The chief executives of nine of the nation’s high-profile, high-tech firms are calling for a complete review of national spectrum policy in order to foster what they characterize as the resource’s highest and best use.
Through their public-advocacy group, the Technology CEO Council, these thought leaders are calling for spectrum transfers from government to the private sector, fewer regulations, relaxed rules governing spectrum licenses and more flexibility in spectrum auction rules.
If the issues sound familiar, perhaps only the urgency of advocacy group’s position has changed. The industry-friendly Bush administration faces lame-duck status, the Republican majority in Congress faces a new test at the polls this fall and the public’s attention is rarely captured by spectrum issues.
The council suggests that commercial and government spectrum should be allocated for experiments on spectrum-sharing solutions, perhaps a first step in the process long sought by industry of transferring government-held spectrum to private enterprise. And, in a move perhaps intended to garner public support for their proposals, the council also is asking that Congress fund programs to help public-safety officials and other government agencies use spectrum more efficiently and make emergency communications more interoperable.
The council focuses much of its argument, and language, on the efficient use of spectrum. The Technology CEO Council’s “report”-actually an advocacy statement on its proposals for public policy-is titled, “Freeing Our Unused Spectrum: Toward a 21st Century Telecom Policy.” Specifically, it touts the spectral efficiency of new wireless technologies such as cognitive radios (which can modify their frequency and power to operate in spectrum that is vacant at a given time and place), ultra-wideband devices (which use a wide range of frequencies at low power), mesh networks (which utilize each user device in an area to both receive and transmit signals) and WiMAX (next-generation Wi-Fi technology with higher speeds and longer range).
The group’s pitch is tailored to the mindset of the Bush administration and its allies in Congress and may well find legislative support, but its release could be ill-timed. At this juncture, the once-monolithic Republican majority in Congress is fracturing, the federal budget deficit fueled by war, tax cuts and Gulf Coast reconstruction leaves little room for funding new initiatives and the upcoming mid-term elections in November can be expected to narrow the legislative agenda.
However, the group’s recommendations also could revive the spectrum debate. “Freeing Our Unused Spectrum” joins the Federal Communication Commission’s own Spectrum Task Force Report, issued in 2002, and the President’s Spectrum Initiative, issued in 2004.
The Technology CEO Council, founded in 1989 and formerly known as the decidedly less-sexy Computer Systems Policy Project, is composed of the heads of Motorola Inc., Hewlett-Packard Co., Unisys Corp., NCR Corp., Intel Corp., IBM Corp., Dell Inc., Applied Materials Inc. and EMC Corp. The council has periodically issued advocacy documents on other public policy matters relevant to its constituents’ businesses.
