President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology Spectrum Report Release

John Holdren: Okay, I think we are ready to proceed.
Welcome, everybody.
I'm John Holdren, President Obama's Science and Technology
Advisor and Co-Chairman of this Council of Advisors on
Science and Technology, PCAST.
Certainly my pleasure to welcome not only everybody
here in the room, but the viewers who are watching
by way of live webcast.
As you all know, I think the occasion today is the release
of the PCAST report realizing the full potential of
government-held Spectrum to spur economic growth.
It actually exists in hard copy.
And we have a very distinguished group of people
to talk about the report and its implications,
including the chair of the PCAST working group that
produced it, Mark Gorenberg, and I want to give mark a
special shout-out.
The task of, number 1, herding all the cats who participate
in such a production and distilling the vast array of
analysis and information that they're drawing upon into a
cogent and imminently practical set of
recommendations is really an enormous challenge which Mark
pulled off with tremendous aplomb.
The other folks who will be commenting,
starting on my immediate left, Jason Furman,
the Principal Deputy Director of the National Economic
Council in the Executive Office of the President.
Mark Gorenberg, as I have mentioned,
a member of PCAST and Chair of the working group that
produced this report.
Lawrence Strickling, who is Assistant Secretary of
Commerce for Communications and Information and the
Administrator of the National Telecommunications and
Information Administration.
Teri Takai, who his the Chief Information Officer of the
Department of Defense.
And Julius Genachowski, the Chairman of the Federal
Communications Commission.
Let me just say a few words before moving on to the other
speakers here.
I would say, first of all, that this report for PCAST was
a particular labor of love in which many members of PCAST
made important contributions.
It was a labor of love in part because it embraces so many of
the priorities and principle themes of the Obama
Administration, including, above all,
the relation between science, technology and innovation on
the one hand, and economic growth, jobs,
competitiveness on the other.
These are themes of great importance to the President.
Great importance to the country.
The theme of public/private cooperation has been another
very high priority emphasis for President Obama and for
all of us in his Administration,
all of us in PCAST.
We think, as the President has so often said,
that the challenges we face in the economy,
in our national security, in the energy domain,
in public health and biomedicine,
all these challenges are so demanding and our resources
so limited that cooperation is absolutely essential if we're
going to succeed in addressing them effectively.
And certainly of all the axes of cooperation that
are important none is more important than the cooperation
between the public and private sectors.
I know that Jason Furman will and I don't want to steal too
much of his thunder, but it is actually clear historically
that technology and innovation have been central to the
nation's economic strength, to our health care system,
to the maintenance and improvement of environmental
quality, to our national and Homeland Security.
And wireless broadband technology in particular has
obviously become a critically important element of all of
this enabling entirely new services,
capabilities and opportunities across all of these domains of
enormous national importance.
Of course, one of the remarkable aspects of this
report is that in contrast to how physicists like myself
have long viewed the electromagnetic Spectrum,
namely as a limited resource provided by nature on an as-is
basis, with no possibility of creating any more,
this report takes on really a new view, a new perspective,
a new approach to Spectrum, which recognizes the enormous
potential of sharing in that space to derive more benefit,
to use those limited frequencies in a practically
unlimited way.
The implications of that shift in thinking and approach are
truly revolutionary.
And again to emphasize the point about partnerships,
there is a particularly important opportunity here
to have the government and industry combine forces in
the way they address the use of this resource for the good
of the economy, indeed, in a larger sense for the good of
the nation.
I know that under the outstanding leadership of
Larry Strickling at the NTIA, a solid foundation for that
sort of collaboration is already largely in place
through, for example, the work of the Commerce Spectrum
Management Advisory Committee, that is formally a federal
advisory committee composed of nongovernment
Spectrum experts.
I'm very optimistic that in the months and years ahead
this kind of collaboration between the public and private
sectors in a domain full of exciting technical advances is
going to help us usher in a new era of mobile broadband
technology performance and applications.
There are, I should say, a lot of other people in the room
that I should thank.
We have another member of PCAST in the front row,
Dr. Rosina Bierbaum.
We have the key supporting members of the PCAST staff,
Dr. Deborah Stine and Dr. Amber Hartman Scholz.
We have key members of the OSTP staff who have worked
hand in hand with the PCAST in the work that
led to this report.
Tom Power who leads our technology division.
Danny Weitzner who has played a key role in all aspects
important to the wireless sector.
There are a lot of other people I should name and I
won't in the interest of time.
We are on a tight schedule and we have a lot of speakers with
something to say.
So let me at this point turn it over to Jason Furman who
will add some perspective from the National Economic Council.
Jason?
Jason Furman: Thank you, John.
Thank you, Mark, and the PCAST for this really
outstanding report.
I wanted to just provide a little bit of context in terms
of overall economic policy and in terms of what this
administration has done and is going to continue to be doing
on Spectrum policy.
Two years ago in June 2010, the Administration launched
its Spectrum plan.
It was based on the FCC's broadband plan and drew
heavily on the ideas of people like Larry Strickling here and
people like Aneesh Chopra who were with us at the time.
It was launched in a speech by Larry Summers and that's
significant because it made it very clear that the President
from the very beginning thought about this as very
much an economic plan and an important part of our overall
innovation agenda.
Sometimes when one thinks about innovation,
you think about funding for NSF or NIH or research or
other things and that's extremely important and we're
fighting for all we can in those areas.
But the days when we could do things like the Recovery Act
which had a 100 billion, over $100 billion of funding for
innovation aren't here any more.
And a lot of the ways that we have to push things forward
are really the private sector and the investments it makes,
the research and discoveries it undertakes and the things
that it deploys.
But that doesn't mean there is nothing for us to do.
In fact, there is an enormous amount we need to do to
provide the catalyst for that type of investment and
innovation and provide the infrastructure and some of
the rules that help it happen.
And wireless is one of the best and most important
examples of that.
And it's not just the jobs building wireless networks,
it's not just the jobs in the whole eco systems and apps and
mobile devices that surround it,
it's the way in which that technological infrastructure
is really central to the way that we operate as an economy
today, the way that we do our jobs.
I have never seen a reliable estimate of the numbers of
jobs, the amount of GDP that can be associated with it,
but it's almost certainly very large.
There is almost certainly a number of other ways that it
contributes to our economy that aren't measured in GDP,
like the quality of health care,
the way in which we use our energy,
the degree of public safety.
Since the time that that was launched,
we've made a lot of progress.
Under the leadership of NTIA we've identified 200 megahertz
of Spectrum that can be reallocated and with the
President and with the Congress and a lot of the
staff members here, wrote legislation that establishes
the authority for incentive auctions which will help us
free up still more.
But in that time since June 2010 when the Administration
first launched its plan, the plan was to nearly double the
amount of Spectrum available for mobile broadband,
500 megahertz, over the course of a decade which
is an ambitious goal and one that will take hard
work to achieve.
But since that time, June 2010,
the amount of Spectrum we use, the amount of,
the use of the Spectrum, has probably increased 5
to 10 fold.
So we set a goal of doubling over a decade.
In two years it's probably gone up five to ten times
the amount that we use.
That means that figuring out how to reallocate Spectrum,
especially to exclusive license use,
is not going to be anywhere near sufficient to keep up
with the demand.
And you look forward at this pace by the end of the decade
it would go up a thousandfold.
To cope with something going up a thousandfold we're going
to need to do the same type of thing the President talks
about in the context of energy which is in all
of the above strategy.
And that includes things that Randall Stevenson talked about
in his op-ed recently congratulating the FCC
on the way in which it sped up the decision process around
transfers of Spectrum.
Local governments freeing up, you know,
dealing with their NIMBY rules,
dealing with building more infrastructure, more towers.
But it's going to take a lot more than that.
That won't come close to doing what we need to,
and that's where this very important PCAST report that
we're going to be taking very seriously and seeing that we
can implement it to the maximum degree possible
come in handy.
And one of the amazing things in it is the statement that if
you did what they said you could actually increase the
amount of Spectrum.
You could use a thousandfold.
It's probably only a decade's worth of time but as I said we
need every tool we possibly have.
And that PCAST report in terms of the creative ideas around
how you share, how you don't just parcel up and do license
use on small things, but you share over broader bounds,
it's places where how we deploy our federal Spectrum.
How we deploy our research dollars.
How we work together with the private sector to develop the
basis for those ideas and put you in a position to deploy
them are going to be one of our very big challenges in
the years to come.
And it's one that we're going to be taking very seriously
working with Mark and the team that helped generate and
develop and put the ideas in such good form and then
working with the types of people represented in this
room from industry, from across the government,
to really make them happen.
So thanks for the report.
We're going to be taking it very seriously and trying to
make it one of the most important tools as we continue
to build on that type of all-of-the-above strategy to
dealing with the increasing demands of Spectrum and its
increasing importance for the United States economy.
With that, Mark can tell us exactly what it consists of.
Mark Gorenberg: John, first, thank you for that introduction and thank you and
many members of PCAST for their mentoring
through this process.
And let me thank all of the speakers that are here,
not just for being here but for the many meetings along
the way and the work that we did together through this
process to come to the report that we have today.
It's both an honor and a humbling experience to be here
today to release this report.
PCAST finds that if the nation expands its options from
managing federal Spectrum we can transform the availability
of this national resource from scarcity to abundance.
Create/support economic growth.
Ensure U.S. competitiveness and leadership.
And if desired, create new revenue streams for
the U.S. Treasury.
There are a number of key people who worked on this
report since last October besides the many PCAST members
that have been involved and let me call out Greg Mundie
for his contribution.
