 If I could ask people to take their seats, we can go ahead and get started. My name is Jim Lewis. We are here at CSIS where we're starting another round of discussions on spectrum policy and spectrum management. I didn't realize the last one was so long ago, but this is a field that we have been interested in. We CSIS have been interested in for a while. We've got a great panel. Our keynote speaker is General Robert Wheeler, who will be going through his slides and giving us some information on DOD's thinking on spectrum management and reallocation. Thanks for coming out on a day that the news outlets predicted would be one of unparalleled snow and blizzard, so I appreciate your hardiness, even though it wasn't. General, would you like to come up? So I do know all the folks on this panel here. We're usually yelling at each other. So this ought to be a little bit of an interesting discussion to say, thanks for coming out today. I know that the snow has been bad, and I was a little bit late because frankly what normally takes 10 minutes to get from the Pentagon to here took about 46 minutes to be exact. And so that was a little bit of pain that I did not expect. In any event, I think this is an important subject. I think it's an important subject for our nation because I think it really talks to the national security issue as well as the economic issue. And to be frank, those are intertwined. Those are together. And I think that's one of the important takeaways, if you take nothing else away, that national security and the economic growth and capability and strength of our nation are one. So I think that's where we all need to think about this from that perspective. The other piece that I'd like to make sure that you walk away with is the international flavor on here. And it's hard for people to fully understand sometimes as to the spectrum, if you will, plate from a worldwide perspective. Because as well we can make a domestic plan. If I've got whirling satellites coming over in that same spectrum that come from many countries, that's going to be a problem. Because at that particular point, then we start to interfere with their satellites, then that causes problem for them to help us when we need help overseas for the same exact reasons. So it's a very strong international flavor that domestically, that doesn't always get heard well. But that is a big deal. The world's become smaller. There is absolutely no doubt with the advent of the internet and the way we're connecting together, it is a much smaller world. And that aspect is a critical part of the spectrum game. So let me talk to you a little bit more about our perspective on this from a DOD side and where we think we're going, because a lot has changed. Slide please. Is it my thing to do the slide? I can do that. I don't know. There we go. Okay, this looks like a very complex slide, but if there's something to take away from it, it's that bottom line. Spectrum is the thread that ties all of DOD together. The other part to the aspect of it is if you're thinking about this, think of three dimensions. Think of the space dimension, which you see whirling across the top up there. The air dimension, which is those aircraft that are going back and forth, and the terrestrial. And at that particular point, you have three communication layers in that particular part, and all of them connect together on voice, video, and data. And all of them have to be ubiquitous across all three pieces of it. So all the way from space, all the way to the air layer, and all the way down to the terrestrial layer, all those connections occur. And that's really what happens from a DOD perspective. And I think you're seeing that in the domestic layer as well in the United States, and we're seeing that grow and grow. So let me take an example. I'm a B2 guy, so I'm a B2 stealth bomber guy. So when I'm flying across the world in a mission, in a combat or non-combat situation, I have a connection to the satellites continuously. I have data coming into that. I actually have a laptop that sits between me that has Microsoft Office on it. And so I get emails and things of that particular nature on there. At the same time, I've got Link 16 going up there, showing all the other aircraft and all the other potential threats that are out there on my particular screen. At the same time, I'm getting voice. All of that's occurring at the same time. So I'm receiving data on two separate screens. I'm also receiving voice multiple, in most cases. Some of it's coming from satellites, coming from terrestrial based. And then at the same time, I'm also starting to get little pieces and parts of non-voice typing, beeps and squeaks and things that come through that I understand that tell me where the threats are. So all that's happening at the same time. So if you can intertwine all three of those, that's an example of that overseeing up that particular slide. Next piece. Oh, I went too far. You want me to stop touching that, is that it? Okay, there you go. One back. Okay. On this particular slide, we're talking about the data. It's a very interesting slide. It takes a while to get to understand it. If you take a look at that top line, that shows a traffic growth. So the traffic growth is actually stabilizing what we're seeing across the board there. You'll also see the second one, the per device growth. That's stabilizing at a lower level. But what is clear is the amount of traffic is growing at a clear 20%. So as the device numbers drop off as to how much we're growing every year, traffic is still going up at about a 20% clip every single year. What does that mean? That means data is going to be the future. What does data mean? Spectrum. That's the key. So we are growing at a rate that is somewhat stabilizing at this particular point, but it is clear that more spectrum is going to be required or more efficient use of spectrum. And I will talk to both of those slide, please. Right here, we're seeing that the whole commercial broadband piece to it is tied back to economic growth, okay? There's no doubt about it. If you take a look at our nation and the way I look at it is, we light up the whole United States with LTE. Can you imagine the possibilities from a business perspective? So you can imagine data to every rural area in the country. Can you imagine what we can do from a business perspective and how we can lead the world? This is about America's creativity. It's about America's ability to stay competitive in the world and keep its edge. And I think that goes from a military perspective as well as an economic perspective across the board. So I think we're intertwined together in that particular one. And that's a clear message from my perspective on there. The President has pushed for a 500-megahertz goal. The PCAST pushed for 1,000-megahertz or more, if possible, in that particular arena. We are definitely pushing hard towards the 500 and the 1,000. We understand that perspective. What that drives? That drives a lot of things. One of them is it's driving technology. Driving technology, we do more efficient. How do we do this better? How do we make it so that we're not as spectral hogs, whether you're the federal side or the commercial side? Because the PCAST message was clear to the brethren here on the table here that it spoke to both the federal aspects of it and the commercial aspects of this. And so those are intertwined. How do we get better across the board so we use the limited spectrum that we have more efficiently? And that's good for all of us. Slide. I love the slide because it really talks about what we have to do. Trying to weave all of the spectrum through everything we do has a spectral impact, whether it's electronic warfare, whether it's talking to a weapon, leaving an aircraft, whether it's moving stuff from FedEx across the country, all of this touches spectrum. And it's the weave, and you weave this through, and every time you add one more piece of spectrum in there, you have to be extremely careful of where it touches. And I think that's a critical part of it because you can start to interfere with each other. You can start to cause problems with each other, and you can actually have a real issue. Example being, if you're talking about missile defense and you have a specific frequency where, from a commercial aspect, you'd look at it and go, I don't use that very often. And I'm thinking, yeah, thank God I don't use it very often from a missile defense perspective. But I have to have that frequency when I need it, otherwise you could lose thousands of lives. And that's a perspective that we have to understand. At the same time, with some technologies out there with dynamic spectrum, we may be able to use that spectrum other times with a guarantee that the priority is when that missile defense is needed, it automatically becomes clear. Those are the type of things that we're looking at. We were not able to do that in the past. In the past, we would just own that frequency. We would have to have that frequency for obvious safety of life reasons. In the future, with technology, we may not have to do that. And that's a key use of it. And we'll see that in many other aspects throughout the spectrum management slide. Right here is what it looks like. So how do I get a maximize my use of that limited resource? How do I make that happen? Because that's where we were. Think about satellites today. So I have satellites up there today. They're in bands that the telecom industry needs. And I will put that needs at this particular point. Those satellites have been up for somewhat almost 30 years. 30 years ago, we were not worried about the width of the spectrum, where we were in that particular arena, or any of that. But to take those satellites down now and to replace them with a new satellite, because I can't obviously change the transmitter on orbit, would cost billions of dollars. So how do I do this? How do I balance it? To not have to take down satellites like that and obviously cause billions of dollars from a taxpayer perspective at the same time, give a spectrum to the right people that need the right pieces for the nation. Slide. You can see the playing field. You've got every single piece of parts from cell phones to radar, to weather radars, to HF, high frequency comms in there, to DOD SATCOM from radars, if you will, from unmanned aerial vehicles all across this. How do I get the maximum out of that limited resource? Clear message. Slide, please. So I'll call the spectral reconstruction, okay? And that's exactly in a lot of ways what I see our nation doing right now. Because in some aspects, we're changing things around on how we're gonna do this. And the interesting part for me is the international piece. I brought that up in the beginning, but we can build a domestic plan all day long, but just keep in mind, satellites are whizzing right by, using frequencies across our nation as we speak. Other ships come into our harbors from different nations. All of this happens. And then think about it from a military perspective. If I'm going into some particular area and I'm kicking down the door, I might not really care what spectrum I'm using at that particular point. But if I'm rebuilding a nation, if I'm in Afghanistan, if I'm in Iraq, or if I'm in the Philippines, trying to take care of a typhoon, survival issues, I want