Incentive Auctions Remain Major FCC Priority, OET Chief Says

The FCC’s upcoming incentive auctions will continue to be one of the Office of Engineering and Technology’s top priorities during the agency’s leadership transition, said OET Chief Julius Knapp Wednesday during a National Spectrum Management Association (NSMA) conference. The FCC would work on the incentive auctions “no matter who the chairman is” because the auction preparatory process involves statutory requirements, he said. The FCC and OET will remain as dedicated as ever to making more spectrum available for use, and there is “every reason to expect” that will continue under new leadership, Knapp said. The Obama administration is also hoping to make additional spectrum available by freeing up a total of 500 MHz of federal spectrum by 2020.

Officials from the Defense Department and representatives of companies that work with Defense and NASA said at a separate panel during the NSMA conference that those agencies are working on plans to share their spectrum as part of that plan.

The FCC is having what Knapp called a “busy year” for spectrum management. The agency continues to develop its band plan for the incentive auctions, which as proposed would involve 5 MHz blocks for licensed use and 6 MHz guard bands for unlicensed use, Knapp said. The FCC is also continuing to work on its rulemakings on shared use of the 3.5 GHz band and allocating additional unlicensed spectrum on the 5 GHz band, he said. The agency also plans to continue its rollout of spectrum on the H Block and AWS 3 band, Knapp said. The FCC also recently launched rulemakings on allowing better broadband access on commercial flights on the 14.0-14.5 GHz band and to allocate non-federal spectrum on three bands to support commercial space launches, he said. The agency will also continue its work to improve spectrum efficiency and limit interference, Knapp said. The agency’s current work on interference includes its proceeding on Progeny’s proposed use of its E-911 locator service for commercial use on the 902-928 MHz band, which has sparked concerns about interference for unlicensed users of the spectrum.

The Defense Department is committed to the Obama administration’s plans to reallocate 500 MHz of federal spectrum, said Col. Brian Jordan, senior analyst-spectrum policy for the office of Defense’s Chief Information Officer. DOD has been working with NTIA and others to ensure those plans are implemented in a way that ensures there is no loss of critical federal capabilities since spectrum is critical to “our national security capabilities,” he said. Defense uses its spectrum for radar, navigation and unmanned vehicle operations, as well as traditional communication uses, Jordan said. Defense is looking to share its spectrum on five bands as a way of contributing to that reallocation effort; while agencies routinely share spectrum among themselves, the proposed sharing of spectrum with commercial entities is “on a grander scale” that will involve hurdles, he said. Defense is “dedicated to working to overcome those hurdles,” particularly by developing a spectrum strategy that’s aimed at increasing spectrum efficiency, Jordan said.

Sharing is one of the best ways to better utilize spectrum, particularly given the widespread conclusion that the auction model is not sustainable, said Stuart Timerman, director-defense spectrum organization at Defense’s Defense Information Systems Agency. DOD is working on its own spectrum strategy to be more efficient; Timerman said the FCC, NTIA and industry should band together to craft a national spectrum strategy. “We can’t continue to be carving out different areas of spectrum to look at,” he said. “We're almost playing Whac-a-Mole from the arcade games."

NASA uses its spectrum for command and control purposes, as well as to collect and transmit scientific data, said Joseph Valvano, program manager-spectrum management office at ASRC Federal, which provides information technology and engineering management services to NASA and other federal agencies. Only about 30 percent of NASA’s spectrum use is in space, while the rest is used during near-earth or on-earth missions, he said. NASA has been working hard to develop criteria that will allow it to share its spectrum wherever possible, said Vishnu Sahay, senior principal engineer at ASRC Research and Technical Solutions.