 We have an exciting and different type of panel to offer you this morning, so now we're going to jump right in. What I want to do is to go over, so this panel is about spectrum and the idea here is how can we better optimize usage for the future. The growth in space applications and fifth generation industrial networks has heightened tensions over radio frequency spectrum use and congestion. This panel is designed to explore how RF is governed, particularly internal to governments. Do we have a policy and governance structure for making decisions that optimize the spectrum usage across all industries from trust your wireless to aviation to satellite? How are decisions regarding spectrum policy and negotiating positions managed in other countries? So if you've come here for a debate about space versus 5G, that's not what we're here to do today. We want to look at are we doing this and approaching spectrum in a way that recognizes that it is a non-renewable resource. So I'm very excited to have with me four illustrious speakers. I'm going to introduce them and then we'll get started. First up is Kimberly Baum, the vice president of regulatory affairs at Echo Star. We also have Alexander Kuhn, a senior government official from the German federal network agency. We have Kenneth Turner, the deputy director and department of defense from the department of defense chief information office. He specializes in drum policy and programs. And finally, we have Jennifer Warner, the vice president of technology policy regulation at Lockheed Martin. So I'd like to turn to Kim. You chair the satellite industries association working regulatory working group who's also put out some thoughts on this issue and I know discusses it at length and gets involved in the WRC and the various working groups leading up to that. Can you share some of industry's perspective on our topic today? Okay, thank you, Crystal. I'd be glad to. Within SIA, our focus has been on looking at how we can improve the U.S. proposal development process for WRCs. And here I would note that two of our members, AT&T and Iridium, do not support the improvements that we've identified. And by way of background and the community may be aware of this, but works happen about every four years and it's the ITU conference that makes changes to the international radio regulations. And the radio regulations provide the international table of frequency allocations as well as a myriad of articles and appendices detailing how an administration can implement frequency assignments. And many countries look to the ITU to define how they could implement a new FSS allocation, for example, and how they could ensure that it could safely coexist with other allocated services. And for the satellite community, the ITU is important as a satellite typically covers more than one country and benefits substantially from common spectrum allocations. And further, because it covers multiple countries, a satellite system might receive interference from services operating in more than one country. And the United States, as Jennifer mentioned, has a dual prong approach, generally to spectrum management, and that flows through to the work development process. So the FCC has a completely separate process to develop non-federal recommended US proposals, while NTIA develops the federal proposals under its own separate process. And then at the end, after this multi-year process, the FCC and NTIA work together with the State Department to determine the final US proposal. And what we found in practice is that leaving this reconciliation of the proposals really to the last step after several years of work leads to rushed decision making and often slows down getting US proposals out to the international community, and getting a proposal out quickly is key to developing a substantial amount of international support. So we feel like this is a very important area where we could enhance US leadership in the ITU. And it's difficult to find a meaningful way to address this issue within the current siloed setup. And as a result, SIA recommends establishing a joint interagency advisory committee to develop USWRC proposals. This joint committee would report both to the FCC and NTIA and could be co-chaired by an industry and a government representative. And it would have representatives for federal agencies and the private sector all working together to develop US proposals. So we believe that this would allow full discussion of these very complex work issues across the entire set of US interests at the start of the process instead of a rush at the very end. And the other improvement I'd like to highlight goes back to the current process and on the FCC side. The FCC has a work advisory committee that develops recommended industry proposals that are submitted to the FCC. And this committee that we call the WACC and recent years has not really reached consensus on many agenda items, particularly the more difficult ones that stretch across multiple services and industries. And we believe that that really undermines the ability or the opportunity that industry has to provide meaningful input and truly be involved in the proposal development process. So in that regard, we think it's critical to find ways to truly have consensus building within the WACC. And one idea we had was to create a working group that would be sort of a cross cutting working group that would if a regular working group couldn't reach consensus, you could transition the agenda item to the cross cutting group to try in a different way to find consensus. And even though the WACC has already been established with set working groups, certainly the overall chair and vice chair of the WACC could take an active role in driving towards consensus once an IWG reaches a standstill. So thank you, Crystal, for the opportunity to talk about some of those improvements we've identified within SIA. What I would like to do now is turn to Ken. So the Department of Defense obviously has a huge stake in spectrum allocation negotiations. But as we talked a little bit about in the beginning and as most people aware, it's not the lead organization, for instance, within the United States government for determining US position. What are your thoughts on how best to ensure effective, equitable and fact-based decision making in determining the US's position on various spectrum issues? Well, I mean, I'm a very basic person and I like to keep ratings very simple. I think process doesn't make decisions. People do. So it begins with people. There's in my mind, the time for people to get to a position only if they want to. There's got to be, like spectrum sharing is some matter of you being it a goal, not a default, being the primary objective of what you're trying to achieve. And from there, you have to understand there's a certain amount of risk and with risk, there's got to be a certain level of trust. What I've seen at least in my perspective and seeing negotiations going back 25 years, and they're never easy. They've got some important functions and some important capabilities that we're all trying to perform and we think are essential. This, even within regards to the department, I go back to my early days of being in a program office and supporting Gulf 1 and I go back to going back to Gulf 2. It was a vast difference in the amount of equipment and the kind of needs we had going into Middle East again. And it created a lot of issues that had to be resolved. But the only way we're able to resolve them is for people to start to come together and talk and had to be some compromises and had to be some an announcement of certain things had to be performed and synchronized. And I think in a broader context, that's true in the even in the negotiations I've been involved in, you know, if one side is going at all risk or it's not as risk avoidance or it's not willing to compromise, that's very difficult to come to any reasonable decision. And it stands to reason that we've all got to kind of look at things in a different perspective. I think from a Department of Defense standpoint, having watched their basic perspective when I first got to Washington, and it's our frequencies, it's ours. And to a point when out where we're investing in technology to the National Spectrum Consortium or we're trying to find new ways to share through the NAS through which it's National Advanced Spectrum and Communication Test Network, we're investing in what I think are our key components of us better understand and share. Because it's not just for us just on a day to day basis dump this time. We've got to operate in a contested and a congested environment. And what we're starting to realize, if we can operate in a contested environment, a congested environment, then that allows us to be more effective on the battlefield. We're running into a