to be able to use spectrum that does not hinder their own efforts within the country. So I have to have an international level of spectrum that I could go into and use all the time without interfering with their particular spectrum. So I think that's important for everybody to realize that we're seeing the normalization of some of these things across the world as far as the spectrum frequencies. And that's also good from a business perspective because if you sell products on the internet side and they're standardized, you can also do a standard sell across the world for whatever it is you're doing, whether it's a new kind of a land, if you will, and our land, as we'll call it, or if it's some other kind of a radio that you're trying to sell. Slide. Here's an interesting comparative piece to this because this comes up a lot in discussion. And I actually believe that until I actually did the numbers and had these slides printed out for a congressional at one point. We take a look at the first band. The first band up there is the three gigahertz band, which they call the prime beach frontage, if you will, of spectrum. And why? Because it's something that our technology allows us to use very efficiently, if you will. And it also has good distance coverage. So if you're a telecom industry type thing, it has good distance coverage, good penetration into buildings, if you will. So why your cell phone works in certain buildings and why certain companies don't work as well might be the frequency. Has a little bit to do with the spectrum in that particular aspect. But we hear a lot about what the federal owns. And the federal side to it is 14.1% is allocated to the federal government on an exclusive basis at this particular point. DoD uses half a lap. Actually less than half of that is the actual term. Non-federal, including commercial use, has been allocated to 31.7%. 54% is shared between federal and non-federal users. So we share it today. We're actually pretty good at it. So we're sharing as something that is happening today. The way we do sharing today, I would argue in the way we do it tomorrow, is two different things. I think there's much more efficient ways of doing it and much more automated ways of doing this that allow us to use that frequency even tighter there. So when you combine more efficient spectral capabilities of just the technology and the ability to use it in a more efficient manner from a sharing perspective, you can open up a lot of that beachfront property very quickly. On the second part here, we talk about the three to six gigahertz band, which is the second best beachfront property, I'll call that. Maybe there's a little bit of rocks in the sand. I don't know if you saw the Olympics and you saw the Sochi Beach, but it was pretty rocky. So I'll call that the three to six gigahertz here. Second most desirable, 8% of that spectrum is allocated on a federal exclusive basis. 18% is allocated for non-federal. 74% is shared between federal and non-federal users. This is important from a lot of perspectives. Back one slide, please, if you would. To do this forward slide, please, correctly, I have to take this into account and how we're gonna do it. I have to take technology into account and I have to take how we're gonna do the sharing in the future to make sure we get this right for all. Federal agencies, non-federal agencies within the government and for all commercial aspects to that. If we get this right, we can make this a win-win situation for all. Slide. Here's where we're going with an individual effort that's happening right now. And it's been an actual really interesting one from my perspective. So the original plan, if you can look up at the top, that's 1755 to 1850 was primarily military and federal systems across the board. And the plan was to go into the band to the right, which was part of the broadcasters band. So we took a look, we spent over a year building a plan because that's the normal way of doing business. We vacate Spectrum and we moved to New Spectrum. Spectrum that is also vacated at that particular point. So the bill from DOD perspective was about $13 billion, okay? If you look at all of the federal agencies across the board, it was somewhere around 17 to 18 billion dollars. All validated and verified numbers with multiple looks at it from different aspects in there. Because you have to think about this. If you're taking down satellites and you're truly vacating all this and putting up new satellites, you're talking lots and lots of money, okay? So obviously from an auction perspective, that wasn't going to be most likely to be in the best use of the money in that particular aspect, and we would not get there. So the auction requirements are 110% when you do an auction, we would have not have got to the 20 plus billion. So that was not necessarily a good idea. Although an interesting piece of the puzzle, 1755 to 1850 is telecom broadband for other parts of the world, okay? It is just not for the US right now. Now interesting part of it from a DOD perspective is DOD just got finished leaving 1710 to 1755, okay? And the interesting perspective of this is kind of a jab to my brother and over here, was that we were supposed to just get out of that band and there would be no more moves for 10 years at that particular point. So we finished a march a year and a half ago, if you will, and now we're back doing this again. It's the right thing to do. But the point is, this is a never-ending move, if you will. So the 1710 to 1755, we just finished. And that was less costly than we expected because most of the equipment that we had in that lower band, we were able to retune into the 1755 that you're seeing up there to the 1780, okay? In that particular area there. So bottom line to the whole piece there, and the 1755 to 1850, I meant to say. So the bottom line to it was, it wasn't as costly of this move as we expected. However, now we're in this band and we're having to move again, it is more costly. But we found some interesting ways to do this. So if we take a look at the bottom, what we realized in the commercial industry came back to us and said, hey, we don't really want that whole band right now, we really don't. And what we want is 25 megahertz of it, the 1755 to 1780, okay? Said, okay, so from that perspective, how do we do this? So we looked at compression, it was the first one. Can I compress to that other part? Hey, well we just got compressed out of 1710 to 1755. So that would be a dual compression. We realized after multiple simulations, a lot of engineers doing it, compression was not possible in the upper part without large operational impacts. And we frankly didn't have the technology to do it right now. The second part of it was, is that okay, what if we move part of our systems and share with the broadcasters? Because I talked about vacating that band. Broadcasters don't want to vacate that. And they have some open spectrum in that arena there. So if we share in that particular band, we can do this as a partnership, move our systems out of the 2025 to 2110 and get into that other band per se, allow the telecom industry, the broadband, if you will, get into the 1755 to 1780, leave a couple systems there, such as our satellites. And just have a geographical sharing, if you will. A geographical sharing, because many of our satellites are in locations where frankly, industry doesn't have a need for a lot of broadband because they're in the middle of nowhere, frankly. So from that perspective, it's a win-win situation. So by taking our most highest price systems, leaving them in that particular band, small chunks of it, compressing parts of them into the upper part of the band and then moving the ones we can't to the 2025 to 2110, allows us to do a very good marriage of industry needs and DOD federal users' needs and have a balance across the board. So this was the plan we came up with. It's never been done before. It is a little bit more risk. It's very different than vacating, but from a DOD perspective, we realize that true vacating of spectrum, if you look at that spectrum reconstruction, it's probably not gonna be possible in the future. It just isn't. We have to think about this in a new way. From an industry perspective, vacating provides the best profit. There's no doubt about it. And I think at this particular time, the combination of the fact that we could move out of the 25 and technology wasn't really ready for us to be comfortable from a risk perspective to actually do dynamic sharing on a large basis, as well as some of the other more spectrally efficient systems. This was the right plan at this particular time. I believe in the future though, we'll have to go to a different approach to this. And I think that technology's going to push that a little bit here. And I think we're about five years off till we see on a large scale basis some capabilities to do this that'll allow us to get more capability out of less spectrum and allow us to have a different approach to this in years to come when they come back for the next share of our particular spectrum, which is already occurring in the five gigahertz band, which I can talk to at the end. Complex solutions show new spectrum strategy is necessary. Okay, so bottom line is we're gonna have to do that in the future. There's no doubt about it. Slide. So what do we see here? This is the strategy development. So from our perspective, we have been too reactive, DOD. That was one of the first things I came in as an aviator coming into the office. I said, we're just too dang reactive. We need to be proactive in this. There's a need from an industry perspective for this particular spectrum. There's a need for DOD. We need to work as a team and be more proactive versus reactive. And this is the pieces of the puzzle. You've got technology. It's driven by technology. But technology's gotta be proven not just at the onesie twosie basis, but on a large scale. When we're talking about that move that I just talked about before, we're talking over 5,000 frequency assignments. 5,000 individual frequency assignments. And trying to make that particular puzzle, Rubik's Cube, if you will, come together is difficult. If you do a test on one or two things for dynamic respectruming, if you will, that's fine, but I need to do it on a large scale basis. And that's the kind of test that we're trying to do right now to allow us to do that. Policy. Policy is a big part of the puzzle. How much risk are we gonna take? What's the right policy to go forward? What is the best needs of our nation as a whole? Not just one agency, but as a whole. The regulatory piece. That is as difficult sometimes, honestly, with all the stakeholders in there as the technology and the policy side. So if I take technology, and all my technology's working and I have it to a specific level and ready to deploy it, if I don't have that regulatory piece fixed, it's gonna be years. So those must go together in conjunction with each other because there's a lot of stakeholders in the regulatory piece. That's something that I didn't fully understand. Being out in the field, making things happen, we don't have as much regulatory attachment. But in the D.C. area where we're doing a large scale type thing for the nation and internationally, internationally, changing a frequency band can take it 10 years, folks. 