There was also a group of 20 outside technical advisors,
two of which are here today, Dr. Preston Marshall and
Dr. Dennis Roberson who were chosen,
these 20 were chosen because they created or chaired many
of the pioneering studies of the last ten years,
have dedicated a lifetime to this topic or are members
today of key organizations like the Federal
Communications Commission Technology Advisory Council.
Or the National Telecommunications and
Information Administration Commerce Spectrum Management
Advisory Committee.
We also work closely with the Office of Science and
Technology Policy Staff and critically important liaisons
from the FCC and the NTIA.
And we can't thank them enough for their tireless work and
their brilliant thoughts.
As Jason Furman stated, our report is published two years
after the President's memorandum that called for
making 500 megahertz available for commercial use in ten
years by either clearing and reallocating or exploring
Spectrum sharing.
That memorandum was created due to the projections of the
groundbreaking FCC National Broadband Plan.
But today also as Jason said even those projections look
conservative as actual uses continues to always
outpace our forecasts.
Global mobile data has more than doubled four
years in a row.
Growth of wireless has been explosive and is a
multi-trillion dollar industry today and will continue to
grow and be a multi-multi-trillion
dollar industry to the worldwide economy.
Today we think of this market as cell phones and tablets
and lab tops.
But bandwidth will be at the heart of all of our societal
challenges like health care and energy.
And in ten years we believe machine-to-machine
communications, sometimes called the Internet of things,
will surpass traditional cellular use.
Let me commend the FCC.
The day the PCAST study actually was approved,
the FCC established a vendor-neutral dedicated
wireless Spectrum band for medical body area networks
that could revolutionize the way patients are monitored
and can contribute to improve patient outcomes,
recovery and quality of life.
For example, a patient can alert the hospital even before
they have a heart attack through measuring changes
in their vital signs.
Or a diabetic patient can auto-inject insulin through
a pump as soon as that insulin level declines.
These are ways that we don't think about Spectrum today.
And while commercial industries need more Spectrum
in new ways, federal agencies also need more Spectrum access
for everything from radars to significant increases in
unmanned aerial flights to keep our country safe and
our military safe.
Since 1994 when auctions began they have brought a total of
$53 billion but over 90% of that net income has been from
repurposing commercial bands.
There has been only one significant auction of
federal Spectrum.
And current federal bands are scored very low by the Office
of Management and Budget due to the
expected clearing costs.
An excellent and comprehensive recent NTIA study reviewed the
1755 to 1850 megahertz band, concluded it would cost $18
billion, be very disruptive to the federal agencies,
and take ten plus years to clear.
We all agree this is too long for us to wait.
Our policy for Spectrum was created exactly a hundred
years ago when we were pushed to action by the sinking of
the Titanic where more timely radio communications would
have changed the course of history.
But today we have a hundred-year-old policy that
has been based on technology that was very noise sensitive
at that time that led to a zoning map of small slivers of
Spectrum in exclusive use that leads to artificial scarcity
and constraints of future use.
A huge mismatch between yesterday's policy and
today's technology.
It's time to take advantage of today's technology to replan
our Spectrum cities and our Spectrum roads.
Today we have the equivalent of railroads on fixed tracks
or single cars on narrow roads.
And instead PCAST believes that it's time to start to
create the shared use Spectrum superhighways.
This book came out last years, this is "Big Roads"
by Earl swift.
This was actually given to me by Jon Leibowitz of the FCC.
And proved to be an inspiration for a lot
of the thoughts about Spectrum.
It is about the creation of the interstate
highway systems.
It was created by FDR's roadmap of 1936 to 1939
which of course we all know was put in place during the
'40s and the '50s.
We recommend that the President issue a new
memorandum that states that we share underutilized federal
Spectrum and that we should identify a thousand megahertz
for sharing with the private sector.
Like the NTIA reports of the last two years we believe we
should start our review looking at the 2700 to the
3700 bands, although other areas are listed
in the report.
The first shared use Spectrum superhighways need to move to
substantial blocks of Spectrum where systems can,
with characteristics, can coexist together by frequency,
by geography, by time, and by technical parameters like code
and modulation and other dimensions in a shared
environment where we can optimize for capacity,
not just for coverage.
With a new architecture we also need to move to a new
set of metrics beyond the static megahertz.
Metrics that can measure not only how well a user can
complete a communication, but also how that precludes others
from using that Spectrum.
As dynamic sharing is improved,
the equivalent to packing more and more cars on the road,
the report shows that we can improve capacity effectiveness
thousands of times.
We can start now using existing technology.
Database management techniques,
essentially air traffic controllers are being
developed and implemented by ten companies as white space
technology under FCC supervision.
At the same time there has been an evolution of
inexpensive small cells frankly closer in size to the
WiFi boxes that you know than to the Aquacell towers that
you see on the road, use that can motivate us to get great
use, reuse out of low power, higher frequency,
geographically-located Spectrum.
