NTIA Nearing the 'Finish Line" on Release of National Spectrum Strategy

NTIA is “near the finish line” on release of a national spectrum strategy (see 2301090035), Scott Harris, NTIA senior spectrum adviser, told the Commerce Spectrum Management Advisory Committee Thursday. Harris said the agency doesn’t view the strategy as an end point.

“We are already working on an implementation plan, which we intend to release a few months after the release” of the strategy, Harris said: “The strategy is designed to explain what needs to be done. The implementation plan is going to give some of the specifics on how we intend to do it.”

“We are absolutely committed to releasing the strategy no later than year-end,” Harris said. “We hope and we expect that it will provide a framework for solving spectrum management problems and answering some of the really important questions in the months … and years ahead,” he said: “It’s critical that we get this done. It’s critical that we get it right.”

NTIA is working to finalize the text and “get all the appropriate clearances,” Harris said. He thanked the federal agencies that helped prepare the strategy. Harris noted it will identify bands that can be studied near term for potential reallocation, look at how to improve the spectrum policy process, how to leverage technology for better access, and how to accelerate workforce development.

A draft report by CSMAC’s 6G Subcommittee, presented Thursday, supported some of the points made by Harris. “NTIA should engage early with federal incumbents with assignments in bands of particular interest for 6G, including mid-bands and above 95 GHz, to understand the type and degree of use and ability to share,” the report said. NTIA should work with the FCC “to leverage more data-driven, automated, and dynamic methods into its plans, such as the incumbent informing capability vision and use of schedulers,” the report said.

The report said NTIA should work with the FCC, federal agencies, the White House and Congress “to consider acquisition reform and incentives for federal agencies and commercial industry to use spectrum as efficiently and effectively as possible to increase spectrum sharing and/or facilitate relocation, as appropriate.” It backed a collective effort “to proactively help prepare for the impact of 6G to government users.” It recommended NTIA work with federal agencies to update the spectrum compendium more frequently, “adding additional, more detailed and granular data, e.g., location and time of use, describing federal spectrum uses and extending its compendium above 7.125 GHz to at least the THz range.”

CSMAC member Karl Nebbia, senior spectrum regulatory adviser at Huntington Ingalls Industries, said federal government procurement processes don’t lend themselves to “starting up a think process for how you can use a technology that’s not available yet.” There are “real challenges there because you’ve got to get a funded program.”

The missions of federal agencies are “very different,” said Jennifer Warren, Lockheed Martin vice president-civil and regulatory affairs. No report can identify “one or two use cases and that’s going to be the killer use case for the federal government,” she said. CSMAC made recommendations on acquisition revisions in the past and those findings proved “unusable,” she said. “We should look back at some of what we tried and why it didn’t work,” she said: “Acquisition reform is a much bigger matter than spectrum governance issues.”

“The CBRS band provides a unique opportunity to allow various commercial entities to coexist within a hybrid licensing mechanism, permitting use cases across various users including fixed, mobile, wireless operators, equipment vendors and enterprises,” said an update from Citizens Broadband Radio Service Subcommittee: The subcommittee found agreement “that the hybrid CBRS framework promoted sharing and that the lessons learned have been valuable to help fine tune this approach for future use.”

CSMAC co-Chair Charla Rath said CSMAC plans its final meeting of its current cycle, Dec. 19, to finalize reports. CSMAC members asked and were warned they can't continue to work if the federal government is shut down, a possibility if Congress doesn’t approve a continuing resolution on funding the government by a Sept. 30 deadline.