10 years. So if you think about the regulatory piece, that can be a driver more than the technology can. Spectrum stakeholders, they tie all of this together. And then of course, the economics. You know, the best way probably for us, DOD would have been to move from band A, which is from the 1755 to the 1850 to the 2025 and the 2110. Economics said that's not gonna happen. It's not gonna be good for the nation as a whole. So we did what we did to come up with a much more complex solution, more risk, but at the same time, I think it'll benefit all and it'll make us think about how to do this better next time and it's already been making us more spectrally efficient from the new acquisitions that we're doing on new particular systems that we're buying within DOD. Then you take a look at DOD requirements that drives all that and how we're gonna change those DOD requirements in the future. In other words, how do we get more spectrally efficient while taking care of the taxpayers bottom line at the same time? How do we do this and how do we work hand in hand with industry to make sure some of the systems that we're developing are just as useful for them as they are for us and vice versa. And that's the key from it. So how do we use those systems together knowing that on the battlefield today, whether it's saving people in a situation with a typhoon over in the Philippines or whether it's in a true battlefield in a high intensity conflict, broadband, LTE, data matters in the battlefield. So I think it's important for everybody to understand that this goes back and forth between industry as well as the federal agencies. Slide. Here's our perspective on how we're gonna do this, okay? From our side of the ballpark and we're gonna do a spectrum strategy rollout on the 20th. The official rollout is the 20th of this particular month and it will come out talking about exactly how we're going to approach this in the future. So the first part of it is we have to have flexible spectrum assets. We see that as the future when we watch how technology's moving forward. We think that's where we're gonna go. We are not there yet technologically wise. We're getting there very quickly. We're not there regulatory wise. We're working through that as well. I think everybody agrees that that's the way of the future and that right now it's very clear to us after this last spectrum discussion that that's the way to the future. Regulatory adaptability, that goes hand in hand with flexible spectrum access. We are going to have to think through how we do business in the future if we're going to use every single piece of that spectrum correctly. Operational agility, that's gonna be key to us. So for example, because I have a system out there that is only tunable, that satellite that we talked about at one frequency I can't obviously replace an orbit. That can't be in the future. I have to put something on orbit then that has multiple capabilities of frequencies or a software defined radio where I can switch to a different band and not cause that problem to have to change it out on orbit. So that's an example of where we're at but there's a lot more examples of where a UAV which can be saving thousands of lives in some place such as again the Philippines or what we saw in Tomodachi which when we talked about in Japan when they had the wave come through there the bottom line to it is depending upon the spectrum means of that country we have to be able to switch to a different band immediately so that we can actually control that UAV and have it in a different band. So that's frequency agility. It may very well be just two receivers or two transmitters in there but where we're going is more the software to find radio of where we say okay we're in this band today, boom. Let's go into this particular band and work it because in country X, country Y that's open and we can use that to save lives. Slide please. So this is where we're going. This is why it's so important for us to be proactive. I'm really scared about a Domino's Pizza delivery to my house this particular way but he's the one that put it on there and talked about it, the driverless vehicle those are reality today in different parts of the country. They really are and they talk to the safety of life piece of spectrum whether you are the FAA flying airplanes the spectral piece to it whether you are the Google car or you're looking at that flying car up in the upper right hand corner honestly I thought that as a kid and I'm dating myself here I thought for sure I'd be flying one of those things when I was a little bit old instead I'm flying a B2 so okay I got it. And then on the bottom of the space book I have my middle daughter wants to be the first person on Mars and she's adamant about it, she's 15 years old and she's pushing hard toward that so I see where our capabilities are going as far as the amount of data that we're getting and the ability if you will to do things from a theoretical perspective it's now important that we take all that data and actually manufacture to build those kind of things I think that's the next great step that we're gonna see that change if you will in the whole fabric of our nation and the world and I think that's one of them right there, slide. Here's where the tenants of it are we're gonna have to do more sharing in the future we understand that we gotta do it right that's gonna require technology and regulatory piece and policy and we're working hard to make that happen okay technological innovation in there that's the key to that particular piece culture change, culture change with everybody all federal agencies as well as industry we have to understand that from our perspective from a DOD perspective this is harder it's more problematic and when you're focused on 10 different things all over the world literally things are happening every single day from a DOD perspective and you're worried about the next threat to our nation this sometimes doesn't have the same priority but it does matter from a lot of perspectives out there and it makes us more capable if we do it right and that's the key it makes us more capable if we do it right I think I skipped one up there partnerships and collaboration we're not doing this without partnerships and collaboration I think there's a person in the audience Dana back there that actually talked to me more about the public private partnerships I think that's what we're doing with some of the folks right now today that we have discussed because I think that's a key to a lot of our future out there proactive versus reactive I can't even jump on that anymore proactive has to occur on both sides versus reactive, global there's a global context to this that I'm not sure everybody understands I'm not sure I understood this from a DOD and I would argue that some parts of industry don't fully understand the impacts of that particular piece to it but I think it also gives them a market too so I think that's an important part of it roadmap with near midterm and far term goal deliverables okay what can we do today what midterm and what far term and we made it a conscious choice that dynamic sharing for example in this last spectrum change wasn't available to us from both a technological side as well as a regulatory side but in the next change I think it will be and I think that's a critical point here governance oversight and accountability this has to be a team effort and we have to get rid of old think if you will as to everybody stating their position and staking a line in the sand about it and we have to stretch all of our thought processes on this I think it's good for all of us in this particular arena cooperative test bed the last part of it's the cooperative test bed we'll see if I can say it correctly here so this is gonna be the national advanced spectrum and communication test network one of the things we learned out of a recent issue that we had on this particular spectrum is how do we test something we've got someone from industry saying this particular thing we have somebody from DOD saying this and we have other folks out there experts how about we have a clearing house of test beds that we can actually work through that we can actually have an environment where we have the test environments available to us we can do a pay for fee where they can come through and they can validate all the particular requirements that they have validate all the capabilities they have so we can roll these things out and we can all agree at the end game that yes this test results are actually the right test results and we can make decisions based upon that and that was one of the perspectives we had out there so that was the final piece of that slide please okay I'm gonna throw one slide up there at the end that I have up here because we're gonna see this in the 20th I'll open this up here now one more slide board that's gonna be our strategy that we're gonna have here it's called the call to action it's revolution in an evolutionary way I'd actually like to change that to spectrum evolution in a revolutionary way because I think it's a revolutionary way to think about it versus the way we're going in that so that's the perspective on that that will be later this week that's part one all that is is a visionary piece what we're looking at now is the implementation of that so that's gonna be an electromagnetic spectrum if you will integrated process team a lot of DOD speak there that bottom line to it is actually makes this into implementable action so there's a vision and then there's implementable action and that will be done with all of our services that will be done with all the departments within DOD to try to say how do we be proactive versus reactive in the future that is the key what we're trying to do on this particular one I can give you example after example and that's all I'm open for questions however you want to do I think weapons would be great okay we can just ask the caveat you can't ask him about the strategy because it hasn't been rolled out it hasn't been rolled out in fact I yeah I can't nice to see the cover though that's the cover and could you identify yourself on your own we could go back one slide so we can do some black Paul Kirby with TR Daily you actually had one of your slides which is why I'm asking it it had the timeline for implementation of the strategy what's the timeline for implementation that's the implementation so what you have is the implementation strategy our plan is to go through and finish it up on a six month timeline to say okay what we do with DOD and maybe I'll back up a little bit at DOD when we build out something typically when there's something new we go to all the services and we go throughout the department and we say okay this is our strategy where we're going to think it as a vision document to get people on the same sheet of music to say okay does this make sense to you does this make sense to you and we walk right through this from that particular perspective once we go ahead and adjudicate that and literally that can take months of talking back and forth getting people to understand okay this perspective that perspective and we come to a common agreement and consensus in that that comes out the second part is the implementation plan okay that's where the rubber meets the road how are you going to do the vision