Executive Summary

A national goal of not merely universal access to broadband, but of truly pervasive connectivity—high-capacity connectivity anywhere, anytime at affordable prices—will require an enormous increase in available spectrum capacity. The conventional wisdom that spectrum is scarce, particularly mid-band spectrum, persists despite the reality that most federal and commercial bands remain grossly underutilized and amenable to more intensive, shared use. Yet eight years after a 2012 report by the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) recommended that spectrum sharing should be “the new normal,” important but limited progress has been made.

Conceptually, use-it-or-share-it rules authorize opportunistic access to licensed or federal spectrum that is unused or underutilized. A use-it-or-share-it authorization expands productive use of spectrum without risking harmful interference or undermining the deployment plans of primary licensees. Since 2014, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has adopted several world-leading precedents in opportunistic spectrum sharing that all apply a variation of the use-it-or-share-it approach. These precedents, and the proven effectiveness of automated frequency coordination mechanisms, can pave the way to an authorization of opportunistic access as the default policy for a far larger number of underutilized and newly-allocated bands.

A use-or-share approach promotes important policy goals, including more intensive use of fallow spectrum capacity, lowering barriers of entry to a diverse range of uses and users, facilitating innovation and competition, improving choices and lowering costs for consumers, and promoting service in rural and other underserved areas, thereby helping to narrow the digital divide. Unleashing opportunistic, shared access to unused spectrum also creates a general incentive for licensees to build out more quickly and to make greater efforts to lease or sell unused spectrum, facilitating secondary markets.

In addition, because spectrum is a government-controlled resource essential for wireless communication, FCC decisions on access to spectrum must be consistent with First Amendment principles. The commission must have an important reason to deny use of vacant spectrum, most commonly to avoid interference. The FCC must not reject proposals to use fallow spectrum without explanation, or on purely economic grounds, if a new shared use of a band can be accommodated, even if only on an opportunistic or contingent basis.

The FCC has begun operationalizing this “scarcity rationale” by applying a balancing approach to determine if interference is unduly harmful to the actual performance of incumbent services or systems—and not merely hypothetical, fleeting, or de minimis. The FCC should find an opportunity to further clarify the operational definition of “harmful” interference to make clear that the intention is to enable the greatest possible productive use of spectrum bands.

The failure to move faster to authorize unused federal spectrum for at least opportunistic shared use (such as on a General Authorized Access, or GAA, basis) has an enormous opportunity cost as we enter an era where bandwidth abundance is in reach. The report closes by examining near-term opportunities to extend shared access to more substantial underutilized federal, commercial, and FCC-held bands, including 700 megahertz of mid-band federal spectrum and 700 megahertz in two very underutilized commercial bands. More broadly, the commission should open a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) that proposes adding a use-it-or-share-it authorization for all terrestrial flexible use bands that have not been built out in substantial portions of the country. Much of the prime spectrum auctioned over the past decade remains fallow, particularly in many rural and small town areas, and at the very least conditional and temporary access to that spectrum capacity should be considered as part of this effort.