Future of Key Commerce Spectrum Group Uncertain as New Administration Nears
NTIA’s Commerce Spectrum Management Advisory Committee may have fallen by the wayside, with many questions about its future unanswered heading into the second Donald Trump presidency. Several CSMAC members told us they reapplied for membership but have heard little in response.
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More than a year ago, NTIA sought members for a new CSMAC term with an application deadline of Jan. 31, 2024. Work was to begin in June (see 2312260018). NTIA later reopened the CSMAC application window with a new deadline of March 4. CSMAC’s last meeting was in December 2023 (see 2312190076).
The national spectrum strategy implementation plan (see 2403120056) mentions CSMAC 36 times. But former CSMAC members acknowledge no one knows what will happen to the strategy with the change in administrations.
CSMAC “has been a source of considerable frustration,” said technologist Dennis Roberson, a longtime member of that body and the former chair of the FCC’s Technological Advisory Council. The spectrum strategy “assigned several critical responsibilities to CSMAC. And having served for years on [CSMAC], I looked forward to helping shoulder this load,” Roberson wrote in an email. Several times, senior NTIA staff assured him that CSMAC would restart, but nothing happened.
Roberson said he applied for membership and received “the normal paperwork” to certify that he wasn’t a paid lobbyist or foreign agent. That has always been the final step prior to standing up the group, he said: “Months then passed again with no additional action. Very sad that the NTIA frittered away this important opportunity to secure free consulting work from the CSMAC to advance the tenets” of the national spectrum strategy.
With a new NTIA administrator coming in and Trump's Department of Government Efficiency “quickly reducing the NTIA staff via retirements, I am not sure where this leaves CSMAC for 2025,” Roberson said. The new administration could choose to restart the selection process “or abandon CSMAC altogether given how long it has been in mothballs.”
Another longtime CSMAC member, Michael Calabrese, told us Friday, “We have just simply heard nothing.” Calabrese, director of the Wireless Future Program at New America, added, “I don’t know what the current NTIA is planning to do, if anything.” NTIA continues to push forward the band studies required under the spectrum strategy, he noted. The agency announced last month that the Technical Panel established by the Commercial Spectrum Enhancement Act approved all its requests for funding to complete the lower 3 and 7/8 GHz band studies.
With the national spectrum strategy “up in the air” and pending changes at the Commerce Department and NTIA, “it seems nobody is focusing on CSMAC at this time,” said Richard Bernhardt, Wireless ISP Association vice president-spectrum and industry. “It may come to the top again later.”
CSMAC has had a long, and at times, troubled history. The committee was launched under former President George W. Bush in 2004, as spectrum issues were growing in importance. CSMAC didn’t meet from July 2018 to October 2019 during the first Trump administration. Moreover, NTIA lacked a permanent administrator for most of that administration.