WASHINGTON-The ranking member of the Senate communications subcommittee on Tuesday hinted that he would like to abolish the bi-furcated way spectrum is managed in the United States.
“We should have just one entity and not be split between two agencies,” Sen. Conrad Burns (R-Mont.) told Jonathan Adelstein at his confirmation hearing to be a member of the Federal Communications Commission.
Adelstein refused to say whether he liked the idea of creating a new agency to take over the spectrum-management responsibilities of the FCC and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration noting only that “any change would require legislation.”
Currently the FCC manages the spectrum for commercial and non-federal government-mostly public safety-use and NTIA, a unit of the Department of Commerce, manages the spectrum for the federal government. There is significant sharing between federal and non-federal, commercial spectrum requiring coordination between the two agencies.
Complicating matters is all of the innovative technologies-for example ultrawideband and third-generation wireless services-that have been developed recently requiring additional coordination between the FCC and NTIA. The coordination has not always been a smooth process and was downright messy in the cases of UWB and 3G.
Any change to the spectrum-management responsibilities of the two agencies is not expected to happen soon, acknowledged Burns. “We have started the ball rolling on spectrum-management reform. This is a huge issue. This will take a lot of study on how we should do it. … We will not get anything done this year. We are laying the groundwork,” he said.