This makes small cells much more compatible with federal
systems than traditional high power cellular.
And it is real today.
In fact, WiFi which now carries more traffic than
all the smart phone data traffic from U.S. carriers
combined, is similar to small cell.
Adding small cells is like adding more lanes locally
to the road.
The report then goes on to make recommendations for a few
core systems that are required to make this transition to the
Spectrum superhighways.
At the heart of it is a three-tier multi-tier Spectrum
access system based on a geolocation database.
It includes the idea of a primary incumbent which in the
federal bands we assume would be the federal agencies.
Exclusive secondary users which could be LTE systems.
It could be other users that are looking for quality of
service in their applications.
Or general authorized access users which are essentially
unlicensed users but with the ability to be either
registered or automatically registered.
A sensing and other technologies to help with the
shared Spectrum algorithms specifically about radars
whose information is too sensitive to put in database
will also be part of this.
It can protect primary federal users.
But a Spectrum access system is the best guarantee that
unused Spectrum will be made available for shared use,
similar in some ways to how the Internet is managed today.
Years ago we had few transmitters
and many dumb receivers.
Today receivers are smarter, and, by the way,
they are also transmitters, so receiver management framework
is required.
This could be done in various ways and a number of
committees under the agencies are looking at this today as a
post-mortem to the life square GPS situation that was ruled
on earlier this year that could have either been avoided
or properly managed if even rudimentary receiver
protection limits were in place so that systems planning
could have predictability.
The report describes a few other mechanisms that we
recommend to be put in place.
One of them is a Spectrum management team that would
work with the NTIA and work with the agencies.
And this would be, this would bring the White House back in
more formal involvement.
A system similar to what we saw in the '70s but we now
have a chief technology officer and this can be one
under their purview to work with the Office of Management
and Budget, the National Economic Council,
the National Securities Staff and the NTIA and the agencies
as we said.
We also believe an incentive system needs to be put in
place for the federal agencies to start to evolve their
systems, to make them more efficient and more aligned
with sharing concepts.
And we think that a synthetic currency,
we call it Spectrum currency, could correlate the agency
use, could start to correlate against commercial value and
also over time as the agencies worked towards making their
footprints smaller, they can be rewarded with real dollars
for doing that and the early adopters will be the first
ones that will be rewarded.
We commend Congress for their work earlier this year in the
Spectrum relocation fund to make it available for
efficiency use.
We think that should go one more step with the idea of
getting rid of small bands to large highway bands,
we think that it's time to also make that fund band
independent so that people who are looking to make their
systems more efficient have a ready pot to go
to to help do that.
We also need to experiment with new licenses.
Today, of course, we have licensed, we have unlicensed.
And license is a long-term license.
But there are room for models in between,
medium and short-term licenses that allow
turnover of Spectrum.
Offer access rather than a model of hard asset ownership.
It will let many businesses have a license to Spectrum but
it provide as mechanism also to generate revenue
if that is desired.
We believe there should be some immediate actions that
take the form of a pilot.
One of them is to create a Spectrum management steering
committee by industry.
And we, PCAST just went through this process with
the Advanced Manufacturing Partnership Steering Committee
whose stellar results came out a year after that report with
PCAST this past Tuesday.
Second, we believe there should be a large real-world
scalable set of test services, a large scalable test city and
a mobile test service that can help answer the sharing
questions by federal users, commercial users
and policymakers on what needs to be answered,
what needs to be discovered, how we move innovation to
reality and how we get new technologies from the labs
to products faster.
The test city can be used for sharing a federal Spectrum.
It can also be used for sharing in public safety
Spectrum which is being currently looked at
for that purpose.
A third is to fast-track two federal bands for immediate
use for general authorized devices.
The 3550 band is a perfect band for small cell local
geography sharing.
In this report we have suggested a number of
bands for a second band that will be determined,
with help by the NCC and the NTIA.
One interesting example, for example,
is the 4.9 gigahertz band because it can work with
existing 5 gigahertz devices and can dynamically share with
noncritical public safety systems to
help explore sharing.
Let me summarize our thoughts to a few questions that have
been brought up publicly since we approved the PCAST report
at the end of May.
One, federal Spectrum.
We've only looked at federal Spectrum but we believe we can
build a Spectrum superhighway starting there especially in
higher frequently wider bands.
Two, technology.
The technology we need to get started is here today or can
easily be created from the technology here today.
We can start with the Spectrum access system, small cell,
radios that work with multiple frequency.
That technology is already proven.
This will provide an unprecedented amount of
effective Spectrum access.
Clearing versus sharing.
Everyone is in agreement that we need to move forward with
dynamic sharing.
The only question is when, how and how fast.
The sooner we do, the sooner we make Spectrum available and
start an innovation cycle.
The concept is being discussed throughout the world with
considerable discussion in Europe.
The plan in the PCAST report can provide meaningful access
to shared Spectrum we believe in three years.