situation where we're moving out of the Middle East and we're going to what we consider a peer-to-peer adversary where they will try to deny us access and to limit ourselves to sometimes to some of the bands we've been allocated to makes us an easy target. So we're looking to ways to be able to move maneuver through the spectrum in a manner that's not intrusive, that's not of going to disrupt people, but ultimately to allow us to perform mission. Are we going to get there overnight? No, but that's a commitment to something. Are there going to be days that there are going to be difficult decisions made? Yeah, of course. At some point, you might get to a point where we say, this is just, no matter what we try to do, this is not going to work. So then you're just going to have to make a decision. And we've had to do that in the past. But I think it all begins initially with people sitting down like Kim may have mentioned before, earlier versus later, coming to the table in honesty with a no-signal skeptic at some level of risk, because you're going to have to reveal yourself, you're going to have to talk, and you're going to have to be willing to concede a little bit. But if you're always coming to the table and never willing to concede, then there's not a negotiation, it's just an argument. And you're never going to get to what I consider a reasonable outcome where everybody's happy. It's a forced march. And that's kind of how I see it. Thank you, Ken. I think we can all take to heart those words that it's easy to just have an argument and not a negotiation. And this is something that has always struck me when I went to my very first SeaTel meeting many years ago now. I remember thinking, wow, this is diplomacy, like real diplomacy in the room negotiating among various interests in various countries and various interests within those countries. And I think you're exactly right. It would be easy to have that be an argument. And so now I'd actually like to turn to our fourth speaker and hear about a different region's approach. And so for Alexander, different regions and different countries approach spectrum governance in a variety of ways. What insights can you share about how European countries come to their positions on how to allocate spectrum usage? What works for you? What doesn't? You're still on mute. Good afternoon, Crystal. Good afternoon, everybody. Thank you for inviting me here. And I'm happy to speak about the European approach on the spectrum governance. First of all, all the European countries, and I can speak for my own country as well as for some others, we struggle with the same different arguments between the different stakeholders in the country. So if you want to come to a clear position, we need to take a decision in the end. And this is something which we brought forward in Europe as well. And as former chairman of the CPG II was the WOC 19, I know exactly what I'm talking about. So we need to have a specific decision time, which is working. But that takes also into account what Ken said. It's something about negotiation and trust. You have to trust into your negotiation partner, and you have to discuss with them on the basis of facts. And this is something that which we learned also within CPT, where we have to work together with 48 different countries and come together to one single position in the end, which then we brought forward to our partners all over the world. So we can really bring something into the WOC context. This is not easy from the beginning. And there is something which if we take into account that a top-down approach is usually not working at all. So we will not get something where we said from the beginning, this is what we would like to have. And everybody else doesn't care about it, so we need to take it. That doesn't work at all. We need to build something up. We need to take a bottom-up approach here. That is something where we take on board also the different arguments and the different needs from different stakeholders. And this is something we do in Europe with a lot of discussions, with a lot of meetings on the different subjects. And if we do that, then we take on board also the process of the ITU. It seems complex, but it is the constant negotiation towards the WRC. It's not something that we can say, we just go to a conference, discuss the things there, and then we take a decision. And we are a little bit at risk, and maybe we come to that point later for WRC 23, that we are losing this point in time, that we have really some good discussions and some good negotiations before the conference. And we are struggling then in order to find the right compromise in the end. And of course, Ken is right, we need to have the will to compromise in the end. The European structure of CPT is just based on that kind of building up. Of course, we have the possibility of taking a decision by majority in the end, but it's always better to have a clear majority by consensus. So everybody is on the same side than leaving someone out, because these ones will work against the overall compromise. Europe is in one way complicated as well, because we need to take into account a different stakeholder here, that's the European Union. They have a different approach. They have often the top-down approach as well. And so we need to balance the interests here of the 27 countries. And this is something which is coming up in the near future, and where we have to take into account as well. And where we have to learn also by inside discussions that we need to bring forward this concept of constant dialogue. And this is something which we need to take into account also, or which the US needs to take into account for their future. And maybe we come to that one as well, because I think that this is still some kind of disadvantage. We have a good experience in Europe with this dialogue between the countries and border coordination, in particular for the space industry, Europe is an enormous market as well. And therefore, we need to find ways and means how we can move forward earlier in the process, in order to come together with good solutions and proposals for the WRC, and not at a later stage to see that maybe some other countries have different approaches. There is something we need to work together, and there is definitely room for improvement. Thank you, Alexander. I think that gives us a really good sense of how different organizations negotiate this, because it's not mandated how countries and regions come to the various high-level negotiations with their positions intact. And so everybody does it a little bit differently. So thank you for that insight. I'd like to turn to the whole group now. In many ways, spectrum allocation is very public. It's something that is available for all to comment on. But in other ways, unless it's someone's primary job and focus, the process can actually seem quite opaque from the outside, or at least difficult to learn. And I hear I'm thinking of smaller companies or academia who now has a very strong interest in this, and even some established companies as they explore new capabilities within their systems. What can we do to change the process to ensure that all stakeholders can actually contribute and have a voice? I'm going to start with Kim, and then we'll see how Jennifer's audio is. What do you think, Kim? Thank you, Crystal. So I participated in some ways with consultations in other countries, perhaps not in Germany, but for example in the UK. And it's incredibly different. The consultation documents themselves are much shorter, and the responses to them are much shorter. It's a difficult idea, I think, to achieve in practice. But if we could move towards greater brevity, both in the documents put out by the government and the responses from industry, or perhaps having more detailed summaries that are over several pages with bullets, but somehow having brief summaries, but with adequate specificity that you're truly understanding the gist of the document. So I would look for fewer page numbers in all documents. I have to say that wasn't the answer I was expecting, but it's actually incredibly logical that sometimes even just trying to tackle this is hard. I mean, I spent a lot of time in the last few weeks reading all of these reports and items, and you're exactly right. All right, Jennifer, I'm going to turn it over to you. What are your thoughts on this? And also please feel free to jump back in, assuming we have good audio with a little bit more about the advisory group. So let's see. Is this working better? A hundred times. You're great. Wonderful. Sorry about that. So let me answer this question, but I would like to go back for a moment on the advisory committee, because I think it's important and worthwhile to focus on the challenge that the bifurcation brings. And I think that bifurcation