The End of Spectrum ‘Scarcity’

As the FCC begins its year-long process to recommend a National
Broadband Plan, one starting point is to unlock publicly-owned assets
that can facilitate ubiquitous, affordable broadband access. Wireless
spectrum remains the most cost-effective and rapid means to deliver
broadband access to rural and unserved urban residents. But as mobile
broadband use continues to increase exponentially, demand for spectrum
will rapidly outpace availability under current spectrum management
policies.

Public policy seems stymied by the myth that spectrum
is scarce. In reality, only government permission to access the
airwaves (licenses) is scarce – spectrum capacity itself is barely used
in most locations and at most times. This underutilized spectrum
represents enormous, untapped, public capacity for high-speed and
pervasive broadband connectivity. It is vital to a national broadband
plan to consider policies that will encourage more intensive and
efficient use of the nation’s spectrum resources.

What combination of technologies and policy reforms can open the
airwaves and enable an era of pervasive connectivity? Our panel
includes technology and policy experts who believe dynamic,
opportunistic access to underutilized spectrum – especially federal
government bands – is feasible if we can only muster the political
will. One promising mechanism for making substantial new allocations of
spectrum available for wireless broadband deployments and other
innovation is to leverage the TV Bands Database that will be certified
by the FCC for unlicensed access to vacant TV channels.

The
Wireless Future Program also released four new papers on the subject:

The End of Spectrum Scarcity: Building on the TV Bands
Database to Access Unused Public Airwaves
By Michael
Calabrese, Director, Wireless Future Program

Revitalizing the Public Airwaves: Opportunistic
Unlicensed Reuse of Government Spectrum
By Victor
Pickard and Sascha Meinrath,
Director, Open Technology Initiative

New Approaches to Private Sector Sharing of Federal
Government Spectrum
By Michael J. Marcus, Principal,
Marcus Spectrum Solutions

A Potential Alliance for World-Wide Dynamic Spectrum
Access: DSA as an Enabler of National Dynamic Spectrum Management

By Preston F. Marshall, Director, Information
Sciences Institute, Viterbi School of Engineering, USC and Former Program
Manager, DARPA Next Generation Communications

Attachments

• MP3 Recording of this Event

Location

New America Foundation

1899 L Street NW, 4th Floor

Washington, DC, 20036

See map: Google Maps

Participants

Kevin Werbach
Assistant Professor of Law, the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania
Co-lead on the Obama Administration’s FCC Transition review

Preston Marshall
Director, Information Sciences Institute,
Viterbi School of Engineering, University of Southern California
Former Program Manager, DARPA
Next Generation Communications

Michael Marcus
Principal, Marcus Consulting

Tom Stroup
CEO, Shared Spectrum Company

Sascha Meinrath
Director, Open Technology Initiative, New America Foundation

Michael Calabrese
Vice President and Director, Wireless Future Program, New America Foundation