Trump’s great tech opportunity is in spectrum sharing

Even in our highly partisan political climate, Americans and elected officials from both sides of the aisle should rally behind the new administration’s commitment to addressing our country’s aging infrastructure. The link between efficient transportation networks and economic growth is indisputable. But while many consider infrastructure to be highways, railways, ports, and public transportation, it would be a mistake to limit our infrastructure investments to these physical assets. In the 21^st century digital world, infrastructure also means communications and high-speed broadband networks. 

 

Congress and the White House have an opportunity to establish America’s digital leadership by considering broadband a part of our country’s critical infrastructure. A key ingredient to the deployment of advanced broadband networks is spectrum – radio airwaves that power all things mobile and connected.

 

{mosads}The Senate Subcommittee on Communications, Technology, Innovation, and the Internet convened on March 2 to explore the value of spectrum to the economy – and that value is significant. Increasing the amount of spectrum available to the private sector through auctions and sharing regimes is essential to ensuring the continued evolution of wireless services and meeting the skyrocketing demand for data services as we enter the Internet of Things (IoT) era. IoT products and services will forever change the way we interact with physical objects, environment, spaces, and people. These technologies are also expected to spur economic growth to the tune of some $16 trillion over next 20 years.

 

 

Trillion of sensors, actuators, wearable, and corresponding infrastructure will enhance automation, productivity, efficiency, quality of experience, quality of life, and safety, respectively. IoT in transportation will enable everything from self-driving to autonomic logistics as transportation systems will be able to sense and respond to rapidly changing conditions. The proliferation of these capabilities will also create new levels of situational awareness and provide a level of redundancy and resiliency in navigation, control, and logistics systems.

 

Spectrum policy was also a hot topic during the Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross’ confirmation hearing with the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee. Sens. Mike Lee (R-Utah), Ed Markey (D-Mass.), and Chairman John Thune (R-S.D.) among others fired off questions about making more spectrum available. Yet it was Ross who set the tone in his opening remarks: “We need more spectrum in the private sector. I will try my best to convince those government agencies that have spectrum and don’t really need it to permit it to becoming commercialized.”

 

As we heard in the confirmation hearing, a national spectrum sharing policy will require government agencies either to share or repurpose unused or little-used bands with private sector partners. Incentivizing agencies to willingly share or give back spectrum will take diligent work from policymakers and the administration alike.

 

In any event, the good news is that many federal agencies need only a small fraction of their spectrum to conduct their activities; and if done correctly, spectrum sharing promises seamless continuity of government services and new private sector resources. New innovations will also help make sharing a reality with improvements in technologies such as spectrum overlays.

 

With the innovations of spectrum overlays, commercial entities can utilize government-held spectrum to spread data to a broader audience. Consider the case of the 1675–1680 MHz band now occupied by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) that uses just a fraction of the spectrum for its weather measurement transmission. A number of private companies are willing to pay the government for the use of the spectrum under such a shared arrangement, guarantee against interference, and protect NOAA’s existing uses.

 

In addition to such partnerships, private actors offer much needed intelligence, resources, and know-how to the government agency. For example, when making a sharing arrangement with a government agency, the private actor could share its own network infrastructure. In the case of NOAA, the provision of an informational content delivery network would provide greater dissemination of NOAA’s weather information to key users such as academic and research institutions, air traffic control operators, drone operators, and other transportation operators. 

 

For eight years, the previous administration supported spectrum sharing as a policy, but failed to move forward in any meaningful way in practice. Leaders in the Trump administration have an opportunity to do more than talk. It’s time for the government to work with industry on spectrum sharing initiatives. The time is right to prepare for the looming IoT boon. Spectrum sharing is a “low-hanging fruit” that should be fast tracked to kick start the economy and incentivize entrepreneurs right out of the gate.

 

Sateesh Kumar is an innovation and incubation executive in artificial intelligence, IoT, healthcare and cybersecurity, and former engineer at Cisco.

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The views expressed by contributors are their own and are not the views of The Hill.