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Okay, I think we are ready to proceed. Welcome, everybody. I'm John Holdren, President Obama's Science and Technology Advisor and Co-Chairman of his Council of Advisors on Science

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and Technology, PCAST. Certainly my pleasure to welcome not only everybody here in the room, but the viewers who are watching by way of live webcast. As you all know, I think the occasion today is the release

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of the PCAST report realizing the full potential of government held spectrum to spur economic growth. It actually exists in hard copy. And we have a very distinguished group of people to talk about

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the report and its implications including the chair of the PCAST working group that produced it, Mark Gorenberg. And I want to give Mark a special shout out. The task of number one, herding all the cats who participate in

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such a production and distilling the vast array of analysis and information that they're drawing upon into a cogent and eminently practical set of recommendations is really an enormous challenge which Mark pulled off with tremendous applause.

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The other folks who will be commenting starting on my immediate left, Jason Furman, the Principal Deputy Director of the National Economic Council in the Executive Office of the President, Mark Gorenberg, as I've mentioned,

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member of PCAST and chair of the working group that produced this report, Lawrence Strickling, whose Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Communications and Information, and the Administrator of the National Telecommunications and

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Information Administration, Terry Tekai, who is the Chief Information Officer of the Department of Defense, and Julius Genachowski, the Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission.

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Let me just say a few words before moving on to the other speakers here. I would say, first of all, that this report for PCAST was a particular labor of love in which many members of PCAST made

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important contributions. It was a labor of love in part because it embraces so many of the priorities and principal themes of the Obama Administration, including, above all, the relation between science,

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technology and innovation on the one hand, and economic growth, jobs, competitiveness on the other. These are themes of great importance to the President, great importance to the country.

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The theme of public-private cooperation has been another very high priority emphasis for President Obama and for all of us in his administration, all of us in PCAST. We think, as the President has so often said,

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that the challenges we face in the economy, in our national security, in the energy domain, in public health and biomedicine, all these challenges are so demanding and our resources so

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limited that cooperation is absolutely essential if we're going to succeed in addressing them effectively. And certainly of all the axes of cooperation that are important, none is more important than the cooperation between the public

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and private sectors. I know that Jason Furman will doubtless address this as well. I don't want to steal too much of his thunder, but it is absolutely clear historically that technology

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and innovation have been central to the nation's economic strength, to our healthcare system, to the maintenance and improvement of environmental quality, to our national and homeland security.

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And wireless broadband technology in particular has obviously become a critically important element of all of this, enabling entirely new services, capabilities and opportunities across all of these domains of

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enormous national importance. Of course, one of the remarkable aspects of this report is that in contrast to how physicists like myself have long viewed the electromagnetic spectrum, namely as a limited resource provided

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by nature on an as-is basis, with no possibility of creating anymore, this report takes on really a new view, a new perspective, a new approach to spectrum, which recognizes the enormous potential of sharing in that

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space to derive more benefit, to use those limited frequencies in a practically unlimited way. The implications of that shift in thinking and approach are truly revolutionary.

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And again, to emphasize the point about partnerships, there is a particularly important opportunity here to have the government and industry combine forces in the way they address the use of this resource for the good of the economy indeed in a

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larger sense for the good of the nation. I know that under the outstanding leadership of Larry Strickling at the NTIA, a solid foundation for that sort of collaboration is already largely in place.

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Through, for example, the work of the Commerce Spectrum Management Advisory Committee that is formally a Federal Advisory Committee composed of non-government spectrum experts. I'm very optimistic that in the months and years ahead this kind

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of collaboration between the public and private sectors in a domain full of exciting technical advances is going to help us usher in a new era of mobile broadband technology performance and applications.

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There are, I should say, a lot of other people in the room that I should thank. We have another member of PCAST in the front row, Dr. Rosina Birbaum.

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We have the key supporting members of the PCAST staff, Dr. Deborah Stein and Dr. Amber Hartman-Schultz. We have key members of the OSTP staff who have worked hand in hand with the PCAST in the work that led to this report.

