Mobile Broadband: A 21st Century Plan for U.S. Competitiveness, Innovation and Job Creation

At a new America Foundation event Feb 24, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski outlined spectrum-related recommendations for the National Broadband Plan. The goal, he said: To benefit all Americans and promote our global competitiveness, the U.S. must have the fastest, most robust, and most extensive mobile broadband networks, and the most innovative mobile broadband marketplace in the world. The plan, then, will be to accelerate the broad deployment of mobile broadband by moving to recover and reallocate spectrum; update our 20th century spectrum policies to reflect 21st century technologies and opportunities; remove barriers to broadband buildout, lower the cost of deployment, and promote competition.

The Broadband Plan will represent the first important step in what FCC Commissioner Meredith Attwell Baker has called "an ongoing strategic planning process on spectrum policy -- to ensure that the agency's stewardship of the public's airwaves is smart, future-oriented, and serves as an ongoing engine of innovation and investment." The National Broadband Plan will set a goal of freeing up 500 Megahertz of spectrum over the next decade.

The plan will propose a "Mobile Future Auction" -- an auction permitting existing spectrum licensees, such as television broadcasters in spectrum-starved markets, to voluntarily relinquish spectrum in exchange for a share of auction proceeds, and allow spectrum sharing and other spectrum efficiency measures. The plan will also recommend applying a flexible approach to other frequency bands, where our rules-technical rules, service rules-may be holding back the broadband potential of large swaths of spectrum.

The Plan proposes resolving longstanding debates about how to maximize the value of spectrum in bands such as the Mobile Satellite Service (MSS) or Wireless Communications Service (WCS) by giving licensees the option of new flexibility to put the spectrum toward mobile broadband use-or the option of voluntarily transferring the license to someone else who will.

In addition, the National Broadband Plan will encourage innovative ways of using of spectrum, including what some call "opportunistic" uses, to encourage the development of new technologies and new spectrum policy models. The plan will also include a recommendation that we invest a sufficient amount in R&D to ensure that the science underpinning spectrum use continues to advance.

Finally, and critically, to improve mobile communications for our first responders, we will develop the 700 MHz public safety broadband network to achieve long overdue interoperability. The plan will also recommend that we establish and fund an Emergency Response Interoperability Center (ERIC) within the FCC to develop common technical standards for interoperability on the public safety broadband network from the start, and to update these standards periodically as broadband technology evolves.