Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) pledged the panel “will move forward on spectrum” as the committee takes up the budget reconciliation bill. It’s been two years since lawmakers let the FCC’s spectrum auction authority lapse and three years since the agency held its last spectrum auction, he noted during a hearing yesterday.
Cruz said the Spectrum Pipeline Act, which Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD), Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), and Cruz introduced last year, “restores FCC auction authority and ends our spectrum drought. Through a clear pipeline of mid-band spectrum, American companies will have the certainty they need to invest billions in their networks and lead the world in revolutionary innovation.”
The measure has a “generous timeframe” for performing feasibility studies so federal missions are not degraded, he said. It uses what he calls a “deliberative process carried out by technical experts across the federal government, including DoD, to begin auctioning a fraction of underutilized federal spectrum.”
“Military analysts say the U.S. is falling behind” in terms of effective spectrum use, IP development and wireless capabilities, according to the lawmaker. “Further, the Pentagon is not the only user of the airwaves globally,” said Cruz. “Many of the bands used by DoD are used commercially in countries like Taiwan, Japan, and Korea. If DoD cannot operate alongside wireless carriers using these bands domestically, how can we expect it to prevail in a Pacific conflict?”
Ranking Member Maria Cantwell (D-WA) agreed vital interests must be protected from “increasing threats from China.” She explained, “Today, our warfare depends on spectrum used for communications. If we lose the spectrum war, we lose the war.”
Witnesses discussed how to get to a place where the FCC, NTIA and other federal agencies agree on what spectrum can be shared for 5G and military use using a dynamic administrator system much like the Citizens Broadband Radio Service band.
Matthew Pearl is the Director of the Strategic Technologies Program with the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Speaking personally, he said before lawmakers mandate that the FCC hold spectrum auctions, engineering analysis needs to be done so spectrum clearing targets can be included in the legislation. “You need engineers from different agencies who are going to share information and work together” to figure it out, he said. “You need the White House leadership to work with agency department heads so the engineers know to be cooperative.” When that doesn’t happen, he said “results are not optimal.”
Bryan Clark, senior fellow with the Hudson Institute, said once the needed bands are agreed upon and it’s theoretically clear what’s possible, testing needs to occur. That testing needs to happen in America first, before such a spectrum-sharing system is used overseas in combat, according to Clark.
He said realistically, it could take about 20 years to integrate such a system with all aspects of the military. Blackburn said that means a bridge or interim spectrum sharing system needs to be developed in the meantime.
By Leslie Stimson, Inside Towers Washington Bureau Chief
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