ITIF Offers Recommendations for Making Federal Spectrum Use More Efficient
The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation recommended market mechanisms to promote more efficient use of federal spectrum. “There are good reasons for the federal government to have access to spectrum,” ITIF said in a report released Monday: “Everything from weather…
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satellites to military radar relies on reliable access to radio frequencies, and we all have an interest in these systems working well. But there are also good reasons to approach federal spectrum holdings with a degree of skepticism.” Federal users don’t face “market discipline because their spectrum is unpriced,” ITIF said. “While NTIA evaluates potential trade-offs and charges a nominal fee to spectrum users, there is nothing close to a market-based usage fee to incentivize agencies’ economization of their spectrum use, either by using a smaller range of frequencies to accomplish the same goals or by reducing the number of goals for which they rely on spectrum,” the report said. ITIF urges Congress and the Office of Management and Budget to make the spectrum relocation fund (SRF) more flexible so it can be used to upgrade equipment and for longer-term planning and research on spectrum efficiency gains. The government should auction more overlay giving the licensee “a right to use a federal agency’s spectrum if that agency agrees,” the report said. It also asks the federal government to reduce its “spectrum footprint” by using higher quality receivers and migrating services to commercial 5G networks when possible. As the FCC is “reviewing ways to improve the interference immunity of receivers operating in spectrum under its jurisdiction, the federal government should do the same,” the report said. “While it is more difficult to objectively characterize the performance of a receiver than that of a transmitter, working toward technological developments that can improve the status quo is essential. The alternative is receivers that are vulnerable to interference from nearby bands, which either threatens the integrity of the federal service or precludes commercial operations well outside the federal agency’s band.” The administration should also take a more active role in managing agencies’ spectrum use, “both through better accounting for the costs of federal uses and by making increasing commercial spectrum capacity a high-level priority,” ITIF said.