that you just came out so you sit down and then you ink it out and you figure out exactly how you're going to do it and I'll give an example of that that we did was the secure mobile commercial mobile comms this area we call secure mobile comms we did a strategy first and then we did an implementation as to how we're going to walk this throughout the services so what would you start looking at in here how do you do acquisition differently from that perspective that would be one primary of it how do you spectrum when we're doing operations differently I mean you can walk right through this and then that's where the rubber meets the road and we have to work through individual pieces on what makes sense and what's good for the department so the six months is the short the near term implementation if you will because you talked about near, mid and long term right I would call that that would be near to midterm near to midterm and then once that's done then it has to be fully adjudicated than an implementation plan which you could think of as part B to a vision if you will or to the strategy does that make sense hi I'm Pat host with the fence daily general what international partners are you guys working on when you're reallocating the bands and also these new bands do you want to move DOD into are they protected or anti-jam resistant in any way obviously I'm not a spectrum expert so I just thought I'd ask that okay I can talk to all that sure so the perspective is two parts I think to your question one of them is when we're working with the international partners we do that through the ITU if you do the international telecommunication union if you will and our front for that would be State Department primarily DOD is a part of the team FCC is a big part of the team that we have here and all of those folks go forward and that's how we work for we have a DOD position if you will and then I should say a US position and a DOD position that feeds into the US position and then we go forward on that and that's how it's presented now from a partnership from a DOD perspective when you go into some place whether it's when you're working with a country for rebuilding like Afghanistan or Iraq whether you're working overseas in the Philippines or in Japan when you go to those countries you work with the country's governments there and they'll be a partner for the local area for certain kinds of communications per se that don't interfere with let's say the satellite part I think the second part of your question was about the anti-jam the frequencies that we're going into sometimes are let's say for example we go from 1755 to 1850 to 2025 to 2110 what you're talking about in there is not a grand jump in frequency so some of the same capabilities apply from an anti-jam it does take some technological change but you do get the same capabilities what we're required to do is to certify that we can get the same either through technology the same capabilities and the same operational allowances if you will within the new spectrum and that's the certification that we do so the answer to your question in short is yes how's that okay please thank you Michelin Tabash, European Space Agency generally you said you were going to say a few words about the five gigahertz band I'd be interested to know what DOD's position is on the discussions that are going on to open it up to more mobile ground based users thank you so the DOD position is just a simple position the US position is not the DOD position so my comment to that would be premature from that particular aspect but we're working through it and we're working through it from the perspective of how do we do this from a proactive perspective on this how do we make sure that we have the right technologies how do we make sure the safety of life systems if you will are managed at that particular point and how do we take care of our partners and that includes the partners in Europe as well and make sure that we balance that so that's the perspective at it and at the same time how do we get technology to move faster to allow us to do these things more easy because that band is a very difficult band there's no doubt about it no matter where you are in the globe from that perspective in there and so I think that's an important part of it going back though to a comment the 2025 to 2110 band where DOD's jumping into one of the reasons why we like that band is because of the fact that overseas wise it is not a broadband band so from that perspective it marries up very well with other systems that if we went into other countries we would be able to use that particular frequency without interference from host country systems so that was why it was a very useful band from our perspective and actually better than the 1755 to 1850 band from our perspective in there which goes back to the five gigahertz band we have to be aligned as a world if you will on that particular band by virtue of the interferences that you're talking about because of some of those things so that's a clear part of the discussion that we're having that I can guarantee you on that and it would be premature for me to comment on it even though I probably worked on it for about two days of my weekend this weekend how about that so they're just on it some of the guys are chuckling here because they were with me on that okay Hi, Mike Clouser with Fujitsu so cyberspace wires and routers aside are basically flashes of light and spectrum how does your spectrum way ahead merge with the department's cyber way ahead? Well I think electromagnetic spectrum that's all one, okay that's a piece in part they go hand in hand together so when you talked about light you're talking about optical communications out there as well that's one way to get out of RF spectrum and give it to somebody that's one example of it the cyber aspect, the electronic warfare all of that together are one part of it so that's why that carpet that I kind of showed in there that kind of weaves everything through that's the critical point if we don't get it right whether you're talking about electronic warfare cyber, radios, optical everything you can possibly think of we are going to end up causing some kind of a incompatibility issue at its best or a safety of life issue so all of those are connected to include the cyber aspects Surprise thing about Yvonne I won't comment on that I have some but so it actually has been probably the spectrum, the radios part the communication part of it it's actually been a very fascinating part of it because to be honest in the B2 realm if you think about it some of the communication pieces are the most important part when you're flying across the world so after 9-11 when we flew across the world one of our number one limitations was the communication piece to make sure that we had it right that the right people we were going against and not doing the wrong thing so the comms became our probably our weak point and then it became our strength by fixing all of it so I think that's kind of the aspect of where I got connected to this and it's been on the ride ever since well thank you that was a lot of data and it was some good stuff here so all that was good what we're going to do now is turn to our panel of experts to go through this I'll introduce them very briefly their bios are on our website where we'll have some additional information but then I probably will do this in the wrong order but we have Julius Knapp who's the chief of the FCC office of engineering and technology one of the nation's leading experts on the technology part which we heard about we have Peter Tenhula a senior advisor at NTIA he and I go back as partners in crimes in this for a crime for a long time and so he's probably reluctant to get involved again in another CSS effort we have Stacey Black who's the VP for Federal Regulatory External and Legislative Affairs between federal and legislative that would be enough to keep anybody busy but we appreciate your taking some time to come and talk and finally we have John Hunter from T-Mobile who's the director for Spectrum Policy what I'd like to do is ask each of our panelists to give some brief remarks and we'll start with Stacey and just go down the row and then we'll take questions from the audience so Stacey please good morning I guess I'd like to just sort of limit my remarks to the role that procurement's going to take in the mission that the general talked about I think procurement's going to be a big deal the technology is rolling along as he pointed out in his keynote and for example I don't know if you noticed in one of his slides he had an acronym called LMR Land Mobile Radio which stands which is actually an application for push to talk and in the old days this technology has been around for almost 70 years and it's gone from two radios that have just pushed to talk released to listen all the way now to where we have an actual device that is a broadband radio that also happens to have a push to talk application writing over it so it could be an iPhone that does exactly the same thing that this radio that required its own dedicated frequency and is used in theater or is used on bases and we see as a company that push to talk is a what I would call low hanging fruit in terms of being moved to a broadband type of network base communications for support communications mobile to mobile or machine to machine types of communications are great applications where they're not mission critical but they are logistical in nature and it's a great opportunity to move them to a more of a broadband environment now in some cases it could be a commercial broadband network in some cases it could be a private broadband broadband network such as what New York City police department did recently with their nice one network but the another application that that would what was recently announced in army magazine last month is what was called the combat training center upgrade for their it's their range communication system and this has been installed in Fort Irwin and Fort Polk and what this system does basically it's like a laser tag system where they have people on rifles and pistols and tanks and things like that and it's actually like a laser tag type system and they've actually installed a 4G LTE network on these bases to actually communicate and put all of this telemetry and voice communications in a coordinated effort and as I said this this is all explained in the U.S. Army magazine but just to give you some of the ideas about it it replaced two legacy landmobile radio type systems for range data management and range communications and they actually built towers in these two areas with 4G technology covering 95% of the training area and now they're starting to use 4G devices so as I mentioned before an iPhone you know it has like six bands it has Wi-Fi it has GPS it has Bluetooth this $500 device is now could be used in place of $1,000 device that was application specific for these combat training systems and as a result of that they doubled the number of instrumented entities in the combat training center battlefields 6,000 dismounted entities 5,000 vehicle entities 5,000 voice communication systems 350 observer coach trainer devices and 1,650 live fire target environment engagement systems so here's a great example of where DOD has embraced commercial