Information Technology & Innovation Foundation

With the rapid rise of wireless technology, the demand for access to the spectrum has increased in recent years. However, there are critical and interrelated gaps and failures in the process and policies used for efficiently allocating the spectrum in the US. Key takeaways from an analysis on this issue include the following:

The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) provides the federal government with the resources necessary to close the digital divide based on lack of service in certain geographic areas and make broadband available to all Americans. ITIF appreciates this opportunity to comment on how the Federal Communications Commission’s Notice of Proposed Rulemaking should implement the provisions of the IIJA related to purported “digital discrimination.” The FCC’s primary goal in this rulemaking should be adherence to the text of the statute and to close the digital divide.

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:

Policymakers in the US and other nations have begun to consider, and in some cases implement, policies that seek to get edge companies—those who produce and send content to end users over the Internet—to pay a larger share of the cost to build and maintain Internet service providers’ (ISPs’) broadband network infrastructure.

Comparisons between US and European broadband prices abound, but their respective markets are built on such entirely different cost structures as to make any comparison between the two meaningless without accounting for the differences in necessary expenditures. A longstanding narrative that US broadband prices are exorbitantly higher than their European peers’ buttresses claims of European superiority and calls for similar unbundling requirements and regulated competition in the U.S telecom industry.

This report assesses spectrum sharing to help observers look realistically at the prospects for sharing and barriers to realizing its more aspirational promises. Key findings include: