Sen Rubio Outlines Broad Wireless Broadband Plan

Sen Marco Rubio (R-FL) outlined an ambitious agenda for spectrum reform, which includes plans to introduce three bills: The Wireless Innovation Act to free up government spectrum; a bill directing the Federal Communications Commission to conduct tests in the upper 5 GHz band and modify the rules to allow Wi-Fi so long as it doesn’t create harmful interference to vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communications; and a bill to promote wireless infrastructure.

Sen Rubio, a member of the Senate Communications Subcommittee, said that there were a lot of serious policy questions about advancements in high-speed wireless, but what was not debatable was that more spectrum was needed. He said the government should not wait until the current FCC spectrum auctions are over before taking steps to free up more.

His Wireless Innovation Act:

• Reallocates 200 MHz of government spectrum for commercial use;
• Establishes an auction pipeline with staggered auctions starting in 2018;
• Incentivizes federal agencies to reallocate spectrum by allowing portions of the proceeds to be used or conducting research and development, as well as cost and technical assessments on reallocating future spectrum bands;
• Requires an analysis of requests for new or modified frequency assignments to determine whether a commercial service could be used, whether federal users can share; and
• Requires [the National Telecommunications & Information Administration] to develop a framework to determine the commercial value of Federal spectrum.