Historically it has taken an average of more than eight
years to clear and reassign through auction and the NTIA
report, of course, on the 1755 band talks about clearing and
reallocating being well over a decade.
Fourth revenue generation.
Today we believe it will be minimal from clearing and
reallocating federal Spectrum.
But a Spectrum access system in place the federal
government has choice to grow the economy without fees or to
look at user fees, shorter term auctions or
revenue-generating mechanisms that grant priority access.
And, fifth, I think most importantly,
we need to create a faster innovation cycle for future
radio technologies to attract private sector investment
dollars and accelerate the innovation cycle critical to
maintain U.S. leadership for the next decades.
If we create the Spectrum superhighways and a robust
sharing environment now, we will create the market
foundation for that innovation and for the innovation of
these new technologies that have flourished in a way that
the Internet also did as we go back to the middle '90s.
We invented mobile phones in the 1930s and we lost that
lead in 1991 and only recently gained back
leadership in this area.
While 80% of the cell phones use U.S.-based operating
systems, all of the major carrier network providers
are overseas.
It's imperative to create the way that will launch an
innovation cycle to foster U.S.-based innovation.
If we don't, another country will and we will not meet our
demand for Spectrum.
We can't wait.
Our report is up on the PCAST site.
We look forward to your comments after you read it.
And thank you, very much, for your attention and for being
here today.
(applause)
Lawrence Strickling: Thank you, Mark.
And I want to thank you and all the members of PCAST for
this groundbreaking report.
Mark, in particular, I know you provided tremendous
intellectual direction and energy to this effort,
but I'd also like to thank other members of the panel
for their ideas and time to deliver this report.
I think we have been very fortunate to have such a
strong panel of experts assembled to provide this
new thinking on an issue of absolutely critical importance
to the growth of the innovation economy in America.
And I'm particularly pleased that this panel of experts has
now validated what we at NTIA have been saying for the past
year, that we have to find a new way of making Spectrum
available for commercial broadband and that the new way
has to embrace the sharing of Spectrum between federal
agencies and the commercial industry.
As the PCAST report concludes the old method of clearing
Spectrum of federal uses and then making it available for
the exclusive use of commercial providers just
isn't sustainable any longer.
We have already moved the easy stuff.
To continue this old method of Spectrum reallocation costs
too much money and takes too much time.
The industry and their customers as well as our
economy just cannot afford the cost and delay.
And more over, over the years the critical missions
performed by federal agencies have required systems of
greater and greater complexity and increased their own needs
for Spectrum and we have to take this into account as we
continue to look for ways to use our Spectrum
more effectively.
Now, nowhere is this confluence of factors
more apparent than in the 95 megahertz of Spectrum located
between 1755 and 1850 megahertz that our previous
speakers have referred to.
Today more than 20 agencies have over
3,000 frequency assignments in this band with uses that range
from point-to-point microwave, to covert law enforcement
surveillance operations, to air combat training systems
where the radio transmitters are literally embedded into
the skin of the aircraft.
Now, we released a study that some of the speakers have
referred to earlier this spring and we described all
of these uses and we projected that it would take at least
ten years and about $18 billion to clear this
band of the federal uses and then make it available
to commercial uses.
And keep in mind we have to find other frequencies to
which to relocate these uses and that's becoming harder and
harder to do today.
Now, granted, these were preliminary numbers.
But, however you discount them it's still going to cost too
much and take too long to reallocate this Spectrum
the old-fashioned way.
So the solution as PCAST recommends is for federal
agencies and commercial users to share this Spectrum.
And while this approach certainly presents some
new technology challenges, we at NTIA working with the FCC
are already moving forward to implement this approach where
we can in the 1755 to 1850 band.
Through our advisory committee we have organized five working
groups made up of representatives from
industry and federal agencies.
The public/private cooperation that John Holdren referred to.
And these groups are evaluating all of the
different uses in this band and they're going to determine
the fastest, most effective way forward to allow for the
commercial use of these 95 megahertz of Spectrum.
Now, in some cases traditional relocation will likely be
the recommendation.
So systems such as point-to-point microwave,
we know those are relatively easy and straightforward to
relocate and we know we have Spectrum to which we can
relocate those circuits.
In other cases such as the satellite earth stations
defining geographic exclusion zones to protect these earth
stations may then allow commercial entry in large
parts of the country not affected by these zones.
But in addition, we're now adding a third weapon in this
effort and that's the possibility that industry
and agencies can both use the Spectrum in the same
geographic area through the use of new technologies that
will then allow the most efficient use of the Spectrum.
These groups are now up and running and we hope to receive
their recommendations at the beginning of next year.
Now, two years ago as John and Jason mentioned,
President Obama directed NTIA to work with the FCC to find
500 megahertz of Spectrum over the next five years to be made
available for commercial broadband services over the
next ten years and including this 1755 to 1850 band NTIA
has already identified 210 megahertz of Spectrum
for reallocation.
