White House Falling Short on Spectrum Push, Irving Warns

"It’s going to require the White House, not through oblique comment, but through actual action to get involved and to intercede,” said Irving, now a consultant. Irving noted that as an assistant secretary of commerce, he got his own flag to fly in his office. “You're flag rank,” he said. “But when you're dealing with spectrum you're dealing with other people of flag rank, generals and admirals and they have flags too. But they also have guns and they have stars on their shoulders, so when you go to them and say you want their spectrum, they're not happy to see you and they're going to obfuscate and they're going to take a very long time to give it up.” DOD needs adequate spectrum, Irving said. “But there’s also no denying that we've not done an adequate job of inventorying and getting spectrum out into the hands of people who need it.”

Irving recalled a meeting at the White House in 1995 when former Vice President Al Gore, at Clinton’s instruction, called in cabinet officers to ask them pointedly what they were doing to get the federal government to make better use of the Internet. Officials were told they had to report back in three months. “I wish the White House would bring the cabinet officers together, say ‘I want you to do a spectrum inventory, I want a real cost allocation [analysis].'” NTIA recently said the cost of clearing the 1755-1850 MHz band was $18 billion, based on agency submissions, on which NTIA did not ask follow up questions. “Maybe [$18 billion] is right, maybe it’s wrong, but let’s know what the real cost is,” he said. “No assistant secretary, no secretary of commerce, can do it by themselves.”

Irving also warned that people outside Washington are growing increasingly frustrated with the intramural squabbles on issues like spectrum. “They think that not only politicians in Washington are the problem, but Washington’s the problem,” he said. “They think that this environment is toxic. Those that come here the most often think it’s the most toxic.” The fights are a “huge impediment” to addressing “looming spectrum scarcity,” he said. Irving said the government also needs to speed up its schedule for bringing more spectrum online for broadband, and 500 MHz in 10 years won’t meet growing needs. “Five hundred MHz over 10 years is really 500 MHz over 15 or 20 years,” he said. “First you have to find it … then you've got to move people out of it, then you've got to move people into it, then you've got to build infrastructure.”

Irving said there’s no question the world is changing and industry needs access to more spectrum. “Fifteen years ago in Brooklyn, 20 to 30 percent of the households in my community, where I grew up, didn’t have a phone in their home,” he said. “Today, 88 percent of America has a mobile phone. … I've got two phones and an iPad with me. I've also got a MiFi in my briefcase.” Irving said he watches more programming on a mobile device than on his TV set at home.

The main focus of the event was on “New Theories of the Public Interest in Wireless.”

Recently enacted spectrum legislation recognizes that there are “great public interest benefits from … making available new wireless spectrum for commercial use,” said Margaret McCarthy, aide to House Commerce Committee Ranking Member Henry Waxman, D-Calif. Congress in the past has focused on spectrum auctions with an eye on revenue, she said. “When you're talking about sort of these broader societal public interest benefits, there’s really no dollar sign associated with those,” McCarthy said.

New America Foundation Policy Director Benjamin Lennett said there was a prolonged debate whether broadcasting would be under the editorial control of broadcasters or a common carrier. “Going forward now where we've moved from broadcasting to wireless, where wireless is being used to provide [broadband] access, we are having sort of the same debate,” he said. “We have seen the benefits of openness on the Internet, of a neutral network and the benefits for innovation and jobs,” he said. “Clearly, that’s [net neutrality] an obligation that needs to be placed on [carriers]."

Wally Bowen, executive director of the Mountain Area Information Network, said the big need for his group is access to better unlicensed spectrum. The nonprofit wireless ISP offers service in western North Carolina. “Our experience has been exhilarating and extremely frustrating simultaneously,” Bowen said. “We've been able to reach some of these hard-to-reach areas but we're using what the engineers back in the 1980s called the junk band.” The service his group provides often works well in the winter and deteriorates in summer when trees are full of leaves, he said. “The spectrum that we have access to won’t penetrate that heavy foliage. It won’t bend around mountain ridges. It won’t penetrate buildings."