NTIA Nearing Next Steps on Spectrum Strategy Implementation Plan

NTIA is expecting detailed comments from federal agencies this week about the proposed implementation plan for the national spectrum strategy (see 2311130048), Scott Harris, NTIA senior spectrum adviser, said during an FCBA webinar Wednesday. NTIA has shared with the agencies its initial thoughts, he said. Next, it will prepare “a full draft” implementation plan, which it will also share, and “kick off” interagency meetings seeking “government-wide” consensus, Harris added.

Released with the strategy in November, the plan hasn’t received the attention it deserves, Harris said. “It provides, I’m pretty sure for the first time, a formal structure for the administration-wide development of spectrum policy and a mechanism for resolving disagreements,” he said. The plan's release date is March 14 as expected, he said. Missing a presidential deadline “is not an option.”

The strategy's spectrum pipeline focuses on bands “where we thought we had a reasonable chance of success in finding spectrum for repurposing,” Harris said. The strategy avoids bands the FCC is already working on, “unless we thought additional work by NTIA and the executive branch could have a material impact on the commission’s progress,” he said.

NTIA was pleased with the public response to the strategy, which brought in some 130 comments “which were deeply substantive,” he said. In addition, NTIA conducted private listening sessions with the FCC and other federal agencies, he said. NTIA was also pleased with the 75 comments on the implementation plan, he said. The strategy identifies the 3.1-3.45, 5.03-5.091, 7.125-8.4, 18.1-18.6 and 37.0-37.6 GHz bands for further study over two years.

The national spectrum strategy comes “at an important crossroads in U.S. spectrum policy,” said Joel Taubenblatt, chief of the FCC Wireless Bureau. Demand for spectrum on the federal and nonfederal side “is extremely high” and “national security and economic security are heavily reliant on spectrum-based services and technologies,” he said.

The strategy recognizes that there is a “wide range of wireless technologies” that exist and will emerge and “it really puts a premium on exploring different dynamic sharing mechanisms … to really see what’s out there in terms of the technology and prove the viability of that,” Taubenblatt said. The FCC will partner with NTIA in exploring dynamic sharing, he said. Moreover, the FCC will “stay actively engaged” in the studies the strategy proposes for five bands, he said.

The wireless industry is focused on the lower 3 GHz and 7/8 GHz bands, Taubenblatt acknowledged. “There are quite a lot of important and extensive federal operations in those bands and a wide variety of options may need to be considered,” he said. Taubenblatt added the FCC has plans for “some initial near-term steps” on 5.03-5.091 GHz, a focus of the FCC for drone communications (see 2303100028).

NTIA and the FCC “coordinate and collaborate closely,” said Derek Khlopin, NTIA deputy associate administrator-spectrum planning & policy. Spectrum actions by either agency often affect the other, “particularly as we look at more spectrum uses being crowded together,” he said.

The webinar also included an industry discussion of spectrum testbeds.

Using testbeds for spectrum decisionmaking is growing and changing, said Umair Javed, CTIA senior vice president-spectrum. One reason is a “continuing lack of trust in the processes for spectrum policy” in the U.S., said Javed, also a former aide to FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel. “Time will tell if the national spectrum strategy can help overcome that,” he said.

Like most things, testbeds “can be good or bad depending on the details,” Javed said. They can help resolve interference disputes in a way that’s collaborative and nonpolitical, he said. CTIA was part of an 18-month study that investigated interference to radio altimeters by C-band deployments, and the group established a testbed, he said. That work “ultimately led to the nationwide launch of 5G service in the C-band in a matter of weeks,” he said.

Other testbeds have “entrenched disagreements rather than solve them,” Javed said. In the lower 3 GHz band “there’s still not real consensus about where to go from here” after two years of study, he said. Testbeds aren’t “a substitute for rebuilding trust and well-functioning spectrum policy processes,” he added.

Monisha Ghosh, engineering professor at University of Notre Dame and former FCC chief technologist, said the school is part of a National Science Foundation project to improve spectrum research. “We haven’t as yet gotten to the point of building testbeds,” she said. An important part of a testbed is understanding how spectrum is used, she said. “We have invested quite a bit of time and effort in building up a spectrum sensing platform that can be used to understand spectrum usage,” she said.

Her experience with testbeds is “mixed,” Ghosh said. They’re most successful “when they’re very realistic,” she said. Creating a testbed in a lab or just one environment “is usually not very productive in telling you how two systems are going to coexist,” she said. The FCC approved unlicensed use of the 6 GHz band without a testbed, but researchers at the University of Michigan have since set up tests using 16,000 access points, she said. Ghosh said her students took measurements and studied the interference potential. “We have come away from that with a much better probabilistic understanding of interference,” she said.