Bits Blog: T-Mobile to Pay $308 Million for More Spectrum

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U.S. Pushes Agencies to Free Up Spectrum

Without additional airwaves for consumer and business use, administration officials say, the “skyrocketing demand of consumer and broadband business users” for wireless service for smartphones, tablets and other devices will soon outgrow the supply.

For consumers, the initiative could allow cellphone and wireless broadband companies to eventually increase the reliability of their networks, meaning fewer dropped calls and shorter delays in loading video and other large files.

It also could create jobs, the administration says. It cites industry studies reporting that since 2007, more than 500,000 jobs have been created in what is known as the App Economy — the business of creating and selling applications and programs that take advantage of faster Internet speeds and more advanced devices.

The administration said it would invest $40 million in the next year and $60 million more over the next five years to find ways for government agencies to share lightly used airwaves that are under federal control with private wireless communications companies.

Mr. Obama directed federal agencies to make more capacity available by enhancing the efficiency of their spectrum use and to recommend ways of using financial or other incentives to increase sharing of airwaves by government agencies.

“The number of wireless devices is exploding, and that means increasing demands on the spectrum upon which they all rely,” Gene B. Sperling, director of the National Economic Council, said in a White House blog post on Friday. “The federal government helps manage that resource, and we know we can do a better job of unleashing innovation by ensuring more of it is shared, unlicensed for innovations like Wi-Fi, and better used by our departments and agencies.”

One roadblock to that seemingly unlimited growth potential, however, is the reluctance of some parts of the government to part with any of their vast holdings of the nation’s electromagnetic spectrum — the airwaves used by cellphone and wireless communications companies.

In 2010, Mr. Obama directed government agencies to work to free up 500 megahertz of spectrum from federal and private sector sources. Those efforts have been embraced by numerous federal departments, administration officials say.

But a few others, including the Defense Department, have expressed wariness not only at sharing or giving up any of their designated frequencies, but even at revealing the amount and location of airwaves they control. Doing so could compromise national security, Pentagon officials say.

An administration official cited one hypothetical example where an executive department might use a certain frequency for about 12 hours a week of training activities. One agency might be willing to confine its use to prescribed hours, and allow commercial users to share the airwaves at other times, while another department might say it needs the flexibility to be able to use the airwaves at any time.

The Defense Department has said it supports the president’s goals of freeing up spectrum, but noted that an increasingly electronically armed military had its own rising needs for spectrum. The administration emphasized that any new plans to free spectrum should not interfere with “mission-critical capabilities” of military and other government departments.

Nevertheless, the intransigency of some departments has frustrated lawmakers.

“I have long called for a thorough inventory of all public spectrum assets in order to gauge usage and improve efficiency, and have been frustrated by how this debate has dragged out over the past four years,” Senator Mark Warner, a Virginia Democrat, said Friday. “Federal agencies should have the spectrum they need to protect the public, but no one should be warehousing spectrum.”

The Commerce Department has identified more than 300 megahertz of spectrum controlled by the federal government that could be set aside for other uses. The remainder of the 500 megahertz defined as the goal by the administration would come from the so-called incentive auctions that were authorized as part of the 2012 Middle Class Tax Relief and Job Creation Act.

That law provided for the government to share the proceeds of auctions of newly cleared spectrum with television broadcasters who would willingly sell some or all of their spectrum licenses.

Perhaps the most interesting and highly charged recommendation in the president’s directive is one ordering recommendations for incentives that could be used to persuade government departments to share or give up spectrum.

A study released last year by a presidential advisory council on science and technology recommended that the government create a “synthetic” currency that could be used to entice federal agencies. The system would in effect increase an agency’s budget if it gave up or shared its airwaves.

Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel of the Federal Communications Commission, who has also been advocating such a system since joining the agency in May 2012, about the time the advisory council’s report was released, said federal spectrum policy should be built “on carrots, not sticks.”

“Our traditional three-step process for reallocating federal spectrum — clearing federal users, relocating them, and then auctioning the cleared spectrum for new use — is reaching its limits,” she said. The new initiatives, however, “are a significant step toward meeting the country’s spectrum needs.”

F.C.C. Has Yen for Broadway’s Wireless Spectrum

An hour before curtain at “Mamma Mia!” at the Winter Garden Theater on Broadway, Craig Cassidy, the head sound man, starts his nightly ritual of testing the wireless microphones that the performers wear hidden in their white spandex bell bottoms.

The run-throughs by Mr. Cassidy ensure that the microphones are transmitting on their assigned frequencies, a narrow sliver of the nation’s airwaves. The same process takes place every night at nearly four dozen other Broadway theaters, where an inadvertent twist of a dial can put a cordless microphone on the wrong frequency — wreaking havoc if it should send the harmonies of Abba in “Mamma Mia!” into the speakers of a performance of “Wicked” across the street.

“It’s quite a juggling act we have to perform in this area to coordinate the use of all of those microphones,” Mr. Cassidy said.

But Broadway producers are alarmed that this carefully balanced system is about to crumble. The Federal Communications Commission is considering plans to force the users of cordless microphones — not only Broadway producers but also megachurches and the National Football League — to move to a less desirable spot on the nation’s airwaves. The F.C.C., backed by Congress, hopes to auction most of those prime airwaves now used by singers, preachers and coaches to data-gobbling smartphone companies, potentially for billions of dollars.

“We’ve been doing this for years,” said Colin Ahearn, a sound assistant on “Mamma Mia!”

“We found out how to make it work. Then the government comes along and says, ‘Hey, we can make some money from it.’ That’s not right.”

The F.C.C. counters that the airwaves are public property and that theater owners have long gotten preferential access to the frequencies. The commission also points out that the first $7 billion raised by the auction is to build a nationwide public safety communications network, and that many members of Congress have urged the commission to sell everything it can to raise money to reduce the nation’s deficit.

Still, Broadway producers say that moving to a new spot on the airwaves, or spectrum, will compromise the sound quality of “Mamma Mia!” hits like “Dancing Queen,” and “The Name of the Game,” making the melodies less full and rich. They say a failure of a wireless intercom could endanger a performer or crew member and that they will be forced to buy expensive new equipment or risk having their transmissions overwhelmed by smartphones that use the same airwaves.

“It is easy for other users of the same spectrum to overpower wireless microphones,” the Broadway League said in comments filed at the F.C.C. That interference “could devastate the sound and stagecraft at major productions, potentially causing physical harm to actors and production workers, serious artistic and cultural losses and — considering the importance of live entertainment to the American economy — significant financial damage.”

The N.F.L. has also told the F.C.C. to back off, citing the need for the use of hundreds of wireless microphones at its games. “Despite N.F.L.’s best efforts to manage its wireless microphones on its increasingly scarce spectrum,” the football league wrote in a letter to the F.C.C., “N.F.L. has received numerous recent reports of wireless microphone interference during games, rendering coaches unable to communicate plays to their quarterbacks and referees unable to consult one another on calls.”

Wireless microphones are one of a number of consumer gadgets — including baby monitors, Wi-Fi routers, garage door openers, television remote controls and electronic car key fobs — that enjoy unlicensed access to the airwaves and which have contributed billions of dollars to the economy. The gadgets can operate without an F.C.C. license, unlike a cellphone company, which must buy a license to operate on a certain segment of the airwaves, or television broadcasters, which operate free on assigned public airwaves.