NTIA Spectrum Strategy Faces Rift Over Sharing vs. Exclusivity

As NTIA tries to craft a national spectrum strategy, advocates are far apart on whether exclusive licenses for spectrum or reuse and sharing should be the primary focus, per comments submitted this week (docket 2023-0003). It continued to get pushes for repurposing bands including 3.1-3.45 GHz (see 2304170009).

NTIA should set up auctions in the near term for the lower 3 GHz band, the mid 4 GHz band, and the 7/8 GHz band, CTIA said. The default should be toward exclusive-use licenses, though sharing among new and incumbent users including DOD might be necessary, it said. Dynamic sharing "remains an experiment and the U.S. cannot base the future of commercial spectrum on a yet-to-be proven strategy," it said. Noting China's support of using the 3.3-3.4 GHz, 3.6-3.8 GHz, 4.8-4.99 GHz, upper 6 GHz and 10 GHz bands for 5G while the U.S. opposes mobile service in upper 6 GHz, CTIA said the U.S. is running the risk of ceding leadership to China in spectrum policy and technology standards development.

Unlicensed spectrum and spectrum sharing have their place in certain use cases, but services using exclusive-use spectrum "are the foundation of America’s robust wireless ecosystem, and more of this spectrum is needed to meet insatiable consumer demand," Competitive Carriers Association said. Any spectrum pipeline should prioritize mid-band, it said. Calling the 3.1-3.45 GHz band "an ideal candidate for the pipeline," CCA said the spectrum strategy also should prioritize the 3.98-4.2 GHz band and the 7.125-8.5 GHz bands. It said low-band spectrum in the 450 MHz range "presents a potentially valuable deployment opportunity."

A central goal of the strategy should be ensuring U.S. leadership in mobile broadband network development, and doing that requires "network grade" spectrum that ideally is exclusively licensed and comes with flexible use rights, AT&T said. Sharing with a federal incumbent is doable as long as that spectrum is exclusive outside of federal users and has good propagation and large contiguous channels, it said. It said there should be a four- to five-year goal of reallocating and auctioning at least 150 MHz in the 3.1-3.45 GHz range, at least 200 MHz in the 4.4-4.94 GHz range, at least 600 MHz in the 7125-8500 MHz range in the next five to seven years and at least 600 MHz in the 12.7 GHz-13.25 GHz range in the next seven to nine years. It said DOD should rely more heavily on commercially available communications services and it should be incentivized to develop enhanced radar and electronic warfare systems capable of operating in the presence of full power, co-channel 5G operators. Citing growing demand for spectrum from satellite providers, it said auctions "would put satellite licenses in the hands of those most likely to use them to benefit the public."

Verizon also urged delineating the lower 3 GHz, 7/8 GHz and 4 GHz bands for commercial use. It said clearing spectrum should be the strategy's "primary focus." In the absence of exclusivity, it said, static sharing models clearly make spectrum available for commercial use while protecting federal incumbents, and dynamic or opportunistic sharing models "remain unproven" at large scale.

A focus on identifying licensed-exclusive bands over other approaches "would not reflect the reality of today’s wireless ecosystem," NCTA said. Finding greenfield spectrum "is nearly impossible now," it said, saying there must be more effort on sharing technologies. "The clear-and- auction approach is not sustainable as the default method of introducing new licensed operations," and shared-license and unlicensed bands should be part of the pipeline, the cable industry said. The 3.1 GHz band "is especially well suited to replicate the success" of the citizens broadband radio service (CBRS) band via a sharing framework, it said.

A policy focus should be maximization of spectrum access by promoting spectrum sharing and investing in spectrum reuse tech, said a coalition including Public Knowledge, New America's Open Technology Institute, American Libraries Association and Next Century Cities. They also urged use of interference metrics that reflect actual interference. The citizens broadband radio service three-tiered sharing framework "should be embraced as a model" that gives local access to an occupied band while protecting incumbents like DOD, they said. NTIA should "explicitly recognize" that approach as "one of the government’s most successful spectrum policy innovations," they said. The agency also should endorse opportunistic access in underutilized bands as the default approach. And NTIA and the FCC should partner to allow bidirectional sharing, authorizing federal users to have secondary and opportunistic access to all licensed commercial bands on a non-interference basis.

The Wireless ISP Association urged several policy priorities, including an audit of actual spectrum use by federal and nonfederal users and emphasis on sharing via electronic spectrum coordination methods. It said the FCC should make the 10-10.5 GHz band available for coordinated, point-to-point use on a shared basis with federal and amateur users. The commission, NTIA and DOT coordinate to finalize rules allowing unlicensed outdoor access to the 5850-5895 MHz band, WISPA said, saying NTIA and FCC should partner on developing a coordinated sharing approach for the 37-37.6 GHz band. It said the FCC’s secondary market leasing, partitioning and disaggregation rules "continue to be cumbersome and conservative," and NTIA should look for ways to increase rural spectrum use via “use it or lose it” or “use it or share it” approaches to discourage spectrum warehousing.

NTIA's focus should be "pricing, if not privatizing, federal spectrum," said Roslyn Layton, Aalborg University fellow. Phasing out existing government allocations and then auctioning them off could net the Treasury trillions of dollars and there would be "no further profligate giveaways of unlicensed spectrum," she said. Such privatization would make pipelines and planning moot, she said. DOD sits on huge swaths of underused and unused spectrum when it needs only modest amounts for training and essential tracking, satellite and surveillance, she said.