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Tom Power, who leads our technology division. Danny Weitzner, who's played a key role in all aspects important to the wireless sector. There are a lot of other people I should name and I won't in the

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interest of time. We are on a tight schedule and we have a lot of speakers with something to say. So let me at this point turn it over to Jason Furman,

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who will add some perspective from the National Economic Council. Thank you, John. Thank you, Mark, and the PCAST for this really outstanding

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report. I wanted to just provide a little bit of context in terms of overall economic policy and in terms of what this administration has done and is going to continue to be doing on

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spectrum policy. Two years ago, in June 2010, the administration launched its spectrum plan. It was based on the FCC's broadband plan and drew heavily

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on the ideas of people like Larry Strickling here and people like Anish Chopra who were with us at the time. It was launched in a speech by Larry Summers. And that's significant because it made it very clear that the

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President from the very beginning thought about this as very much an economic plan and an important part of our overall innovation agenda. Sometimes when one thinks about innovation,

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you think about funding for NSF or NIH or research or other things and that's extremely important and we're fighting for all we can in those areas. But the days when we could do things like the Recovery Act,

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which had over $100 billion of funding for innovation, aren't here anymore. And a lot of the ways that we have to push things forward are really the private sector and the investments it makes,

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the research and discoveries it undertakes, and the things that it deploys. But that doesn't mean there's nothing for us to do. In fact, there's an enormous amount we need to do to provide

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the catalysts for that type of investment and innovation and provide the infrastructure and some of the rules that help it happen. And wireless is one of the best and most important examples of

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that and it's not just the jobs, building wireless networks, it's not just the jobs in the whole ecosystem and apps and mobile devices that surround it. It's the way in which that technological infrastructure is

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really central to the way that we operate as an economy today, the way that we do our jobs. I've never seen a reliable estimate of the numbers of jobs, the amount of GDP that can be associated with it,

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but it's almost certainly very large. There's almost certainly a number of other ways it contributes to our economy that aren't measured in GDP, like the quality of healthcare, the way in which we use our

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energy, the degree of public safety. Since the time that that was launched, we've made a lot of progress. Under the leadership of NTIA, we've identified 200 megahertz of

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spectrum that can be reallocated. And with the President and with the Congress and a lot of the staff members here wrote legislation that establishes the authority for incentive auctions,

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which will help us free up still more. But in that time, since June 2010 when the administration first launched its plan, the plan was to nearly double the amount of spectrum available for mobile broadband,

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500 megahertz over the course of a decade, which is an ambitious goal and one that will take hard work to achieve. But since that time, June 2010,

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the amount of spectrum we use, the amount of use of the spectrum has probably increased five to tenfold. So we set a goal of doubling over a decade. In two years, it's probably gone up five to ten times the

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amount that we use. That means that figuring out how to reallocate spectrum, especially to exclusive license use, is not going to be anywhere near sufficient to keep up with

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the demand. And you look forward at this pace by the end of the decade, it would go up a thousandfold. To cope with something going up a thousandfold,

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we're going to need to do the same type of thing the President talks about in the context of energy, which is an all of the above strategy. And that includes things that Randall Stevenson talked about

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in his op-ed recently congratulating the FCC on the way in which it sped up the decision process around transfers of spectrum, local governments, freeing up, you know, dealing with their NIMBY rules,

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dealing with building more infrastructure, more towers. But it's going to take a lot more than that. That won't come close to doing what we need to. And that's where this very important PCAST report that

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we're going to be taking very seriously and seeing that we can implement it to the maximum degree possible come in handy. And one of the amazing things in it is the statement that if you did what they said, you could actually increase the amount of

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spectrum, you could use a thousandfold. It's probably only a decade's worth of time. But as I said, we need every tool we possibly have. And that PCAST report in terms of the creative ideas around how

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you share, how you don't just parcel up and do license use on small things, but you share over broader bands, is places where how we deploy our federal spectrum, how we deploy our research dollars,

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how we work together with the private sector to develop the basis for those ideas and put you in a position to deploy them are going to be one of our very big challenges in the years to come.

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And it's one that we're going to be taking very seriously, working with Mark and the team that helped generate and develop and put the ideas in such good form and then working with the types of people represented in this room from industry,

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from government, across the government to really make them happen. Thanks for the report. We're going to be taking it very seriously and trying to make it

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one of the most important tools as we continue to build on that type of all-of-the-above strategy to dealing with the increasing demands of spectrum and its increasing importance for the United States economy.

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That, Mark, can tell us exactly what it consists of. John first, thank you for that introduction and thank you and many members of PCAST for their mentoring through this process. And let me thank all of the speakers that are here,

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not just for being here but for the many meetings along the way and the work that we did together through this process to come to the report that we have today. It's both an honor and a humbling experience to be here

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today to release this report. PCAST finds that if the nation expands its options for managing the federal spectrum, we can transform the availability of this national resource from scarcity to abundance,

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create support economic growth, ensure U.S. competitiveness and leadership, and if desired, create new revenue streams for the U.S. Treasury. There are a number of key people who worked on this report

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since last October, beside the many PCAST members that have been involved and let me call out Craig Monday for his contribution. There was also a group of 20 outside technical advisors,

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two of which are here today, Dr. Preston Marshall and Dr. Dennis Roberson, who were chosen, these 20 were chosen because they created or chaired many of the pioneering studies of the last 10 years,

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have dedicated a lifetime to this topic, or are members today of key organizations like the Federal Communications Commission Technology Advisory Council, or the National Telecommunications and Information

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Administration Commerce Spectrum Management Advisory Committee. We also work closely with the Office of Science and Technology Policy staff and critically important liaisons from the

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FCC and the NTIA, and we can't thank them enough for their tireless work and their brilliant thoughts. As Jason Furman stated, our report is published two years after the President's memorandum that called for making 500

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megahertz available for commercial use in 10 years by either clearing and reallocating or exploring spectrum sharing. That memorandum was created due to the projections of the

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groundbreaking FCC national broadband plan, but today also, as Jason said, even those projections look conservative as actual use continues to always outpace our forecasts.