The FCC for its part now having been given the
authority to do incentive auctions will be moving
forward with broadcasters to make additional substantial
Spectrum available as we meet the President's goal.
But given the speed at which demand for Spectrum is growing
there will be a continuous national need to find Spectrum
for broadband services.
And if we can realize the vision reflected in the PCAST
recommendations we can hopefully find a way to
support the wireless expansion and the growth and innovation
in jobs that it is delivering for the foreseeable future.
So, Mark, the Administration and the nation owe you and
your team an enormous debt of gratitude for the work that's
been represented in this new report.
And for that I want to thank you and all the members of
your team for your contribution.
Thank you.
(applause)
Teri Takai: Good afternoon!
It's a pleasure for me to be here representing the
Department of Defense.
But at the outset I'd like to add my thanks to the team for
the excellent work and the efforts of the PCAST team.
Their efforts have really furthered the critical
dialogue on how we meet the nation's broadband needs and
we greatly appreciate their efforts and their thoughts.
Military Spectrum requirements are diverse and complex given
the variety of missions that the department must support
around the world.
DoD uses federally allocated and regulated Spectrum
assignments for command and control operations,
communications, intelligence, surveillance and target
acquisition on land, at sea, in the air and in space.
In the continental United States our systems utilize
Spectrum which is critical to properly train as
we must fight.
For example, as Larry mentioned,
our air combat training system uses the 1755 to 1850 band to
support combat readiness pilot certification through a robust
U.S. aircrew training which includes our allies.
The system is used at training ranges and bases across the
United States with over 10,000 training flights per month.
In short, Spectrum is the critical enabler that ensures
information is dependably available to train our forces
and ensure our mission accomplishment.
We must also recognize the growing Spectrum demands
resulting from our increasing reliance on
Spectrum dependent technologies.
For example, our use of unmanned aerial systems
requiring Spectrum to process volumes of critical
intelligence, reconnaissance and reconnaissance data.
The inventory of our UASs has increased from 167 in 2002,
to over 7500 in 2010.
This has resulted in a dramatic increase in UAS
use and training requirements.
But we also recognize the importance of the growing
need for Spectrum for economic development,
technology innovation and consumer demand.
We are dependent on industry for innovative products that
can be used for national security.
In that regard we remain fully committed in support of the
national economic and security goals of the President's 500
megahertz initiative.
The implementation of more effective and efficient use
of this finite radiofrequency Spectrum and the development
of solutions to meet these goals is essential to national
security and economic goals.
For example, we continue to work with NTIA and our other
administration partners to ensure the balance repurposing
decisions that are technically sound and operationally viable
from the mission perspective.
The results so far have been promising.
For instance, the first, the fast track study effort has
resulted in arrangements to geographically share the 1695
to 1710 megahertz and 3550 to 3650 megahertz bands.
Furthermore, the reallocation feasibility assessment of the
1755 to 1850 band marks another important step.
As Larry mentioned, while there are significant
challenges yet to overcome, it is possible to repurpose all
95 megahertz of Spectrum based on the conditions that are
outlined in the NTIA report.
DoD is fully engaged and looks forward to addressing these
challenges by closely working with industry to evaluate
sharing possibilities.
As also was mentioned we have been working with NTIA and FCC
to determine ways to share Spectrum with commercial
users where possible.
The medical body area network sensor devices that were
discussed previously are being shared in a band that
is critical to our safety aeronautical
mobile telemetry testing.
We also recognize that innovative Spectrum management
and sharing arrangements and solutions are necessary to
future Spectrum repurposing decisions.
The move from an exclusive right Spectrum management
regime to one focused on large-scale Spectrum sharing
between federal and commercial systems,
represents a major shift in the way Spectrum is managed.
While this shift represents many challenges,
we will continue to work with our industry partners and our
government partners to develop equitable
Spectrum sharing solutions.
We recognize as well the need for us to look forward.
We are developing a Spectrum strategy focused on our
investments in technology and capabilities aimed at more
effective and efficient use and management of Spectrum.
In many cases that's a long-term proposition for us.
It involves the re-equipment of our entire in some cases
aircraft, what we have at sea, as well as what
we have on land.
The department remains committed to continuing
this important work with our interagency partners NTIA,
the FCC and industry.
Together we believe we will address the long-term
solutions to achieve a balance between national security
Spectrum requirements and meeting the expanding demand
of commercial broadband services.
Thank you.
(applause)
Julius Genachowski: Thank you.
I am Julius Genachowski.
I'm the Chairman of the Federal Communications
Commission and the last speaker which means I am close
to the only thing standing between you and the weekend.
(chuckles)
Let me welcome Commissioner Rosenworcel who is here,
my newest colleague.
It's a privilege to have her on the Commission and I want
to acknowledge the strong support that Commissioner
Rosenworcel as already given for the Spectrum goals that
we're discussing today.