technology brought their costs down and actually started working in a public private environment with a commercial LTE broadband provider to be able to accomplish their combat training mission in these two bases so I think this is a great start but as I said it takes a new it takes a new way of thinking in terms of procurement because now you're going from a very application specific building a very expensive one-of-a-kind device to now using a commercial off-the-shelf system that maybe have more of an operational expense as opposed to a one-time very expensive capital expense but it's going in the right way in my opinion, thanks. Hi, I'll focus my comments I think on what the general talked about there with specifically around collaboration and partnerships I think that is so critical I think we've learned a lot over the years me personally I've been involved in the AWS clearing relocation effort for well over seven years now and I can tell you we learned a lot through AWS one working with DOD and the other federal agencies and trying to assess their needs and balance their priorities with market realities of what we're trying to roll out I think through that effort we continued that on and as many of you know we have the CSMAC working group process I think you know put forward an unprecedented level of collaboration that you're seeing we learned certainly a lot from that you know, mirative systems I think you're going to find that we talk about 1755 to 1780 it's going to be an amalgam of relocation some sharing but in the end I think when we go pre-auction it's the collaboration making sure that everything gets set up and then you're going to operationalize the use of the spectrum and as we saw in AWS one we certainly had some challenges but I think you've got to work through those challenges respect the requirements on both sides and even today we still deal with some of those issues but in the end it's going to be the collaboration and working with the agencies that's going to make this whole thing work for both sides so thank you I had a great talk but General Wheeler gave it I would say that facetiously but the important point is we're all pulling in the same direction and I think I have never seen closer alignment between the thinking on both the federal side and the non-federal side with the appreciation that we're going to need to find ways to accommodate all of the innovative ideas and the growth that's coming you know, people will talk and challenge the need for more spectrum and then I ask them what would you do this morning is they all check their smart phones they use their key fobs to get into the car they're checking at home with a wireless baby monitor and so forth and some of the G-Wiz stuff that we saw on the screen you know is coming the driverless cars maybe a little bit further out but things like M Health you get up in the morning and your device is basically checking how are you doing today? Do you need to go in and get a checkup? So this technology is really enabling all sorts of new applications that are going to improve our lives and advance the economy I'm just going to say a few words about the tech talk on the bands and what we've been learning as we've gone through this process so you've heard reference a few times the 1755 just for some of you who may not be as focused on all the details why this is important it's a piece that sits adjacent to one of the major wireless broadband bands AWS-1 we already have in our portfolio on the non-federal side spectrum that would match up with a companion piece to expand that band using this band that you've been hearing about 1755 to 1780 it was a long and hard road I think for everybody and we still have a ways to go there was a lot of work looking at a broader piece the 1755 to 1850 piece in the end I think we made a decision that the difficulties of the reallocation and the expense when compared to the benefits of just the lower piece really sent us down this path but it's not an easy path as General Wheeler mentioned there's a need to transition systems out of that spectrum and some of there'll be some systems that remain and we have to find ways to we've already identified ways to share with what will be there for some time part of the solution there was sharing with a band at 2025 to 2110 that's used for electronic news gathering on the non-federal side but it's not used constantly and so there's space there basically for the services to share and there's been great cooperation between the broadcasters and the Department of Defense in working up a way to share that spectrum as part of the solution so what we have ahead of us is really working on the transition plans and making sure that all the parties understand how things are going to be shared what the transitions are going to look like over time second band I'll talk about is 3.5 gigahertz and I agree again completely with General Wheeler that people view the spectrum below 3 gigahertz as the prime beachfront property and maybe above 3 gigahertz there's a few pebbles or stones the federal side had identified 100 megahertz of spectrum that would be made available for non-federal use so what's there? The biggest thing that people focus on is offshore very high powered Navy radars so the sharing was identified as having exclusion areas along the coast that were rather large but this was all focused on ubiquitous wide area coverage wireless systems the real issue in many cases for wireless broadband is capacity and so people started focusing on small cells low power cells could be put in places where you really need to pick up capacity you already have coverage but you just don't have enough space once things turn there there was a lot more interest on the non-federal side and it kind of changes the analysis that was done previously so following on from the PCAST report which really talked about the model we have in TV White Space of using the database access to control the access of devices to spectrum PCAST suggested building on that model with a new generation of smart technology and focusing they identified 1,000 megahertz 2,700 to 3,700 and one of the bands that we have been focusing on for that has been a 3.5 this 100 megahertz so the FCC has proposed to do something new building on the White Space model with something more sophisticated through a spectrum access system that could control access to the spectrum by devices either through a priority access or generalized access to increase the efficient use and open it up to as many players as possible so that proceeding is still active and we're working with NTIA and the Department of Defense about how we can continue to protect the systems that they've got in that space and then lastly you heard a little bit about 5 gigahertz and so there's a long story there too. This is one of the primary unlicensed bands used for wifi so when you go into the store shelves you'll see 2.4 gigahertz and then you'll see 5 gigahertz so there's already spectrum for wifi at 5 gigahertz and it shares today with federal radar systems. Going into the 2003 World Radio Conference the US had advocated a model based on dynamic frequency selection or DFS was brand new, it was accepted by the world, we came back, found out that it took a little bit more work than we anticipated so why is this so hard? Because you're searching for signals that you can't always identify and just looking for a particular level to tell you whether something is there or not often is not sufficient. So it was really tough and there were points along the way where it wasn't clear we were gonna come up with an answer. So now fast forward today, if your wifi technology has continued to evolve there's a new standard that you're seeing on the store shelves, the 802.11 AC standard, what's so magic about it? It can offer data speeds of above one gigabit per second and it uses channel bandwidths of 160 megahertz in some cases so it basically needs more space. There are a couple of bands that have been identified for expansion, one sits in the middle, 5350 to 5470, the difficulty is that there are different kinds of radar systems in there and the techniques that were used before can't be used without some adjustment or some other change to share with the systems that are in there. And you've already heard the question from the audience, there's also the Earth Exploration Satellite System in there. So there's a lot of work that we have to do to make this happen. I tend to be an optimist, when you get technical people together trying to solve a problem, you often can come up with a solution. Maybe not all the time, but more often than not you figure out a way to do it. So I'll stop there, I just would add that as we go forward, we're going to continue to have the exclusive use in the unlicensed models, but as we're searching for more spectrum sharing is really going to be the focus and trying to figure out how we develop techniques to evaluate both from the analytical and testing side, these new sharing methods is going to be a real challenge for us as we go ahead so that we don't stand in the way of these things coming out or testing processes have to be at least as fast as the technology's rolling out. Thanks. Great, thank you, Peter. Thank you, Jim, thanks for having me. Thanks for the reunion and looking back at the fond memories that the last time I was at the old location, I guess, at CSIS, I was working with Paul Colotsy on the spectrum policy task force at the FCC. And so back in 2003, I did pull up the report from there and a lot of this kind of interesting to go back and revisit in salient, and I recommend everybody do that, take a look at it. So Paul and I came over and briefed former secretary, Slicinger and Mr. Galvin who are leading this effort at CSIS to do this report. Jim invited us over. I can't remember if that was before or after we had run into each other at our kid's school, but we also had that in common. But I went back and just pulled it up. We're in the back there and kind of look at the recommendations and it's amazing how these things come around. First recommendation was White House oversight. Well, since then, I think there's been at least three presidential memos on spectrum and a new spectrum policy team established within the White House. Another recommendation was a spectrum advisory board. And at NTIA, we have a commerce spectrum management advisory committee, one of the members sitting here in the front row, Jennifer. You know, so I think that serves the bill. There's also an interagency group called the PPSG policy plan steering group, I believe it's called. General Wheeler participates in that with Terry Dekai, the CIO from DOD and all the other federal agencies with spectrum. So there's lots of interagency collaboration. Reinforce the international functions was another one that we had a little discussion about that, how that's maybe still in the works. But I won't go into that. Research support for spectrum innovation, that was one of the things that struck the chord. And I think that is a key focus and that's one of the things that NTIA is working on with in conjunction with National Institute for Standard Technology at Commerce Department and NIST. We're putting together Center for Advanced Communications, which, and General Wheeler talked about the NASTAN initiative, which is would be