The #CommActUpdate is facilitating much needed improvement to spectrum policy

[Commentary] While many technology policy debates are characterized by a lack of reason, at least one area of vital national interest proceeds in a rational and transparent fashion: the process to update America’s Communications Act. Reps Fred Upton (R-MI) and Greg Walden (R-OR) lead the process with a series of opportunities for public comment.

While sharing has a role in spectrum policy, the US should certainly not give up the valuable efforts to auction relinquished spectrum for licensed use.

Indeed, the UK trades 84 percent of its spectrum, and where necessary, the government has seized spectrum from uncooperative government agencies. The Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) project facilitated the difficult process of closing bases in phases following the Cold War. The US needs to take the same approach with spectrum, also known as “BRAC the spectrum”.

It is no small goal for which auction revenues are being raised the First Responder Network, FirstNET, a national communications network for public safety. As 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina revealed, the current patchwork of emergency communications in the US needs to be upgraded to a national state of the art network, and the cost is in the tens of billions of dollars. Spectrum license revenue could directly contribute to that effort and help fortify public safety.

Communications regulation needs to be transitioned from the current silo-based, sector specific paradigm to a modern, technology-neutral, competition-oriented approach. Most of the functions of the Federal Communications Commission are duplicative of functions performed by other agencies. Functions and resources should be rationalized effectively and redeployed to the appropriate agencies, or bundled into a specific agency for the management of spectrum.

[Layton studies Internet economics at the Center for Communication, Media, and Information Technologies (CMI) at Aalborg University in Copenhagen, Denmark]