White House Official Urges 'Trustworthy, Predictable Process' for Making Spectrum Decisions

A White House official called for more predictability in how spectrum decisions are made, at a Silicon Flatirons spectrum conference Friday. Austin Bonner, White House Office of Science and Technology Policy assistant director-spectrum and telecom policy, said she has had meetings with “dozens” of spectrum stakeholders about how policy could change. The administration is moving toward release of a national spectrum strategy, which the Trump administration promised but never delivered (see 2209190061).

“We need to institutionalize a trustworthy, predictable process for managing change in spectrum allocations and for resolving spectrum disputes,” Bonner said. It should be no surprise to those at the conference that those she met with “saw some gaps between the way things are supposed to work on paper and the way that they actually worked in their lives,” she said.

Under the Biden administration, FCC and NTIA already improved how they work together, Bonner said. She cited the recently updated memorandum of understanding between the two agencies (see 2208020076). “Operationalizing” cooperation “is both important and not going to happen by accident,” she said.

“All stakeholders need to operate with a high degree of transparency so that all the arguments are on the table when decisions are made,” Bonner said. The administration also recognizes the importance of strengthening laboratories and research on spectrum, she said. “It really is incredible what a difference the research makes,” she said. In the citizens broadband radio service band, research and testing allowed the shrinking of exclusion zones by 77% over the original map, she said. Millions of people who were originally excluded can now benefit from CBRS, she said. “A basic set of shared facts is a prerequisite to working together well,” she said. The Biden administration stressed from its start that decisions should be based on the science, she said.

Leadership “that can cut through institutional conflict” is also important on spectrum, Bonner said. “I don’t think our recent interference disputes felt intractable because we’ve all just become more churlish and difficult to deal with as people,” she said: “It’s kind of easy though to dig in on one cost, or one benefit, when the solution we’re reaching for requires balancing amongst many competitive considerations.” Vetting spectrum proposals early is important, she said: “Waiting to get involved isn’t a good strategy -- I think that’s an important lesson from lots of our recent conflicts.”

No Easy Fixes

On panels that followed, experts agreed there are no easy fixes to preventing the kinds of spectrum fights seen in bands like the C-band, where the airline industry raised alarms after spectrum was already auctioned.

Ideally, decisions would be made based on technology, “but if we’re honest about it, we really need a regulatory framework in place,” said Derek Khlopin, NTIA deputy associate administrator-spectrum planning and policy. “We’re not going to get rid of these challenges, it’s how are we going to address them,” he said.

The biggest challenges include predicting interference and separating interference from harmful interference, Khlopin said. “In a perfect world we have a regulatory framework that allows us to address these issues as quickly as possible, which means bringing the technical side into it,” he said.

Economic considerations drive technology, said Albin Gasiewski, University of Colorado Boulder professor-electrical and computer engineering. “If you don’t have economic forces in place you don’t have … the stable of engineers that are needed in companies to make new advancements,” he said.

“Getting out in front, and having the technical work done before anything is even developed, is critically important,” said Jennifer Manner, EchoStar senior vice president-regulatory affairs. “We want to get new technology out, we want connectivity,” but regulatory decisions shouldn’t be made before engineering work, she said. Too many technical studies are done to defend decisions that have already been made, she said. “There are studies that are shaped around the results we want,” she said.

Just releasing a national spectrum strategy won’t address all the problems policymakers face, Manner said. “What would that look like?” she asked: “I can do a one-paragraph national spectrum strategy, or I can do a 4,000 page” strategy.

Harmful Interference

Panelists agreed decisions on what constitutes harmful interference are always use-case specific.

Jordan Gerth, chair of the American Meteorological Society Committee on Radio Frequency Allocations, noted the difficulties of assessing what constitutes harmful interference, especially for the passive services. “Some members of our community feel that all interference is harmful, because there is no way for many of our instruments … to determine what is coming from a terrestrial source and what is being produced by the atmosphere,” Gerth said. Meteorologists take measures across numerous bands, he said: “The best weather forecast possible requires the best, highest quality observations.”

“Basically, it’s what impairs the effectiveness of the equipment to deliver on the mission to which it contributes,” said Lockheed Martin ‎Vice President-Civil and Regulatory Affairs Jennifer Warren. “It’s very different from a radar to a satellite earth station to a certain type of sensor,” she said: “They all have different sensitivities.”

One thing the U.K.’s Ofcom does well is bring everyone into the process in the early stages of a proceeding, Warren said. “You have everyone at the table talking,” she said: “That’s a convening function, which with the way we’re structured” in the U.S. “doesn’t work, or hasn’t yet worked. It works when there’s a crisis, but not as the norm.”

"We no longer have final answers in spectrum policy,” suggested David Redl, CEO of Salt Point Strategies and former NTIA administrator. “The court of public opinion seems to now be the final arbiter of whether or not a spectrum decision has been made in the public interest,” he said: “Is it time for us to revisit whether or not a final decision is a final decision?”