brings challenge even into the international context, as I think both Kim and Alex have mentioned, and Ken, perhaps when I was dialing back in. If we bring together so that we're able to set up a national spectrum policy through a single, perhaps a spectrum resource agency, there's options on how to do this, but where you can reconcile internally what we want to prioritize as a country. When we're having to deal with spectrum sharing and competing needs, I think we will be able to be in a stronger negotiating position with other regions and with other countries, which is important. Sometimes we're an easier group to negotiate with because we have so many factions. Sometimes that makes it more complicated to get to the end. I'm looking at Alex who's smiling. But I think we need to understand what would be those options. How do we, as the United States, become stronger so that we can take spectrum policy, which has enabled so much innovation over the last 30, 40 years, and make it work for us going forward? In the context of your question, I appreciate the simplicity but importance of Kim's answer. Another actually perhaps very simple answer is also not use acronyms and shorthand to describe everything. The FCC's work advisory committee is all about numbers and references to agenda items that mean nothing to anybody who is not on the inside. If I ask you, do you know what agenda item 1.3 is? No one but our three panelists are going to know what I'm talking about. And so we make it hard even by how we do our work in our own processes. We have created a club of acronyms that makes it seedingly hard for someone to recognize there's something about suborbital planes that might be something somebody wants to look at. You would never know that from the way most of the work is structured because it's all numbers. It's an interesting point. I used to work at NASA which we called the alphabet soup land and then I worked on spectrum for a while and so I mean in your right it's if you even if you know what you want to follow up on it's not even easy to figure out how to do that and so maybe turning to Alex you know do you feel that it's possible for various interests especially those who's you know this might not be their primary thing or they're newer to the industry you know how do they engage in Europe? Are they able to be part of the process? Do you have any thoughts on that? Yes they do. Of course they can they can show up they usually come back to the different agencies in particular also to my agency and ask questions how they can be involved in the process and they just have to to move on and join the meetings and they can bring forward every thought they would like to but Jennifer and Kim are definitely right on that one. We have our own speech in this spectrum village I would say where we really have to be forward and be more clear and explain what is really essential towards the WOC process or other processes as well and it's always good that we have new people in the room which are asking them and don't be shy on that one asking the process as well and be trustful that if they got an answer on that one and work with the process too that is really something which brings us all forward and up to now we made very good experiences with the so-called vertical industries right now which I usually a spectrum user that turn out into a spectrum manager more and more in the process of we call it in Europe industry 4.0 but they need to learn more about spectrum management and they are showing up more and more into the process as well and asking more questions towards the WOC and the international seat and this is a good thing because then you have a broader a bunch of people we are who are talking to to the process and bringing in different perspectives as well so we may have these sections too Jennifer but we need to work with them and we need to find them the consensus because otherwise we are we are losing more or less the basis on that one and you just leave it to the specialists and that's not the right way forward for the administration. Thank you Ken I'd like to get your thoughts on this as well especially because you're representing spectrum interests within a much larger government agency that then absolutely runs technology that is dependent on that spectrum how do you communicate with your colleagues do you are there things that we could change that you feel would make that process easier within DoD for instance. In my years I think the first thing is you have to recognize you have to have patience I mean you have to talk to people and I think one of the comments I saw her earlier was this we need to use simpler language we don't need to mystify our work with a lot of political appointees coming into the Pentagon or general officers coming in from the field it's incumbent on me or it's my responsibility to make spectrum management clear and simple so they can make an informed decision and with greater participation and people being inclusive it allows for much more of I think a more holistic answer which is what we're always trying to achieve and in some cases I'll go back to this no matter what you try sometimes you just reach a point where it's just it's just damn hard you just have to accept it and excuse me if that offends anybody but it gets to a point where you know this is not an easy business and it's not it's not checkers it is sometimes three-dimensional chess and we have to understand it but I think in general with me I found that the more patient I was and taking the time to explain to others who are not as familiar with the subject the more familiar they were the more comfortable I was with the approach I was taking and that once I got their support I could move forward and to your point yes department of defense uses a lot of different um capabilities that it brings to the battlefield some of its commercials some of its not purpose built satellites um and um we've had to you know really take the time to slow down and just a lot of ways to think about how we're going into the next century of how we want to go about things and we've been well I'd say confronted with new challenges that we did not foresee and it's it's really making us have to take a moment to think how we want to go into the future and a lot of times people don't even take the time just to roll breathe in think about what you're really trying to achieve and and get against some um some some momentum in that direction and with everybody's input so you can proceed forward I again I think um being inclusive is important um everybody trying to take time and and and and understand each other and and take the time to explain to people in a manner that's that's relevant to them versus trying to make this too mystical in the or too esoteric in it in a language in your approach to what you're trying to solve as a basic problem I think everybody understands basic problem solving um activities that you have to do on a day-to-day basis um and that you just we can bring some of our this our our general day-to-day decisions we make in our life into the process by trying to keep it simple and not overcomplicate things it's just really my thoughts thank you I'd like to take some time to go through some audience questions I'm actually really pleased that we're getting um not just a decent number of questions but some really good ones as well and so one that caught my eye right away is do you consider the current US government spectrum policies as technology neutral i.e. that they do not inherently favor one technology to the exclusion of others if you don't can this be improved I'll start with Jennifer what do you think so that is I think it could be improved I think that what we see it kind of goes back to my original comments about national priorities and the bifurcation the FCC certainly has a a priority that is focused on a particular technology wireless 5G I think that's safe to say and there are a multitude of other priorities including 5G that I think NTIA would say are are important is that technology neutrality it's more there's not a lot of use neutrality but there may be technology neutrality I think Kim may be able to speak more to the satellite versus I know we aren't really going to talk about versus terrestrial but if you consider that technology as opposed to you know the old days of GSM versus CDMA which was really a technology battle so I think it's a challenge I think that it's important again to have a unified national approach and we need to think about how do we get there what is the best way to to get there I guess I would I would stop I would stop there for the moment all right Kim what are your thoughts so you know I agree with what Jennifer said you know there I think clear priorities certainly on the FCC side and I think if we think back to some of the the remarks