the FCC should have articulated a strategy decades ago. Industry has compensated for “federal incompetence time after time by paying beaucoup bucks for a scant amount of frequencies,” he said. The last administration tried to develop a strategy “but couldn’t get it out the door for lack of leadership with DOD and other sacred cows,” he said. Strand is “skeptical” the Biden administration will do better.

The differing approaches and mindsets between the FCC and the NTIA was on display last week as the NTIA launched a broad RFC and the FCC an NPRM on satellites and smartphones (see 2303160009), emailed Jim Dunstan, TechFreedom general counsel. “Here you have the FCC looking to radically reshape spectrum policy by breaking down a major stovepipe in spectrum approach,” he said: “Juxtapose that with the NTIA document that is superficial at best in terms of actually doing the hard work of spectrum allocation.” The “good news” is that NTIA may be “getting somewhat serious in addressing spectrum issues, something that has been legitimately questioned in the past,” but the RFC “looks like it was, or should have been, drafted over a decade ago,” Dunstan said.

Dunstan found the RFC’s opening paragraph especially “troubling.” That paragraph says, “Access to more spectrum, in short, will help the United States continue to lead the world in advanced technology and enhance our national and economic security." The sentence “may just be sloppy writing, but it appears to indicate that there's ‘more spectrum’ out there that can be utilized, when we well know that there is almost zero ‘greenfield’ spectrum remaining, meaning that ‘access to more spectrum’ by definition means reducing access to spectrum for some existing users, many of which get to play the trump card of ‘national security’ to shut down any discussion of reducing ‘their’ spectrum,” Dunstan said.

“At least a process is underway even if the ultimate destination is unclear,” emailed Cooley’s Robert McDowell. With no spectrum plan from the last administration, together with congressional failure to pass an FCC auction authority extension or a pipeline bill, “the public policy process for wireless has come to a counterproductive and abrupt stop,” he said: “These are unforced errors by policymakers that will not be rectified -- in the form of new spectrum being put into the hands of consumers -- for years. But this step by NTIA provides some hope, whether it’s perfect or not.”