Building on Uncle Sam’s “Beachfront” Spectrum: Six Ways to Align Incentives to Make Better Use of the Airwaves

The federal government’s use of spectrum dates back to the beginning when radio frequencies were used to communicate—and so does the policy question of how to apportion spectrum access between government and private uses. The federal government has important missions that require the use of the electromagnetic spectrum. But federal spectrum lacks market discipline and profit motives, so it does not tend toward efficient use. Six proposals to improve upon this include the following:

1. Reform the Commercial Spectrum Enhancement Act: Removing the limitation of an agency being unable to use SRF money to buy improved equipment that may use spectrum more efficiently would foster the adoption of more advanced technology during the relocation process; it would also incentivize agencies to use the SRF since clearing spectrum would come with the potential for upgraded equipment.
2. Create a Market for Persuasion by Selling Overlay Licenses: Policymakers should auction more overlay licenses to create profit opportunities for those who can persuade federal agencies to vacate some spectrum by paying for relocation, upgrading equipment, or otherwise protecting the incumbent use. 
3. Improve the Quality of Federal Receivers: The federal government should reduce its spectrum footprint by increasing the quality of its receivers and migrating bespoke services to commercial 5G networks wherever possible. 
4. Assert White House and Congressional Leadership: The executive branch should take a more active role in managing agencies’ spectrum use, both through better accounting for the costs of federal uses and by making increasing commercial spectrum capacity a high-level priority. 
5. Increase the Compatibility of Federal Services with Commercial Networks: The federal government should increase the compatibility of federal services with commercial networks. Federal users can also become better stewards of the spectrum by investing in services that run on a commercial spectrum rather than bespoke federal systems. Just as the federal government procures other mission-critical supplies from private contractors, it should seek to, for example, leverage existing 5G networks for its communications systems.
6. Price Agency Spectrum: Agencies’ budgets should reflect the costs of maintaining access to the wavelengths they use. It is a problem inherent to federal spectrum use that individual agencies and their employees bear no responsibility for the alternative uses they preclude by maintaining their own rights to a spectrum band. More executive-branch management of the federal spectrum—specifically, management that checks internal agency inertia in favor of overall spectrum policy and efficiency—could improve this process.