that Ken made about how DOD is really focused on sharing and you know trying to develop more complex solutions you know I think to some extent it's an easy solution to just be like oh you know what can we do to facilitate terrestrial 5G okay let's do that instead of you know trying to make a tougher decision that accommodates more services in the same spectrum in a truly meaningful way and I'm not sure how we get there but you know we would like to see more decision making focused on you know real opportunities for other services and and not such a focus on terrestrial 5G there are other important you know other important considerations as well Alex how do you feel that they see this in Europe do you feel like there's a good balance between the various competing interests or is it different countries really prioritize one or two and focus on those well on paper we have technology neutrality in reality we look to the technology which is available and build on that one so therefore we have a trend right now and this is I think on a global scale it's not only Europe doing that that we are we are moving forward away from the technology neutrality which allows a little bit more innovation if you if you really concentrate on the main elements which are necessary to ensure that you do not have harmful interference so therefore we we have still the opportunity to turn that back but even on the on the global scale we are discussing more and more technology details which are just linked with one specific technology and there we need to be careful but on the other side you see as well if you use just one technology you can have a better sharing of this picture of a particular band because you can share the capacity in many different ways so you see it has both metals on or both sides of one metal there which you need to take into account but we need to from my understanding provide really the opportunity for all the industry to use the sharing and their frequencies of on a on a different approach and then also be open for two different frequency bands which allows their new innovative applications and that is what we would like to have we would like to have the best spectrum use in there and we see that the the trend is to using more wireless instead of less so therefore we need to find ways and means what is meant by sharing and how we can share the spectrum that we will come to that point later on I'm quite sure thanks all right um another question here from Mark Bahauland who it's a lengthy question but I think it touches on kind of the international coordination aspect of this which I think is really important for how domestic policy is also made because as much as that we're talking about coordinating within a country it's part of this much larger system of negotiation and positioning and and diplomacy and so his question is how does the panel view the value of technical working groups in the spectrum world such as the frequency coordination group domestic space agencies doc you know all of the groups we're talking about international space agency coordinating groups should these bodies include commercial space operators more is there sufficient coordination and overlap with the itu regional groups essentially is how's everybody working together how do you view the technical working groups and how they function I'm gonna pick on somebody all right we're up I'll jump in um so I think the the uh national space agencies do a phenomenal job of coordinating uh amongst themselves globally I think they they spend a lot of time and effort and I think that it really advances the dialogue and and they come very prepared and have done their homework when excuse me into the itu and into um all of those processes and I and they're very strong contributors I believe into numerous national processes so I think that coordination is um quite extraordinary and perhaps the highest among of all of all that I have seen um and I personally think that's valuable how do we how do we um draw any lessons from that I'm not sure but I would offer that that's that's very important I think the the if I could just to to go slightly um to another angle but still on the international and sharing one of the things that we see in Alexander mentioned is you know the importance of spectrum sharing what so we're seeing this dialogue at the international level right how to accommodate these different uses and share the spectrum what we aren't seeing is the sharing of the regulatory solutions on how to facilitate sharing so the FCC and Germany and the UK they may all do their own analyses and come up with solutions but it's not usually put into the itu regulations or resolutions how spectrum can be shared it's just here you can use this spectrum for all these different uses but if you're talking to an international community that doesn't have 500 engineers in the regulator or 200 or 100 asking them to try to repeat what a couple of years of engineering proceedings at a regulatory agency have yielded it's is is kind of unfair it's holding back information rather than making information available to the global community on what the solutions are and right now US policy doesn't really support the export into the international regulatory environment the regulatory solutions that we come up with domestically um just the bottom lines not the how-to's and that's unfortunate because the success of the bottom line is highly dependent on the how-to and that's that's a real challenge we face yeah that's an interesting point Jennifer we we had an event last year on the concerns for spectrum sharing for weather satellites and it's exactly right there's are we negotiating correctly but also there's a full acknowledgement that some of this is going to be a technical solution and are we figuring that out in a way that shares best practices across the industry I think that's a great point Kim did you have anything to add on this point hey thank you crystal um you know certainly you know I also admire the space agencies and how they work together um you know I think as Alex said you know early decisions are better and the more we talk I think the the sooner and the more we share like detailed technical information the sooner we can get to those decisions um and with respect to Jennifer's comment um certainly when we're looking at um you know getting landing rights for satellites in countries say in Latin America you know often you know I get questions as to well you know Kim can you give me um you know give me a summary of the ITU the relevant ITU um regulations on how this can work you know how can the satellite service share with um terrestrial or you know maybe another allocation in the band so it would be incredibly valuable I think for many countries as Jennifer said to have like detailed um solutions in ITU resolutions you know and unfortunately we see that in some cases but not in others and I think as we move towards more and more sharing you know countries do need the ITU to provide you know guidance and real solutions Kim what's your take on this I mean the actual technical working group is itself is that something that the DOD is happy with the process is there something you would change there well I'm going back to what Kim and Jennifer commented on I very much respect what the science foundation community does and coordinate and their activities and we participate in some of those groups as well also occasionally um I think the essence of all this comes down to communication is the key and the fact that you've got working groups that are focused on a particular problem is a good thing and could that be expanded I believe so um it's just a commitment to go do it and that is a priority um the answer that is accommodating to all without knowing what other people want there's no way to ever figure out whether there is a compromise at all so you've got to sit down and talk with people in order to figure out the house and the why of how you're going to get to an end goal and I think another thing that I'll bring up to Jennifer mentioned I mean sometimes having a strategy or a national spectrum strategy or a policy document that kind of helps overlay where you're trying to go then allows for those kind of technical groups to then kind of focus and row in the same direction that everybody's going in a different direction you go around in circles when you're rowing together you move faster and I think the groups are always anytime you get together and and speak and they take the time to listen there's always goodness in that okay I'd like to move on to another audience question um so this says innovative space technology is being planned and coming on rapidly user demands are also changing quickly is the current approval process at the FCC for space and earth stations timely enough are there improvements that