The PCAST Report And The Inconvenient Truth About Federal Spectrum.

[Commentary] We have all kinds of reality-challenged folks in Washington including “the folks who think we can keep finding federal spectrum to auction forever.”

Case in point, the reaction by some to last week’s report on the future Federal spectrum management by the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST). The PCAST Report found that we won’t clear big chunks of spectrum for auction anytime soon. We therefore ought to consider other ways that will make spectrum available for commercial use and simultaneously make federal spectrum users more efficient. This means moving from a world that treats exclusive federal allocations (occasionally cleared for exclusive commercial applications) as the norm to a world that treats sharing federal spectrum with commercial users as the norm. Hardcore spectrum warriors unwilling to adapt cannot change reality. Unfortunately, in Washington DC, well-funded deniers of reality have an amazing capacity to block good policy that contradicts their worldview. Happily, the demand for new wireless capacity continues to produce an ever growing number of industry participants – such as the cable operators making a heavy investment in Wi-Fi and carriers such as Sprint using shared spectrum to supplement their licensed spectrum -- who don’t have time for ideological battles. While I am not so naïve that I believe that being right is enough, it helps especially when there is money to be made by doing the right thing.

In the end, we will have more spectrum sharing because we don’t have a reality-based alternative. But if we want to save ourselves a lot of endless delay, we will need to force the spectrum old guard to accept some inconvenient truths.