under that Center for Advanced Communications, so that's being implemented. And last but not least, I think the recommendation from CSIS was a national spectrum strategy. And wow, that's kind of interesting that a couple of days before DOD announces their strategy, which I think is important that it's be technology-driven and then as some of these guys mentioned, centered around collaborative efforts and spectrum sharing. So it's interesting, these things don't die easily and these recommendations, even though they were made a long time ago, ultimately, ultimately, somebody picks up and implements them. One other point I just wanna touch upon regarding incentives and spectrum and then how incentives apply to the federal agencies. For those of you who stayed home Thursday and Friday because of the snow or if you didn't, you missed it, there was an announcement that came out of the White House, the Office of Science and Technology Policy, OSTP, about a new report authored by the Science and Technology Policy Institute was a survey of a variety of incentives or approaches, recommendations for federal agencies to relinquish or share spectrum. So the spectrum policy team in the White House put out a federal register notice seeking comment on that report and I'd encourage folks, I think it's about a 30-day cycle to take a look at that report, it's quite lengthy but very comprehensive, it hits on all the major areas that would encourage or facilitate sharing, relinquishing of spectrum by federal agencies. Includes things like user fees, spectrum innovation fund, even applying a kind of spectrum property rights regime for federal agencies. And the kind of old fashioned command and control approaches to improving efficiency for agencies that have over the years been proposed by various documents, papers and things like that. So I'd encourage folks to take a look at that report, respond to the questions in the federal register notice. One of the questions that's most interesting kind of personally to me is the practicalities of some of the incentives, federal agencies are a different animal than the companies that are on the other end of the table. The things that drive them, what I've learned in the last two years I've been back in the government at NTIA is their incentive is to perform their missions in the best way possible. So how can we get them to, and I think General Wheeler talked about a lot of ways that can be done through better technology, obviously, through money doesn't necessarily translate into the mission, especially if the folks that are doing those missions don't have control over that money. So what are the ways, in a property rights type scheme where you're given agencies more freedom, more autonomy over how they use the spectrum how they control the spectrum, can they sell it, can they buy it, can they divide it up, just like the private entities. I kind of reminded that when I worked on the FCC spectrum, the secondary markets policies, even the FCC did not grant secondary market authority to all users of the spectrum. It was really limited where there was exclusive use of the spectrum. In the federal side, that doesn't exist. There's really, there's no one single agency that does not have exclusive rights to the spectrum. It's all shared among the agencies or between federal and non-federal organizations. So I'd encourage those who are interested in this area to provide views on some of those incentives and those ideas. Thanks. Thanks, Peter. He reminds me that one of the lessons I learned the last time I did spectrum, it was a lot more fun doing RF and EW, but spectrum, the lesson I learned was you really need patience. So we are making progress here. And when you think about where we were 10 years ago, we're in a lot better place, but I want to challenge the panel with a question. I'm not sure who would be fair to start with. Thinking about where we want to be in 10 years, what should the spectrum environment look like in 10 years or a bit longer? What's our goal here for where we want to end up? Maybe you could start with that. Stacey, do you want to go first? We can circle around and do you last, too. It's a good question. Well, I think that over the next 10 years, there's going to be a lot of new technology that's going to be introduced. Obviously, there will be the spectrum sharing technology, and I think you'll see a lot more like the 3.5 initiative, where there's the use of the shared access databases and things like that. That'll be very important. There actually may be some software to find radios that are cost-effective enough to be consumer-based. But then also, I think that you're going to see more smart networks, and that's where, whether it's even in a Wi-Fi environment where everything is connected to a control plane, that way, there is some sort of master smarts that is actually controlling the communications across a variety of platforms, and that will, in effect, make the communications a lot more efficient, and I think that's what we'll see in the next two to ten decade. Yeah, I think I added that. I've said this before in a number of forums, but I think the spectrum sharing, certainly it's an evolution, not a revolution. I think, as the general pointed out, some of the technology there is there today, and we're seeing great strides with those advancements. But by and large, there are a number of challenges that we have to work through with regard to spectrum sharing. But in the next 10 years, absolutely, I think we are going to start seeing more spectrum sharing type technologies, particularly given the 3.5 band that Julius talked about. I think there's concepts of databases, sensing, I think on the five gigahertz band, the challenges that you have with .11AC and the ability to a sense of where a wider bandwidth can be problematic in trying to figure out how you would make that work. So I think there are gonna be other types of applications with five gigahertz, if it's not DFS, then maybe a database is more appropriate. But I think, moving forward with, I think the 1755 to 1780, I think we are gonna see some sharing there with the satellite operations geographic based but then as we move forward, I think from an industry perspective, we're gonna get an opportunity to showcase some of the features that LTE has to offer. And in fact, we're going to be doing a demo with one of our vendors and we've invited DOD folks to participate in that demo where we're gonna share that next month. Thank you. So in the end, I think the goal is that we're getting as much out of this space as we possibly can. That the folks who come up with innovative ideas, new industries have that opportunity to develop and implement them. From a technical standpoint, we often will talk about the spectrum below three gigahertz but when you really start to get down into the weeds of what's there and you start to understand that all of the low hanging fruit so to speak and it wasn't so low to begin with has been picked. And so you're down to, I mentioned before 2,700 to 3,700 and you start to look, well, great, what's there? The weather radar says that you look at on television every night to see the storms coming through. That's what's in there. Well, let's just move them someplace else. You can't do that because of the physical characteristics that they need to be able to do what they do have to be in these parts of the spectrum. So you say, well, how do we share with these things? First it matters where they are and most of them are in places where people are. And so this isn't the classic geographic separation where the one system is out in the middle of the desert and all we have to do is stay 200 miles away. We're down to doing things like, well, can I operate when the radar's pointing in the opposite direction? And I can tell you that it's incredibly complicated and hard and it points to the need when you start going down this path of detailed analysis and testing because we're past the simple stuff of, well, we're just gonna reallocate the spectrum and the new systems going in. We're really kind of at the cutting edge of technology and what can be done to gain access to and value out of that space. Well, to look ahead 10 years I need to look back 20 and look at the transitions that we've kind of gone through and the trends that I personally have gotten scarred from but the improvements that have been made more, it's on the lawyer, I guess, on the panel. I'll talk about the regulatory and the process. It still takes an awful long time. I mean, the process and throwing the international component to it and you really got a long time. So I would like to see in the next 10 years some improvements in that process and the way that can happen is really through what's been started fairly recently is more and more kind of the public-private partnership collaboration approaches to regulation. Get the issues on the table as early as possible. Get the folks in the room as early as possible. Hash out these issues where there's differences, figure out a way to resolve them. So it's really about what kind of process improvements can we make, what kind of institutional things need to be reexamined and we're starting to do that. We're creating these new, I talked about a couple of the groups and organizations, the new one being the Center for Advanced Communications on the research and development side. The testing and evaluation aspect of that is very, very, very crucial. So to make leaps and bounds towards that aspect of the technology would be great. Because looking back at the various transitions from 2G to 3G to 4G, some of it was technologically driven, but some of it was driven by the fact that, well, you didn't need to come back to the regulator and get permission to go from one generation to the next. You did need to come back to get the spectrum. So if there's a way to figure out a way, sharing spectrum, access to spectrum, improving the process for that, that's what I'd like to see. Sure. So Peter set me up for one thing. I wanted to mention, because I agree with him, the processes today take a long time and often are frustrating for all of the parties. I've seen things gone on two and three years arguing about whether an out of van emissions limit should be 10 dB tighter or not. Not always, but often if we get the parties sitting down together and the technical people, they'll work it out. I often use the example of the medical body area networks, which was seeking to share spectrum with aeronautical telemetry systems. And for two years, it seemed that each side would basically ping the other about its technical analysis. And once we got them sitting together in a room, it took some time, it was more than a year, but they kind of figured out a way that with a combination of operational controls and coordination and technical limits, the two could share the same spectrum. And so on Friday, we released, I should say, Diane Cornell, who's headed our process reform group, we released a report on process reforms at the FCC, including some of these ideas that Peter just talked about, about trying to find alternative ways to address some of these issues that come up. So we invited public comment on that and I think it was, don't hold me to it, the end of March that we set as a deadline for comment. So I just encourage you, since this is really a