could be made Kim I think I'll start with you I know that this obviously affects a lot of members in your um in fia and in industry in general thank you crystal um you know one thing I guess there's multiple points in the process and arguably the first step is to get your application on public notice and that you know gives everyone an opportunity to review it and provide comments um but sometimes we find that applications languish um you know maybe they're almost forgotten about maybe there's active review going on but if there could be more of an active or an automatic system in place where applications go on public notice in you know x days maybe it's 30 days maybe it's 60 days but if there was more of an automatic process that I believe the FCC has for other services you know I think that could get things started and moving for applications on the space side you know much more quickly um but anybody else like to comment I'm kind of curious on Alex's position on this I mean do you feel like the process is fast enough in general in Europe I mean I already do you feel like companies and other interests are adequately served um you know I've heard comments like you know how can a new company know that it needs to get on the wrc agenda four years from now um so what are your thoughts on that well at least I can speak for my own agency we are we are flexible enough to find interim solutions without the wc decision it's it's not always it's always the killing argument you have to go to a wc oh so long no I don't do it um but but that's not what we want I said it already we want a spectrum out in the market to be used and therefore they were they are always solutions is is our um authorization system fast enough um well in certain cases yes in other cases no of course what what kim said is something which which we are of this of real concern for us that we may use more automatic um authorizations as well and at least also some some more sharing opportunities in there in in order to make the the right calculation but that means also on the other side we need to have very highly sophisticated people who are able to provide the right content and the parameters on that and this is for the space industry definitely something for terrestrial users which are completely new to spectrum management could be a new caveat and just the closing the doors again because it could be too complex so therefore we need to be careful on that one and from my understanding yeah we need to use more automatic systems but we need to be careful not to exclude someone who's using the spectrum with it as well okay thank you um I want to move on to another question uh this is from teresa hitchens first of all she asked if the sisma uh i don't even know if you use that that way uh the report jennifer mentioned is available the public the answer is yes for anyone who's interested i put the link in the chat uh but the second half of her question would changes that you've potentially discussed here require congressional action to change current laws you know how what what how could we go about this i mean if there was real interest in updating and modernizing this process what actually needs to happen yeah no thank you very much and um that was in what i would have said had i not had to dial back in um the more dramatic changes the real structural reforms would require uh congressional action whether it you know some of the options were collapsing the FCC into the NTIA or collapsing the NTIA into the FCC obviously structural change uh congressional action required there creating a new agency that would take responsibilities from both the FCC and NTIA to manage spectrum it would require statutory um change because each of those agencies um has statutory responsibilities um so all of these require it so what i think the c-smack report in my view my personal view tried to do was lay a foundation for discussion it's building blocks for policymakers to think about what would benefit the us 21st century and beyond and here are some you know things to look at each of the ideas has pluses or minuses but let's have a conversation about those pluses and minuses perhaps the congressional this is not in the c-smack report but perhaps you know um the GAO could do a study on how would there be benefits or what how could we improve the process um there are a number of different ways that congress will want to look at this and you know there's always that challenge with um congressional oversight the FCC in the sense is is a creature of congress and you know some of the ideas would have it be um all consolidated in um an EPA type or FAA type agency with responsibility for spectrum management i'm sure that has questions of committees of jurisdiction etc so but it's a dialogue that needs to get started where it ends i don't know and when it ends i don't know but it's a good conversation to have because we should not accept just the status quo because it's the status quo let's see how we can improve things anybody else have any thoughts on that i mean i think jennifer answered the yes no aspect of the question but in terms of what you see is the next steps um in terms of serving these interests while also participating in this complicated process um just kind of opening the floor on that one kim ken uh i'll just make a basic statement i think um generally anything you can do to speed up the process is good um when that's whenever possible um maybe some of that's the automation artificial intelligence some of these new emerging technologies may be able to help associate some of it um and then but then there's other instances where i think that it takes time and thought and we can't be impatient in the name of haste because you can get into a bad decision real quick and you can't get out of it so just because you're fast doesn't make it good um quite frankly i mean the bifurcated process served do well um did we always get everything we want to know right who says you're supposed to but at the end of the day we've been able to look at this and um through the process and reach agreements on a lot of instances i i think that um you know obviously national security is something that is when you go towards it's a dramatic affair nobody wants to but if you were preserving certain spectrum or certain things that allow you to go when you need to go then you'd be starting from ground zero and that's not feasible either given what we are in this global and you know global war we live in so there's obviously some sacrifices you have to concede that are part of being the country we are and um maybe that's a little bit myopic and narrow but just based on where i'm coming from but you don't always get things for free it takes time it takes effort and it takes commitment and it takes sacrifice and we just have to acknowledge that again maybe the power natural a national spectrum policy or strategy awful still stays that kind of dialogue so then allows whatever regulatory structure you come up with supports that but without that you're you're going to leave something on the table that's just my opinion kim what do you think the next step is um you know obviously you're all engaged with the various agencies but from a practical standpoint what's next so that's an excellent question um i agree with jennifer that it's it's really important to have the dialogue started um you know i think there's certainly longer term actions that are going to take a lot of time as ken has mentioned um but we're starting those discussions now um but it would be really wonderful if there were interim measures that we could take in the meantime that could start um you know start moving us in the right direction um you know and we've tried to identify some of those like within the FCC's work advisory committee like you know pushing towards more consensus building there um but i'm not sure how we increase the consensus or you know the work across the federal and non-federal side um you know in the meantime but it's certainly something i think that we should all think about sure and i'd actually like to ask alex as well you know in europe is this a set process or is it something that changes if someone doesn't like how it works do they have an ability to to suggest that change or is it pretty pretty well worked out at this point well um yeah that is now something i would say for the european union we have this constant review process of their overall framework on it and therefore we are constantly thinking about how we can improve the process up to now the process is rather stable because of in germany because of our general laws there we do not have this division between the federal and non-federal we only have the division between everything which is related to spectrum and spectrum for the military so national security purposes all the rest is