The End of Spectrum Scarcity: Building on the TV Bands Database to Access Unused Public Airwaves

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Wireless is the most cost-effective and rapid means to bring broadband access to under-served rural and urban residents. Even after high-capacity Internet access becomes universal, wireless remains as the complementary infrastructure needed to achieve the larger goal of pervasive connectivity. Within a few short years, most Americans are likely to spend more hours each week on mobile than on wired Internet connections. This paper recommends that the Obama administration and the Federal Communications Commission make mapping and actively facilitating opportunistic access to unused and underutilized frequency bands a priority as part of any national broadband policy.

Unlocking the "vast wasteland" of unused spectrum capacity can be achieved through three overlapping steps:

1) Under a White House-led initiative, the NTIA and FCC should conduct an Inventory of the Airwaves that maps how our public spectrum resource is being utilized or underutilized in various bands, by both commercial and government users.

2) The process of unlocking unused spectrum capacity should begin immediately on a band-by-band basis.

3) NTIA and FCC should commence a set of inquiries into the technologies, incentives, institutional arrangements and "rules of the road" that can best facilitate a future of more open, intensive and opportunistic sharing of the nation's spectrum resource.


The End of Spectrum Scarcity: Building on the TV Bands Database to Access Unused Public Airwaves