Delay in FCC Auction Authority Renewal Shows Lawmakers Asking Different Questions

The approach to spectrum allocation on the Hill and in industry is maturing, which may explain in part the problems Congress is having as it considers renewing the FCC’s auction authority, experts said during a Technology Policy Institute webinar Wednesday. That authority largely lapsed in March (see 2312200061),

“We’re having to look beyond” a “'we’ve always done this'” approach to spectrum, said former NTIA Administrator David Redl, president of Salt Point Strategies. That’s part of what’s happening in Congress now, he said: “They recognize we can’t just do what we’ve always done.” There are other use cases and spectrum users who don’t benefit from auctions “that are critical as we look at a more holistic approach going forward,” he said.

The FCC’s current lack of spectrum auction authority doesn’t mean it can’t act on spectrum, said Jennifer Warren, Lockheed Martin vice president-regulatory affairs and public policy. “There are many commercial uses … that can be granted access to spectrum without going through an auction,” she said: Auctions are “limited to a very narrow pool of the wireless industry.”

The national spectrum strategy redefines the “spectrum pipeline,” which formerly was considered as focusing primarily on spectrum for full-power licensed use, Warren said. The new pipeline recognizes “how much spectrum is at the core of so many industries, and national security, [and] other federal government uses, and the pipeline needs to feed all of that spectrum demand,” she said.

The strategy focuses on studies about how to use spectrum, said Gus Hurwitz, senior fellow at the University of Pennsylvania Center for Technology, Innovation and Competition. Meanwhile, Congress is having “a deeper discussion” on “what is the underlying mechanism for allocating this scarce resource and coordinating its use,” he said.

Fifteen years ago, the focus was on spectrum as a property right, Hurwitz said. “That conversation is dead -- we are in a very different place in how we’re thinking about the allocation mechanism for spectrum,” he said. The old government band plan maps still hanging in many offices is “the way of the past, it’s not the way of the future,” he said. “Spectrum is spectrum” and its use has to be flexible, he said.

Redl said he’s not suggesting that the congressional approach to spectrum legislation is changing, “I’m straight out saying it.” There are “a lot more tools in the toolkit now,” than in 2012 when Congress approved the Spectrum Act, he said.

Sharing has been part of auction and spectrum pipeline legislation for more than a decade, said Shawn Bone, Verizon director-public policy. “We are thinking about new mechanisms for coexistence” that still allow for exclusive-use licensed spectrum, which may require dynamic sharing, he said. Congress seems to be “stepping away from specific band allocations” and saying “we need goals set for the country,” Bone said.

“We need to get away” from looking at one sector’s use of a band “versus” another’s, Warren said. From the aerospace and defense industry's viewpoint, “we want to leverage commercial technology, not always commercial services, but commercial technology” for services that “we’re offering our customers,” she said.

For 30 years, the FCC auctioned spectrum “with little harm” to other users, from national security to weather observation, Warren said. “We’re in a very different environment now” because services must coexist, she said. “Global competition is not limited to wireless,” she added, and the only empty bands are those at very high frequencies. Whether carriers like it or not, “there are going to be fewer pockets of exclusive-use spectrum.”

Carriers are using shared spectrum in the citizens broadband radio service band, and offering fixed wireless, “a completely different market segment” from the one they always served, Redl said. The market is “telling us” carriers don’t need more spectrum for national macro networks, but for local and regional coverage, “either network densification or alternative technologies,” he said.

The market is telling us we need “more unlicensed, more CBRS, more sharing” with less focus on spending billions of dollars clearing bands to move federal systems, Redl continued.

Bone took issue with that point. People should remember how bad wireless coverage was 30 years ago, he said. Consumer expectations have evolved largely thanks to spectrum auctions, he said. Some are finding that their mobile hot spots are now more reliable than public Wi-Fi networks, he said. “Our connectivity models have evolved” and “everybody’s expectations of connectivity have evolved,” he said. There are physical limitations to what spectrum can do, he said. “We can’t always say technology is going to solve everything,” he added.

The historical approach to spectrum policy “was antagonistic or … at least not collaborative,” Hurwitz said. Today, there’s “a much more sophisticated understanding, with much more engagement and willingness to work together” between industry and federal agencies, he said.