covered by by bnetza and therefore we have this discussions internally and not inter institutional so therefore you you may have to see that there is always a different approach which you can consider and you can look outside how it is made well in in the uk it is different in um in in france you have still also other institutions for different purposes uh very small ones as well but to a certain degree very efficient as well because very fast acting so therefore you can always have these uh advantages and disadvantages but you need to have this constant collusion of the arguments i would say and then also the consensus building process which is coming up to the to the right decision at the end but you will have the decisions and the discussions every time either inside one agency or outside and uh yeah we are just currently in a process in uh implementing the new um EU legislation regarding telecoms and in particular there on spectrum as well that will change some things regarding um our way how we approach spectrum in europe um and that will include also some further work inside our agency in europe um but overall and this is with the view to the ITU it will stay the same okay i'd like to actually combine two questions and so what we have here is one question that's saying what are the prospects for new tech reducing the demand for spectrum or congestion are we or will we still have a spectrum scarcity for the foreseeable future and there's also a question that i think is more basic but i think it's something that people care about like not everyone understands this like how close are we to running out of spectrum like or do we have a huge problem now and then what are your thoughts on part of the solution being how technology can help solve this technology problem if that makes sense alice i'll go ahead and just turn it back to you what are your thoughts on this so thank you um now i don't think we are we are running out of spectrum um what what we see right now we just open the doors to a new level um we we just saw that we are moving up in the spectrum uh the the space agencies are already there but we see that the terrestrial technology is coming up there as well in the millimeter wave area so we we will see that there is also spectrum available for different purposes and the technology development now indicates that we will have some some further opportunities there as well of course this will take time as always but if you if you look into the past and then backwards the history of the 100 years of the itu uh you saw always these most likely spectrum crunch and what they what what happened was that technology moved up in the electromagnetic field so no there is still enough spectrum available will we see more intense discussions on the most valuable spectrum which where equipment is already on the market because people and companies would like to have immediate solutions on their wireless needs yes that could definitely come up and there we will see more discussions and more more sharing opportunities most likely but maybe also some other technology solutions i just mentioned here 5g network slicing it's still an option and i haven't seen so many indications or implementations of it right now but it still is a very interesting option there as well in order to bring together those spectrum users on a on a very small part of the spectrum as well um overall that's my view on on that point and then i leave it to the others as well thank you ken what do you think about this i mean obviously you work with systems that are incredibly important that we ensure continuity of service gps weather and we've touched on several of them already what are your thoughts on on the current you know situation i just want to make sure wasn't kim um she could speak she can answer for me though now on that note i'm i'm with uh so good i mean i look to where um where we come from and where we're going on trajectory and um obviously looking over my time in the department of defense you know it's increasingly clear to me the technology has been the key to everything our ability to deploy our ability to operate has been increased substantially with the with the technology and as we advance the technology it brings about a lot different capabilities and opportunities and i think as alex noted we're in a moment where where we're at there is you know an urge to get things to market very quickly based on what we have on the table now that creates an immediate issue that you have to contend with but that doesn't have to mean it's going to be like that forever and as the as we go up towards more higher frequencies and even into optical it's going to allow for a lot more um things to be completed to be done and you won't you won't have the same issues that you have now may have some other ones but you don't you don't have the same ones and that's how i kind of foresee it absolutely jennifer please the thing so i i think the point that alex made is really important it's going to really be the question of congestion in the in the spectrum where there is commercially available equipment there's ample opportunity for r&d to be able to exploit lots of future bands of spectrum higher and higher up but in terms of the near term it's it's the congestion in the in the lower bands and technology does offer a potential easing of that congestion if we look at the application of ai and other sensing capabilities to automate some of the sharing solutions so you take the delay of the human in the loop to solve coordination or geo fencing or other solutions and you make it you know you apply the ai and you get to an automated speed of coordination that makes spectrum sharing just change dynamically in terms of its of its enabling more services to use the same spectrum i think that that holds great potential and it's and it's something that i know um we and others certainly are looking at and kim i'd like to hear your thoughts as well i mean i think this is something that people want to know you know how urgent is the issue and where are the biggest problems now and where might the problems be in the future so we found ourselves running out of spectrum but we were running out of ka band spectrum um in developing um our latest broadband satellite and so we turned to q and v bands the 40 and 50 gigahertz bands for gateways for our latest satellite and you know that's been really exciting um i think we've really been on the forefront of using those bands commercially um and certainly you know equipment development takes time we've um you know been able to leverage i think some you know often we can leverage work that dod has already done and um you know advancing the equipment um so i think we do have like other spectrum to move to um i think one thing that's been frustrating for us in making use of those frequencies is you know they're shared with um terrestrial 5g in the us and you know we find uh severe limitations on where we can locate our earth stations you know that may not really take into account um where the terrestrial 5g may truly be implemented you know we're you know pushed to incredibly rural areas where we may not be able to get fiber connectivity yet you know is it realistic that we need to preserve the you know vast parts of you know practically every county in the country for um almost i don't know global or continuous 5g coverage so we'd really like to see a better balance that takes into account the realities of of both services needs and deployment requirements okay so i'm going to go ahead i i have a question here some of you might be able to see it um we promise that we're not here to get into specific battles within this um so i'm going to change this question slightly when i ask you but i do feel like i have to ask it um so the original question is would any of the panelists care to share their opinion on the sdc legato 5g decision that was made earlier this year i'm not going to ask you to answer that question but i would like to talk about the process of how that decision was made and so without getting into the details there you know i would like to see if anyone has comments to say you know there was a lot of coverage of this some people were very happy with that process other people were not um and there's been a lot of pushback on it obviously and that does touch on what we're trying to talk about here and so i will open the floor i'll see if i have any takers but again i want to talk about the process of how the public and others are able to input into that decision do we feel that that process is adequate or not don't see anyone taking off their mutes i understand um oh denifer so to talk about process and i think legato can be illustrative of a challenge right that i spoke to before which is you have two agencies with two responsibilities and so you have that