The Battle for Spectrum

The explosion in wireless technology, the devices millions of Americans take for granted-garage door openers, wireless key locks, cellular phones, handheld computers and other gadgets becoming ubiquitous across America-has pitted the new economy squarely against the Defense Department in a contest for airwaves.

The electromagnetic spectrum-that region of the atmosphere where broadcasting and mobile communications travel-is a finite entity. Because demand for space in the spectrum has increased exponentially in recent years, the value of the right to occupy that space, which is owned and licensed by the federal government, has risen dramatically.

A strong economy is in everyone's best interest, even the Defense Department's, and making spectrum available to the private sector has been vital to recent economic growth. But many believe that Congress and the Clinton administration used spectrum as a cash cow in the 1990s-auctioning off parts of it to pay down the budget deficit, for example. Federal users of spectrum that is auctioned off must retool their equipment to operate elsewhere in the spectrum-a costly proposition.

Finding a way to accommodate the conflicting commercial and military uses of spectrum will be critical to both national security and economic security, say federal officials. The 1934 Federal Communications Act established the Federal Communications Commission and gave it broad regulatory power over both wire-based communications, such as telephone and telegraph systems, as well as radio-based communications. The law retained for the President the authority to assign frequencies to all federally owned and operated communications-authority that is now vested with the assistant secretary of Commerce for communications and information.

Plans are under review to auction off an additional portion of the spectrum now occupied by the Defense Department. Defense officials estimate the cost of relocating their systems out of the proposed bandwidth would be about $4.3 billion-a cost to be borne by the companies that buy the spectrum, and eventually, the consumers who buy their wireless products. Nonetheless, it would take years to migrate the military systems-satellite communications links, training range operations and weapons targeting tools-from the bands they occupy in the spectrum, and some fear their capability would be degraded in the process.

"The military has been in a war for spectrum for many years," says Mary Ann Elliott, president of Arrowhead Space and Telecommunications, a defense contractor that provides global telecommunications service. "They've only recently come to grips with it. "Industry sees frequency as a way to sell widgets and make money. Congress sees spectrum as a way to . . . put money into government coffers. And the military views spectrum as vital to protect this nation's sovereignty. So you have three completely opposing viewpoints. There's no easy, expedient way to mitigate or change any of the three," says Elliott.

While the use of spectrum has changed in ways unimagined in 1934, the Communications Act remains the framework for managing it. What's more, spectrum management is a sovereign right of nations, which is why cellular phones and radios that work in the United States do not work abroad. International pressure is mounting to allocate portions of the spectrum-some of which is occupied by the Defense Department and other federal agencies-for global use.

For the military, this lack of coordination in spectrum management is more than an inconvenience. During the 1999 NATO air campaign to stop ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, the United States found itself restricted in its ability to gather intelligence, communicate via radio, and even conduct aerial refueling of aircraft-all because of poor spectrum management, according to a November report by the Defense Science Board.

"Restrictions on U.S. military equipment did not arise from sabotage, maintenance failures, or enemy countermeasures-they resulted from the Department of Defense acquisition system failure to insist on qualifying spectrum allocations for new systems that depend on access to the radio frequency spectrum," the board found. "In the United States, some military equipment designed to operate in the UHF band can no longer be used because its spectrum was auctioned off to raise funds to reduce the national budget deficit and promote the growth of the digital cellular telephone industry."

Without a comprehensive plan to better manage spectrum use in the future, such problems will only grow.