John Holdren, thank you for inviting me and for the work
that you do to harness science and technology to the benefit
of our country.
Thank you, Jason Furman, for your great work to
drive economic growth and opportunity.
I saw here coming in friends from Capitol Hill on both
sides of the aisle and thank you all.
We have been able to work together in this area towards
the common good.
I want to acknowledge the hard work and leadership of
my friend and colleague Larry Strickling of the NTIA,
his staff.
Everyone here from the military and other federal
agencies, including, of course,
Teri Takai from the defense department.
And of course thank you, so much,
to each of the members of PCAST.
In particular to those of you who invested so much time and
energy and ideas to this project.
It is an honor for me to participate in a PCAST event.
I'm a geek, like many of you here,
and being in this job was not the first time
I heard of PCAST.
It's a President advisory group that goes back to FDR
that was embraced by President Eisenhower and over the years
has been visionary in laying out ideas and policies for
the country.
So, thank you to this Administration for taking
PCAST seriously.
Thank you, Mark Gorenberg, for jumping in to this particular
assignment and doing it.
We saw this from the first day with so much energy and
enthusiasm and commitment to our future of innovation in
the United States.
And I also want to make sure that I acknowledge
Jon Leibowitz from our team at the FCC.
I, too, got at copy of the book but I did not read it
as carefully as Mark did.
(laughter)
Mostly because with John working at the FCC,
I'm very fortunate that we have just such a great team
pushing these ideas and initiatives forward.
Now, the President, as we have heard,
has made wireless a priority recognizing its enormous
potential to drive economic growth and opportunity.
Two years ago the President said we want to -- and this is
a quote -- invest in the next generation and high-speed
wireless coverage for 98% of Americans.
This isn't just about faster Internet or being able to find
a friend on Facebook; it's about connecting every corner
of America to the digital age.
And there's mounting evidence that the wireless strategize
we have all pursued -- wireless strategies we have
all pursued are working.
Across the mobile sector we see good news.
Innovation is up.
Investment is up.
We're on track to meet the President's goal of 98%
coverage ahead of schedule.
The U.S. is leading the world in deploying 4GLTE mobile broadband
at scale with 69% of the world's LT subscribers here in the U.S.
making this country the test bed for next-generation
wireless broadband innovation for the globe.
Deloitte estimates that 4G investment and innovation will
create 770,000 jobs by 2016.
The U.S. apps economy, which barely existed at the start of
2009, is the envy of the world and has created nearly half a
million jobs already and more every day.
Since 2009, just the last three and a half years,
the percentage of smart phones globally with American-created
operating systems has grown from under 25% to over 80%.
That's an incredible thing in a short amount of time.
In 2011 venture investment and Internet startups,
heavily mobile focused, reached its highest level
since 2001.
Annual private investment in our wired and wireless
broadband infrastructure and of course we need a robust
wired infrastructure to support our wireless system,
well, that investment is up 30% since 2009.
WiFi is booming.
WiFi born of U.S. policy innovation and where the U.S.
continues to lead.
Hot spots, WiFi hot spots are increasing dramatically
in the U.S.
We're seeing increasing integration between WiFi and
cellular and software and devices of real benefit to
both consumers and our Spectrum efficiency goals.
Now, U.S. innovators and entrepreneurs have made
this progress possible.
Smart government broadband policies have facilitated
real progress.
With so much progress, why are we here?
Well, we're here because our success around mobile
is creating enormous new challenges.
As we began putting out in the FCC's national broadband plan
demand for Spectrum is increasing,
increasing exponentially and increasing far beyond what
anyone had previously anticipated.
And increasing here in the U.S. before it's increasing at these
rates anywhere else in the world.
As a consequence, American mobile networks are running at
the highest utilization rate of any country in the world.
An increase in Spectrum demand will go up as time rolls out,
not down, creating even more of a Spectrum crunch.
We need, we all agree, more Spectrum capacity,
more Spectrum efficiency and we need it soon.
It's a very real challenge.
Now, it's the kind of challenge we want because
it comes from too much demand.
Believe me, it's much better than the opposite problem.
But it's a real challenge.
And as the wireless world has changed so dramatically and so
quickly, we know that the old ways of unleashing Spectrum
for mobile and mobile broadband are not enough.
Historically as you have heard our basic strategy has been to
clear a band of Spectrum and reallocate it.
It's a strategy that has delivered tremendous benefits
for America.
With new Spectrum we not only add capacity,
we enable innovation, new technologies,
new architectures, new network concepts.
The original 800-megahertz bands brought us analog
and cellular.
PCS brought digital.
And the DTV transition has brought us 4G.
Landmark changes to the FCC's Part 15 rules enabled
WiFi and Bluetooth.
It's hard to even imagine modern life without these
innovations, but none of them existed before they existed.