bifurcated jurisdiction that i said before and what you have governing how they resolve issues is a um a memorandum of understanding between the two agencies of how they will coordinate and that is public it's on the it's on websites and um of how they will govern how or how they will try to resolve issues how they will coordinate but the bottom line is that the FCC and this is what we saw at the end for from the um federal government side at least has unilateral jurisdiction unilateral decision making so the mou is nice but the mou doesn't commit to consensus doesn't commit to escalation doesn't commit to what do you do when you don't agree um and perhaps that's a gap um but also um i think the non-traditional communication uh sorry the the non-communications commercial stakeholders i think um were challenged by the process as well right so when you look at i'll pick on the aviation community when you look at the aviation community whether it's the helicopter association or the aerospace association they're not the traditional um players at the FCC so that's again that's that's it's a new stakeholder community many of which have never even gone to the FCC before when you look at some of the the players so it's it's again it's it's about creating a more inclusive um and broader understanding of of the um of the equities and the stakeholders and again that gap in that consensus building between the two agencies if we're going to continue forward in this bifurcated structure thank you thank you that is exactly the kind of discussion uh that i was hoping to have does anyone else want to make a comment on that otherwise i'm going to move to the next question all right so this touches on the same question a little bit um so the question in the comments is is the public interest adequately served in the current system and i'd like to add to that so when we talk about a transparent process when we talk about something that new groups can get involved in part of it is a lot of people don't even know that this is a problem for them and so one of my questions to the group is do you feel like the current process is both internationally and nationally adequately represent not just the specific interests but also broader interests you know are we are we coming up with solutions that really are overall optimizing spectrum is you know because there's there's groups that are affected by this that aren't at the table and it's not because they're not they can't come to the table but in many cases it's just because they don't know they need to be there and you know it is an example um we hosted uh co-hosted at the no weather satellite conference um over a year ago and i will tell you i think we gave people heart attacks because the number of scientists also the fact that we had a very large room of people who are very concerned about this and again they have representation but it just goes to show you that many people affected by the use of spectrum are not necessarily involved in how spectrum is allocated so i'd just like to hear your thoughts on you know do you feel the process is robust enough to represent broad public interest here um kim what do you think so you know perhaps one example of you know a range of interest um could be c-band and looking at you know repurposing some of that spectrum in the u.s um you know so certainly you had the the satellite companies that were very involved and the terrestrial um 5g folks but there were many many people that rely on the you know the programming that's provided um you know over the those satellites and they were able to be involved because they were the licensees of the earth stations at least you know but it was something that was new to them and um you're certainly not something that they would normally participate in you know but i could see how other users where they don't have a license before the FCC uh you know they don't have an opportunity um really to get involved in the process necessarily while it it could have a serious impact on their their business you know or personally so i don't know that i have a suggestion for it but certainly i think you know the folks that don't necessarily have a license are certainly you know more left out of the process than you know those that that do have a direct link to the agency ken what do you think do you mean as again as an agency that is directly responsible for a lot of public good technologies and satellite do you feel like the process is robust enough and really represents all of the interests i think we can always improve um i can just speak to myself of knowing that there's some a true warfighter out there somewhere that's relying on communications to occur and he has no idea about spectrum allocations he just wants whatever a piece of equipment he has to work and work in a manner as timely and efficient and effective and um you know do we always do the best job of explaining how things work and do we bring them into the solution all the time and does it always benefit the greater good we try and that does the go you just accept the fact that you we just need to improve the process you know expand and work more and make sense i mean i i think that again there are things that we're looking to do in the future as jennifer mentioned automation ai maybe all that helps take some of the the decision the human in the loop out of it makes it more seamless but until we get there i think we always can expand the tent so to speak bringing more players and as best we can be patient and explain to them the process and get their input to see how we can make it better great jennifer what do you think you've been around during this a long time do you feel like everybody's represented represented um there's always um a constituency so i'll pick radio astronomy right so there's the agency that cares about the national science i think is the nsf right that's the radio astronomy representative but the downstream beneficiaries of what radar the radio astronomy sites generate i don't think they're represented i don't think they're understood right it was kind of like with the weather that the downstream i always get confused downstream upstream but the beneficiaries of what that spectrum use does the non-consumer beneficiaries the not you know i don't think those are understood or adequately represented i think the ham operators do an awesome job of representing themselves and they are so many but science scientists i don't think they're an active participant in the in the processes in the and the the universities that are doing r&d so when the FCC you know it's important when the FCC is looking at changing experimental access to spectrum that those groups participate and it's important therefore it's back to that simplicity discussion we had at the very beginning that kim teed off which is making things accessible so people understand what the regulators are talking about so that they can see and then where where is that communication done where is that publicity of that information what is the obligation of the regulator to reach out into communities like they did for dtv transition they did a great job reaching out into every community to educate not saying this is that level but at some point what is the obligation to go beyond a federal register notice because i don't know about most people but if i weren't in my job i wouldn't subscribe to federal register notices now it's such a good point i mean politics you know what we do here is very inside baseball for a lot of people and they they need to know these things but you're exactly right i am guilty of of subscribing but not always reading as closely as they should sometimes alex i'd like to get your thoughts on this i mean for me here a pn perspective you know do you feel that everyone is represented do you feel that your process is able to address those needs and that that you actually hear them to begin with thank you the process itself is definitely able to keep with it the question is how do we reach everybody who's interested in this subject and what we can only do is going out to the public inform them and invite them we're doing that because we're working under the ministry of transport and they do a lot of public events describing also our spectrum things the agency itself is making their their work public as the fcc is doing but then we are back to the question we have before regarding plain language so we are we need to really sell what we are doing and it's not always easy and of course the general public is sometimes more interested in different subjects than in allocating spectrum they would like to use the motorway and didn't want didn't want to know about how it is built so therefore we we need to be be careful there too but but from my understanding of course everybody is invited to show up in our preparatory works