collective matter for the entire community to take a look at what's in the report and of course if you have ideas that you think might be alternatives or better than what we've got out there, our ears are open, thanks. Let me ask one inspired by those remarks, which is about the international side, which we've heard a fair amount today. Where do we stand in terms of other countries thinking on how we move forward on spectrum? What do you see happening at the next work? Where do you think the US is most effective in driving an international process? So I know that's sort of a general one, it's a little off topic, but given how much the international theme has come up and given that we do need to coordinate, I wonder if people want to give it a try and maybe this time we'll start with Peter and then work down the row. It's definitely not my area of expertise and I'm more an observer on this but there are definitely, cadre of very dedicated folks involved in this and that's where collaboration does occur, to come up with US positions especially. But also I think, but in my experience looking at other countries and seeing how they've evolved and typically you see them kind of just following the lead of the US. Other times maybe they're driving some of the things. Like I would say spectrum sharing is definitely taking off globally the concept and various areas, like Europe has really been focused on kind of a licensed approach to sharing, like licensed shared access or authorized shared access of the concepts that they're exploring. So if back in the old days, you looked at within the United States, the States as kind of the laboratories for experimenting with new approaches, it's now different countries or regions around the world that are experimenting with different ways of providing for spectrum access that we ought to kind of learn from. I mean the UK for example, experimented for a long time and developed a spectrum fees for their government users and how they manage the government. So we've looked at that, the report I mentioned from STIPI looks into that experience as well and evaluates that. So we look at the other countries for laboratories but also as collaborators too, because this is like General Wheeler said, it's a global spectrum environment. And pretty much you need to be on the same page. But at the same time, let others to kind of take the lead and see if it works out and maybe follow with that. That's a good approach too. So at the technical level, there's a lot of work going on internationally, universities and so forth. So you go to a conference that Peter and I, I'm sure there's others here go to, called Die Span, which has been going on 10 years. 2005 yeah. Yeah, it's a bit surprising how much work is going on in the dynamic spectrum access around the world. And the normal processes, you first see these things in the laboratories and in the universities and then assuming they still have merit, they bubble their way up through the policy ranks. So I'll just focus on a couple of things. TV white space in the database model that we adopted here in the United States. It's been embraced already by a number of countries around the world that are deploying systems either on a trial basis, experiment someplace operational. In many of these countries, they actually have more white space than the United States. And if you're trying to send signals out for broadband at a distance, it's ideal. So it's an instance where something that was born in the United States is catching hold in other parts of the world. The international process is slow to change. And I think it's understandable. So while at times it can be frustrated why isn't it moving so fast, you have to keep in mind there's huge investments in the systems that are there today. And we should be making sure that those systems are protected. The classic model has been the kind of stovepipe allocations, that's the way the international table of allocations is set up. And so when you come to an operator or people who have a, or stakeholders in a block of spectrum and say, we've got a great idea, we're just gonna put somebody in who'll get out of your way. There's naturally first reaction of well, that puts my system at risk. And it's not clear to me that it is actually going to work. And then of course, in the end, how does this, other than making the community better, how does this benefit me? So I think it's going to be a long process internationally where when people start to see benefits to their economies from access to these systems, and that the technology also works, it will work its way into the international process. And in fact, I think there's been a task group that's been looking at software defined radio and cognitive radio. So it is getting more attention internationally. Yeah, I just want to, I think from a commercial perspective, we kind of look at this in many cases, it can be like watching paint drive. I mean, it really does take a long time. And I certainly appreciate all the work that goes into teeing up these bands from Mobile Broadband. And I go back to 2000 when a number of bands were teed up in the WRC and assessed for Mobile Broadband. And subsequent to that, I think with the President's 500 megahertz initiative, the work that's ongoing at NTIA, going through the process of evaluating each of those bands, it is a lengthy process. And so, the FCC has the tough job of trying to balance the federal needs with the commercial requirements. And so that is certainly difficult. I think on the technical level, in preparation for this upcoming work, there's a number of joint technical working groups that are working to assess a number of bands that are going to be put on the agenda. But the challenges are abroad. And I think it's going to take a lot of work on both sides. And Peter's right, the US does lead, I believe the world in this regard, other countries tend to follow our lead on it. So hopefully the process will speed up a little bit more. And I'll just add to the fact that the international standards community and the role that they play in this is so critical. I mean, carriers by their very nature are looking for the greatest economies of scale that they can get. And if you can get bands that are harmonized globally, that makes it our device manufacturer is much more easier to build devices that are affordable. And so I think this is one of the things that we all have to be, especially those as we go into work and things like that. We, the participants need to be thinking through how do we make sure that we've got harmonized bands and obviously the least expensive devices that we can get. That's a pretty robust agenda there. Let me see if anyone out in the audience has a question for our panelists. Go ahead, please. Thank you, Caroline Branden from Georgetown. Question for any of the speakers on the panel. Has there been any discussion or evaluation of the ability to use some of the funding in the Spectrum Relow Fund for some of the R&D and research related to determining the answer can certain things be cleared versus what are the best sharing opportunities? Yes. Oh, you wanna, yeah. There's been several proposals to expand the use of those funds. I mean, why not reinvest auction proceeds into the development of new and better technologies that totally make sense, right? Right now, the Spectrum Relocation Fund that was created by the Commercial Spectrum Enhancement Act 2004 as amended more recently in 2012 only covers costs for relocation or sharing. Those costs that are covered did expand a little bit to cover like planning and those, some research and development. But the recommendations by the President's Council for Advancement of Science Technology, PCAST, I think that's right, the CSMAC recommendations. Others have suggested, probably the CSIS report from 2003 too, I don't remember. Suggested some kind of Spectrum Innovation Fund and there's legislation going this way as well that where the auction proceeds would go into more broader reinvestment into that kind of stuff. So the idea has been out there. It's just a matter of really getting it, obviously would probably require legislation every time you're moving money from one purpose to another, you're gonna have to get Congress to bless that. So if there's other ways to do it, they'd be fine too. But yeah, it's one of those ideas that's been around. It's just a matter of implementing it because there's lots of demands for money. And that goes to the point, kind of really one of these, we talked about the process and stuff like that. These processes are such a drag sometime on resources and it's finding the resources to get these things done. Whether it's do a test to go out and conduct tests to do some modeling, simulation. I mean, I was talking to a company the other day about a really large company, how long it took them to get approval to buy some kind of software package to do some modeling. I was like, oh my God. And this is the band, for one of the bands of the future that they had a lot of stake in. So it's not just the government. It's a lot of folks that are hurting for money and resources. So any way to kind of filter that back into R&D testing, that would be great. Anyone else? No, I'll go ahead, John. Yeah, I just want to add, I think with regard to doing the testing and the studies, I think from an industry perspective, we actually embarked on a monitoring activity to assess the type of emissions that were encumbered in specific bands and figure out what impact would those emissions have on an incumbent DOD aircraft. And so I think the results from that analysis were very telling. And we're hopeful to begin the process of sharing that with the regulatory community and DOD alike. And hopefully as a way to move things forward with regard to how can you better share between federal and non-federal assets. Thanks. Well, I was just going to follow up on that by saying, I think that's a great idea of the idea of using the SRF for this might actually be a good input to the whole spectrum incentive RFI. Because if you think about the, that there are today are disincentives for an agency to do testing and do expend the resources to try to figure out how to either move out of a band or to share it. But a case in point, going back to the Combat Training Center example that I gave before, I mean, there have been money available for the US Army to have done their testing. That program might have accelerated itself twofold easily, but it took a while. But the point is that it was still a proposal that was brought to them, that they finally were able to test and get behind it and now they're implementing it. But that's, again, it's probably a way of getting around the disincentives for relocating or sharing. Jennifer, please. Can we get that? Jennifer Warren, Lockheed Martin. I guess my question is mostly for Peter, but others as well. So the leadership that DOD is providing and putting forward this new strategy, are you seeing that reflected in any other federal agency? Because as you and General Wheeler noted, there really is no exclusive DOD spectrum or very little. So it's shared with other agencies that may have significant infrastructure investment or operations. Thank you. Yes. Oh, okay. On behalf of the federal agencies, large is also reexamining. It's kind of a strategy along these lines. So and