None of the Spectrum strategies that we
using today, like auctions on license,
others existed before they were recommended, invented,
put in place.
Now, wherever possible as we go forward we have to continue
to clear and reallocate.
To clear and efficiently use Spectrum for flexible
broadband use.
Sometimes this may be a matter of will;
sometimes it may require new approaches.
Incentive auctions, proposed in our national broadband plan
and adopted by Congress on a bipartisan basis earlier this
year, is one new way to reallocate commercial
Spectrum to flexible use.
A very significant Spectrum policy innovation which
together we have put in place and of course now I look
forward to working with my colleagues at the FCC and at
other agencies and with the industry to implement.
But in order to keep pace with our nation's demands,
we need to continue to develop new tools
to supplement the old ones.
Spectrum sharing is one such tool.
This is why PCAST efforts are so valuable.
Just as incentive auctions are a big, new idea,
new tool for freeing up Spectrum for commercial use,
PCAST recommendations on government,
commercial sharing are another big idea for freeing up
Spectrum for commercial use.
Both ideas will help drive our economy and job creation.
And I am pleased to report that at the FCC we have
been working hard already on various
Spectrum-sharing initiatives.
I was pleased to hear some of my predecessors,
the earlier speakers referred to the medical body network
authorization that we put in place recently at the FCC.
This is a new spectrum-based technology that will allow for
patients to be untethered from the wires that now connect
them to monitoring devices at ICUs in hospitals,
and ultimately at home.
I'm pleased we got this done at the FCC and we would not
have been able to without the cooperation of the NTIA and
the Defense Department.
Let's take a moment to reflect on what Spectrum
sharing means.
In a sense, and Jon Leibowitz has told me this repeatedly,
Spectrum has been shared since the Commerce Department began
issuing radio licenses a hundred years ago.
Our system of licensing and allocations is a way
of dividing Spectrum up and frequency and geography to
allow multiple uses and users.
Sharing is completely consistent with exclusive
licensed use while also creating new opportunities
for unlicensed use.
Now, of course, most current approaches to sharing tend to
be static in nature.
And what's new and exciting and embraced by PCAST is the
prospect that technology can turbocharge sharing not only
in frequency and space, but also in time.
In fact, cutting-edge wireless technologies like LTE and the
latest flavors of WiFi do just that.
They provide mechanisms for finite amounts of Spectrum
to be shared among millions and millions of users.
Sharing between commercial and federal users can pay
major dividends for everyone involved.
I mentioned the ways, as others have,
the ways it can drive our economy,
innovation and job creation.
From the perspective of government users it can also
help narrow the growing gap between the functionality and
cost of military and other government communications
equipment and commercial.
It can do this by allowing federal agencies and shared
bands to tap into the massive $300 billion global supply
chain for commercial wireless equipment.
I have seen a lot of ideas presented and
developed in Washington.
I completely believe that this idea is a win/win idea for
both our economy and our military.
Looking into the future we'll increasingly see different
sharing approaches for different circumstances
and different bands.
I expect we'll see greater use of the dynamic frequency
selection methods which allow unlicensed networks to coexist
with radar systems in the 5 gigahertz band.
We may see licensed terrestrial mobile networks
coexist with airborne systems taking advantage of some of
the interference management features built into LTE.
This is why the new tests and the 1.7 gigahertz band
are so important.
Why we were pleased to receive an experimental license
application from the industry and why we're working very
hard with NTIA to move this forward quickly.
Now, while the FCC has pioneered the development of
white space as sharing in the TV band I think we'll see the
concept extended as the PCAST recommends
to other bands, too.
And today I am pleased to announce our plan to begin
the proceeding to move forward on small cell use in the 3.5
gigahertz band.
I will work with my FCC colleagues to issue a notice
of proposed rule-making later this year.
I expect it will consider some of the amazing ideas contained
in the PCAST report and other ideas.
I look forward to working with our partners at NTIA on this
important effort in getting it moving.
Now, I know we're all committed to working together
to maximize the usefulness and availability of the
3.5 gigahertz band and all Spectrum.
3.5 in particular can become a powerful proving ground for
technologies to help solve some of the thorniest Spectrum
management challenges.
The small cell opportunity is a significant one and it would
be consistent with our history of innovation to identify a
band that helps jump-start an area of innovation which the
U.S. can lead.
Working together we can unleash the full potential of
wireless to drive a bright future for all Americans.
That's why I am and I know we all are so grateful to PCAST
for this report.
Thank you, PCAST.
And thanks to all of you.
(applause)
John Holdren: Well, thank you, Julius.
And thanks to all of the panelists.
That concludes our event.
We thank the audience as well, those who have made it here in
person to hear these comments and those who have watched
over the web.
The PCAST report I understand now is the posted on the PCAST
website in full.
So as others have said, we look forward to the comments
of those of you who read it and would like to send
us your thoughts.
Again, thanks for being here.
(applause)