if they have a good argument to bring forward or a good idea for the allocation of spectrum why not so that's this is really open but it's sometimes really difficult to describe really what we do in our normal work in such a simple way as it is also need to be very short but because usually if you use simplistic language it's much longer than the abbreviation all right so we have just about 10 minutes left and what i'm going to do is i'm going to just take a quick glance through the q and a and see if there are any more rapid fire questions that we can address we've had a really engaged audience we keep getting questions keep popping up we're not going to be able to get to them all but i'm going to answer a few more and then i'd like to offer an opportunity for final comments to the group and so let me go through here i noticed one for jennifer uh there's it's a two-part question what is the difference between the advisory committee's full service spectrum agency and unity agency um and you can answer that if you choose and then the second question i think is relevant to everyone um is the bottom line here that consolidation is needed to enable better sharing of spectra you do you want me to take that first question yes so um the the difference between the unity agency and the full service agency the unity agency would combine all of nta and fcc the spectrum components and the non-spectrum components into one new single agency the other the full service agency would combine only the spectrum related functions meaning spectrum allocation spectrum licensing all of the all of the different aspects related to to the use of spectrum so that is the difference leaving the non-spectrum functions in the nta and fcc so that that's the difference um what was the second part of the question which i know goes to us all it was a well it was about consolidation i mean do you feel that consolidation in the process is an important part of what needs to happen so i'll just continue and then just turn it over to um i think a conversation about it is very important because we are no longer working in the in the what in the way we were in the past with spectrum being stovepiped the spectrum sharing reality that is confronting us requires a cultural shift uh confidence shift and a real trust in the regulatory framework and i i think there needs to be a conversation how do we get to those three things and it may involve a consolidation a new agency um but we have to start that conversation kim any thoughts on this i mean do you see consolidation as one of the key ways to to try to move forward or are you open to a lot of other solutions as well so i think at a minimum we need to communicate and make decisions together on the wrc front um you know so if there are other ways to do that besides consolidation um you know it may be easier to create a new advisory committee you know share between FCC and NTIA than make some of the structural changes jennifer is talking about um you know but i do think we need to move forward and certainly on the the ITU front we don't want to be making decisions within three days at the last minute before an important regional meeting you know and meshing together FCC and NTIA views at the last minute you know that's just not serving anyone well great all right um scrolling through here there's a lot of questions would take longer to answer than we have um if anyone wants to comment on the possibility of regulating laser com you're welcome to but i'm not gonna put that answer the group um honestly i one of the things i want to say before we go into closing comments is we see this as kind of an initial conversation i think there's been a lot of interest in revising processes and really taking a hard look at spectrum policy in the u.s um since the last wrc and ahead of the next one um so we wanted to just host the first you know a conversation out loud um you know i'm happy to say that this is not just something that's being pushed by industry although i've been thrilled to hear from uh kim and jennifer today about that as well as ken's thoughts and alex's but there are other conversations happening and so for those of you who are interested i encourage you there's a public forum that the nta is hosting i think it's september 20th um so this is really just meant to be the beginning of that conversation and is what i did get a private message saying this is the most interesting conversation on spectrum they've heard so i think we've done at least a decent job of making this conversation accessible to an audience who may not focus on spectrum uh what i'd like to do now is go ahead and take the opportunity for each of you to just sort of give us closing thoughts um i'll see you up a question but i open this to the floor if you have something that you think we haven't covered um essentially is if you could change one thing about the spectrum policy process you know right now if you were in charge you know what would that be um or if you want to make a different comment that's fine too um kim we'll just go around the room okay thank you so i would love to see a concerted effort um to make tough decisions that meaningfully accommodate multiple services and technologies um you know in a in a more fair um thoughtful way alex what about you um if you could change it something here or internationally uh you know you're king for a day of the it world what would you do oh my god um no what what i would like to see in the future is really something that we have uh turn again spectrum strategy to a long term vision so something where we have really something which is like which are the guidelines and not to a short term decision making process this is something we need to have uh for the itu as well we should not turn the itu into a short term uh decision unit this is something which which is going totally in the different in a very dangerous direction from my understanding and we have now some tendencies we are doing these spectrum decisions and spectrum strategy just from this term in a very bad sense and not for long term and we need to have this understanding that spectrum is a long term um a long term doing and therefore we need to do it really for for those who are interested also in the future and we can't can't change everything within one year or two sometimes it takes longer times and that is something we need to take into account all the time thank you you're speaking my language alex that's one of the things we are so who interested in insecure world and it's one of the reasons that spectrum is so important to us but we're still figuring out how we can best be helpful because for us it's about exactly what you're saying you know how are we overall making these decisions are we managing in a way that makes sense um i leave the the negotiations of 28 gigahertz to those who understand it far better than i do but i also know and understand and want to support this concept of the vision i think that's a great way to put it um ken what are your thoughts i i kind of second what alex said i mean i again i started off by saying i'm a very simple individual trying to do things very basic it all starts so i think a lot with the commitment and uh and the cultural change towards the how we look at this and it's got to be directed in a in a way in in a manner that everybody understands maybe the national strategy is to way forward i mean and once you know where you're going how you get there become why you get there is it becomes a lot easier without some general understanding and then and then taking the time to to speak it out talk about it elaborate on it it makes it much i think that i had one thing to do for a day just i communications it's key thank you jennifer obviously this is something you deal with day in and day out um you know i've yet to see a spectrum panel where you or maybe the other jennifer and some of the other faces are not involved and that's great i mean in some ways that's a resource to the community but you know what do you think is most important what really should we be focusing on right now so if i were i'll do zarina just to be different um um so i would i would like to see um an integrated national spectrum strategy that was perhaps binding on the us regulators and their processes and guided our participation internationally that is what i would focus on all right well that's a simple answer i like it so again thank you to all of my panelists i think this was an incredible discussion and we will be providing a recording of this later so if anyone feels like hey they heard something great and they want to go back to don't worry we're going to have a record of this i know i certainly will be um so again thank you jennifer ken kimberley and alex um i felt this was an incredibly lively conversation and it was great to see everyone's faces