FCC Chief Engineer Warns Interference Problems Will Get Worse

they may be vulnerable to interference,” he said at the conference streamed from Boulder, Colorado. Device and network flexibility is important, Knapp said. Most cellphones contain more than a dozen radio transmitters, he said: “They’re capable of operating in different modes … making trade-offs for the signals not getting through.” Challenges will get harder, Knapp said. “The downside is if you’re looking at spectrum vulnerabilities, there are lots of bands to be concerned about,” he said. “We’ve got a lot more things out there that are relying on the airwaves.” Every device generates “some spurious noise and contributes to the soup,” he said. Managing spectrum isn’t easy, he said. “We’re always trying to put new things on airwaves and allow for innovation for the new applications that you see coming out every day,” Knapp said: “For the incumbents, what they care about is it’s not going to disrupt the services.” The question becomes what data do you collect on interference, Knapp said. “If you’ve got a phone and its throughput is reduced because of the noise level, how would you know?” he asked. “There’s immediately privacy concerns when you start collecting this kind of data.” It’s difficult for FCC engineers to gauge whether data is reliable and figure out how to interpret and analyze it, he said. “I know don’t if there are easy answers there,” he said. It’s important “to anticipate every way some 12-year-old who is up to no good has figured out a way to undo all your protections,” he said. We’re trying to replace wires with wireless, Knapp said. He said 5G will “greatly expand the use cases … coming for connectivity.” Enforcement actions help but are complex, Knapp said. “These aren’t like parking tickets,” he said. The Enforcement Bureau has to do the investigation, then “build a case” against violators, he said. The FCC is focused on jammers and goes after them, he said: “It’s tough because of all the different ways that people can find to get them out there.” Everybody "has a piece of this, everybody plays a role” on security, Knapp said: “There are so many different agencies that are involved in trying deal with the cyber issues and the kinds of things we’re talking about today.” Network operators, equipment designers, standards organizations and app developers all have responsibilities, he said: Don’t “think about this afterwards because then it becomes a big problem and very expensive to fix,” he said: Danger comes when people think that “'I’m following the security standard, what could possibly happen?'” Wireless devices pose a special problem, said Pierre de Vries, co-director of the Spectrum Policy Initiative at Silicon Flatirons. For wireless devices to work, “they have to be open to the world because if your radio can’t hear anything, it doesn’t operate,” he said: “They don’t have the refuge of hiding behind the wire or fiber.” The question is: “How do you secure something that everybody has access to,” de Vries said.