obviously it plays in the lines tightly with what is gonna be announced later this week. So I won't go into any kind of the details on that to not get out in front of that. But again, like I mentioned before, it really should center around technology and innovation and but also collaboration. And so it's about, it's continuing to what we've kind of been doing in the sense of bringing the agencies to the table and being on the same page, seeing how they can work together like in the example with regard to the one of the band, 1755, law enforcement surveillance activities happens across several federal and state agencies. So is there a way that they can collaborate on developing the next generation of law enforcement surveillance applications and technologies. So it's really about getting the right people in the room talking to each other and a strategy really is, we're a tactic, more like of using those kinds of crowd sourcing, for lack of a better term, among agencies and the commercial side. So that's really kind of focused strategy that I'd like to see. And there are definitely other agencies, I mean, there's other agencies that are very interested like the Center for Advanced Communications that we've been developing. So they'll be all participating in that. I think, yeah, I would agree with Peter's short answer. Yes. You know, you're actually seeing it, I think in some of the grassroots in the agencies, I haven't gone through this exercise and focused here on the commercial wireless, but there are plenty of other services where we are looking at sharing spectrum. Important point, though, to mention is it needs to be a two-way street. So I think when the agencies look at this and say, well, okay, if you're gonna believe in sharing, it can't just be sharing my space. It needs to also be providing for the benefits to the agencies of being able to share space elsewhere on the spectrum that where they may not have a current allocation. And we've actually issued proposals to do just that in a number of places. Certainly one you know about relative to commercial space launches. And it's been very important, I think, to the federal government to have an upgrade in their allocation for their own earth stations that are using commercial satellites. We proposed to allow federal systems to actually, well, federal users to have access to the space in even the spectrum we're talking about here. And we also proposed to allow it at 3.5. So I think there really has to be a change in the way we've looked at things on both sides. If we don't have any final questions, I'll ask the panelists. Oh, do we? Oh, go ahead, sorry. Good morning, Courtney Robinson from the Aerospace Industries Association. And I suppose this question is mostly for FCC, though, anyone's free to jump in. It has to do with unmanned aircraft systems, kind of as a specific example of an emerging technology that is going to require spectrum resources. General Wheeler had a couple of pictures of the Domino's Pizza delivery UAS and all this other stuff. But the jokes aside, this is going to be a technology that's going to have thousands of aircraft in the skies before, too long, like we're thinking before 2020. And FAA has a congressional mandate of 2015 for full integration. Yet we don't have, one of the details that's missing from FAA's roadmap is how we're going to handle frequency for a line of sight and beyond line of sight. So I'm just curious to know if while DoD has its spectrum assets, civil users do not. And what is the plan for addressing that? Thank you. So we'll have different bands, depending on whether the pizza is going to a private sector user. Yeah, I think we have a lot of work ahead of us on this. First of all, I don't think people appreciate the UASs or UAVs come in all shapes and sizes and have all sorts of different applications. So you have to be concerned about the command and control. You've got to be concerned about, in some cases, we're looking to have, we, I talked collectively, the real-time video. So we have a lot of work ahead of us in identifying exactly what the needs are and where the appropriate places for them to operate. And I think sharing is gonna be, I take as a given, we're gonna have to figure out what can they share with. So it's not going to be easy, but we'll find a way. And I just didn't know, although it's FCC, it's clearly federal government as well. Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up because it also demonstrates the fact that the demand is not only on the commercial side in your traditional broadband mobile type applications. There's a lot of applications federal and non-federal in other contexts and supporting UAVs and other unmanned systems is huge, huge driver for the, and so it's, you'll see, you'll see, for example, in the DOD proposal for using 2025, it suggests using smarter technology and multi-band capabilities. So the newer applications, the newer approaches are gonna be more dynamic and more capable of finding the best spectrum available when and where it's needed. You know, and so there's gonna, you can't, there's not one single scenario, you know, for those types of platforms. They're at various altitudes, at various locations, various times, and they're gonna have to be very, very spectrum agile. And so they're gonna be driving a lot of that technological development as well. So I don't see the same old dedicated band approach. And there may be one or two dedicated bands, you know, for the safety, life, critical command and control links for those, but video download, all payload type applications coming from those things. Yeah, you're gonna have to find a lot of spectrum, a variety of places, depending on, you know, where it is. So, and I'll just point out that the way that the supply chains work in these various industries are so different and parallel and they don't even cross each other sometimes. You know, you look at the commercial mobile industry, the suppliers there and look at the suppliers in other radio markets, they don't even cross. So you have to figure out a way for those to do a little cross-pollinization. Yeah, I just wanna touch on the number of bands. I think it kind of coincides with what General Will was talking about with having platforms with multi-band capability. And what we found, you know, during some of these C-SMAC working group projects, and particularly the UAV platform itself is a multi-band platform. And it actually had become somewhat agile in terms of your ability to move that system to other bands without impacting, you know, incumbent federal operations. So I think as we would look to, you know, frequency bands for UAVs, I would hope that we would continue that same process and making sure that these platforms do have a multi-band capability. Thank you. We've heard pretty frequently. We need to think about how the process can be streamlined, but also how it can be guided by a policy that's shaped by both national security and economic concerns. And General Wheeler pointed out how intertwined those are, but there's still some sufficient differences that we need to think about the balance between the two. We talked a little bit about incentives. We talked about technology. We talked about R&D. The technology one always strikes me as sort of the silver bullet in some ways for spectrum problems. We always say, yeah, we'll fix it because we'll have a new technology, which I, like, Julie, I'm an optimist on, but you've got to invest in it if you want to get it. So it's something to think about, right? And then finally, we talked about the slow process, particularly when you throw on the international side. So these are all good topics to think about in the future. I'll close by asking anyone have any final words of wisdom they want to share. Well, I'll start off just by saying that, you know, the, that sharing is not the only solution. You know, I think that the mobile operators and the whole auction environment, which is very good to the economy and the treasury and all of that from an auction perspective, it needs to continue. And that's going to be done by cleared and vacated spectrum that could be sold at auction. So, you know, while I understand the PECAST report is promoting sharing, and I think we even heard General Wheeler say that in his perspective, sharing is really going to be the future. I think we as an industry and as an economy need to be thinking about how can we find a more available spectrum to auction and provide the commercial mobile operator. Yeah, first off, thanks for having me, I appreciate it. So, and I think it's, it is a balance. You know, I think to Julie's point, you know, looking at the bands that are out there, it's a challenge, you know, I think for the federal government to find spectrum and make that available for mobile broadband. But I do think that, you know, as Julie pointed out that we are moving in the right direction. I think both industry and government are moving, forging ahead and trying to figure out how we can make this spectrum utilization work better for everyone. And I think, you know, as I said, it is an evolution. It's not going to happen overnight. I think we're going to, we're seeing some sharing capabilities that we're going to be able to employ in the 1755 to 1780 band. It's going to be very beneficial as well as the three out five band. So if we can continue to focus on, you know, the technology improvements that are facilitating access to those bands, then I think that's where sharing becomes, you know, more of commonplace, that's what we're seeing today. Thank you. I had mentioned, I think those, the models we've had in the past of the exclusive use where we see opportunities will still be pursued. But I also think as you look at the spectrum chart, the challenge you have is the services that are there, where do you relocate them to? And that's what drives you often to sharing, to see if you can actually get value. But by value, I mean, not just having access to spectrum and saying, well, I got 100 megahertz here. All it is, is I can't use it any place if there's people. It's gotta be something as we go through this process that we actually is going to serve needs. So I think we're gonna continue to pursue along all fronts and it's just not going to be any easier. No words of wisdom, but maybe just words of ignorance to offer is that you don't know, we don't know where technology, 10 years ago, whatever we could not have predicted necessarily where we are. We would probably predicted, yes, that the industry would be back for more spectrum for exclusive use. And I think it's easy to predict that some parts of the industry would not favor a sharing approach and would like, and I think that a lot of federal agencies would like to have exclusive access to spectrum as well. But you just don't know where technology is gonna lead you. So if you have the incentives and the drivers for technology basically to develop and make sure that any regulatory barriers are out of the way, then the limit, I think the future is limitless. So let's come back and probably 10 years after your next report and we'll reflect on that and see how your recommendations are doing, Jim. But thanks for having us. Well, I hope we can speed the process up a little bit more than 10 years, but please join me in thanking our panel for this morning. Thank you.