NTIA’s Strickling: Government Needs Paradigm Shift in Spectrum Thinking

National Telecommunications and Information Administration chief Larry Strickling said that the government needs to come up with a "new paradigm" for freeing up government spectrum, saying the problem with NTIA's own report on a timetable and cost -- 10 years and $18 billion -- was too long and too costly.

That report was based in turn on government agency assessments, so it was not a criticism of his own agency. Instead it was to support NTIA's recommendation that it needs to look into more spectrum sharing as a way to speed the recovery of spectrum, which that report also recommended. Assistant Sec Strickling was pressed by Rep. Bob Latta (R-OH) and others on why it might not be quicker to focus on a 25 MHz swath adjacent to already available commercial spectrum -- something the FCC favors -- rather than on the whole 95 MHz in the 1755-1850 spectrum band it has identified for clearing and sharing. According to the NTIA report, DOD has said the lower 25 MHz could be fairly quickly cleared, while it could take 10 years and many billions to clear the whole 95 MHz. Strickling said it was not that easy, that some government users who moved into the band on the advice that they would not be moving again were using all 95 MHz.