According to a 2013 report from the Brookings Institution, the greater Seattle area is the 11th most innovative region in the U.S. Much of this is due to the proliferation of mobile devices and seamless connectivity of businesses and people that let Washington’s technologists do what they do well.
But an unseen obstacle stands in the way of this innovation economy — the likelihood of a shortage of electromagnetic spectrum, the real estate on which wireless communication and the modern economy are built.
Spectrum is the range of radio waves that can carry mobile signals — voice, image, data, whatever you want, digitally morphed. And like the land that supports commercial, residential and industrial structures, spectrum supports our phones and other mobile devices and, in turn, their apps, remote education and health care, environmental monitoring, security and law enforcement, mobile entertainment, games and other amusements, as well as the burgeoning “Internet of things,” in our future from driverless cars to refrigerators that order groceries.
As a result, spectrum today supports 1.3 million jobs and $400 billion in annual economic activity, according to The Brattle Group. But where will future growth come from if we run out of the electromagnetic real estate on which to build it?
Technological advancements from companies like Amazon or Microsoft help make more efficient use of spectrum. But it is far from a fix and things will get worse as America grows from 75 percent Internet adoption rates to 100 percent and younger people who are “cord cutters” replace older folks (who use mobile less), and video consumption becomes even more common than it is now.
Cisco estimates that consumer demand for mobile data will grow more than six-fold in the next four years. The number of wearables and connected devices in the U.S. will be double the number of smartphones by 2019. And in just three years, videos will make up 80 percent of all Internet traffic. Experts predict the U.S. will need to increase its existing supply of licensed spectrum by 50 percent in the near-term to help facilitate all these wonders.
We are failing to keep up with this demand because of the policies that govern spectrum supply and allocation. The Federal Communications Commission’s main effort in this area has been auctions, in which spectrum is purchased from users (such as on-air broadcasters) and repackaged and sold to eager bidders. The last such auction, held in early 2015, raised nearly $45 billion.
While these auctions help, they won’t fill the void. That is why leaders in Washington, D.C., are focused on the Senate’s Mobile Now Act, which would get the spectrum now in the hands of government agencies to commercial users who are building the mobile broadband Internet. It arises from the Senate Commerce Committee, a key post for Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Washington, and is expected to advance early this year.
The measure is sound both financially and practically. And it is being lauded as a measure to help Sen. Patty Murray, D-Washington, and her colleagues on the Budget Committee identify revenue, which additional spectrum sales might provide.
Government agencies have a great deal of spectrum — perhaps as much as 70 percent of the total — and it’s not clear why they need much of it. The Mobile Now Act would dramatically increase the spectrum called for in the Budget Act of 2015. It would then codify President Obama’s 2010 commitment to make 500 MHz — almost double the 645.5 MHz of spectrum currently licensed for broadband — available to the market.
The results could be significant. Just as the most recent auction garnered $45 billion for treasury, selling far more spectrum in the future could help fund programs to close the digital divide and further our national goal of connecting all school and health facilities to the broadband Internet.
But reallocating spectrum and deploying mobile broadband service is a long, technically complex process that takes on average 13 years. When considering that Congress will check out next year for the presidential election, or that advancing policy is a tall task these days — even when bipartisan like this measure — the urgency rises.
For the benefit of Washington state and mobile users everywhere, I hope Sens. Cantwell and Murray sense the urgency and act. It is smart policy there for the taking.
Ev Ehrlich served as undersecretary of Commerce for President Bill Clinton. He is a visiting fellow at the Progressive Policy Institute.
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