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Global mobile data has more than doubled four years in a row. Growth of wireless has been explosive and is a multi-trillion dollar industry today, and will continue to grow and be a multi-multi-trillion dollar industry to the worldwide economy.

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Today we think of this market as cell phones and tablets and laptops, but bandwidth will be at the heart of all of our societal challenges like health care and energy. And in 10 years we believe machine to machine communications,

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sometimes called the Internet of Things, will surpass traditional cellular use. Let me commend the FCC. The day the PCAST study actually was approved,

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the FCC established a vendor-neutral dedicated wireless spectrum band for medical body area networks that can revolutionize the way patients are monitored and can contribute to improved patient outcomes,

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recovery, and quality of life. For example, a patient can alert the hospital even before they have a heart attack through measuring changes in their vital signs, or a diabetic patient can auto-inject insulin

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through a pump as soon as that insulin level declines. These are ways that we don't think about spectrum today. And while commercial industries need more spectrum in new ways, federal agencies also need more spectrum access for everything

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from radars to significant increases in unmanned aerial flights to keep our country safe and our military safe. Since 1994, when auctions began, they brought in a total of $53 billion,

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but over 90 percent of that net income has been from repurposing commercial bands. There has been only one significant auction of federal spectrum. And current federal bands are scored very low by the Office

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of Management and Budget due to the expected clearing costs. An excellent and comprehensive recent NTIA study reviewed the 1755-1850 megahertz band and included it would cost $18 billion, be very disruptive to the federal agencies,

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and take 10-plus years to clear. We all agree this is too long for us to wait. Our policy for spectrum was created exactly 100 years ago when we were pushed to action by the sinking of the Titanic,

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where more timely radio communications would have changed the course of history. But today we have a 100-year-old policy that's been based on technology that was very noise-sensitive at that time that

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led to a zoning map of small slivers of spectrum in exclusive use that leads to artificial scarcity and constraints of future use, a huge mismatch between yesterday's policy and today's technology.

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It's time to take advantage of today's technology to replan our spectrum cities and our spectrum roads. Today we have the equivalent of railroad on fixed tracks or single cars on narrow roads.

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And instead, PCAST believes that it's time to start to create the shared use spectrum superhighways. This is, this book came out last year, This is Big Roads by Earl Swift.

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This was actually given to me by John Leibowitz of the FCC and proved to be an inspiration for a lot of thoughts about spectrum. It is about the creation of the interstate highway systems.

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It was created by FDR's roadmap of 1936 to 1939, which of course we all know was put in place during the 40s and the 50s. We recommend that the President issue a new memorandum that

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states that we share underutilized federal spectrum and that we should identify 1,000 megahertz for sharing with the private sector. Like the NTII reports of the last two years,

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we believe we should start our review looking at the 2,700 to the 3,700 bands, although other areas are listed in the report. The first shared use spectrum superhighways need to move to substantial blocks of spectrum where systems can,

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with characteristics, can coexist together by frequency, by geography, by time, and by technical parameters like code and modulation and other dimensions in a sharing environment where we can optimize for capacity,

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not just for coverage. With a new architecture, we also need to move to a new set of metrics beyond the static megahertz, metrics that can measure not only how well a user can

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complete a communication, but also how that precludes others from using that spectrum. As dynamic sharing is improved, the equivalent to packing more and more cars on the road, the report shows that we can improve

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capacity effectiveness thousands of times. We can start now using existing technology. Database management techniques, essentially air traffic, air traffic controllers are being developed and implemented

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by 10 companies as white space technology under FCC supervision. At the same time, there's been an evolution of inexpensive small cells, frankly closer in size to the Wi-Fi boxes than

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you know than to the acrocell towers that you see on the road, use that can motivate us to get great reuse out of low power, higher frequency, geographically located spectrum.

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This makes small spells much more compatible with federal systems than traditional high-power cellular. And it is real today. In fact, Wi-Fi, which now carries more traffic than all

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the smartphone data traffic from U.S. carriers combined, is similar to small cell. Adding small cells is like adding more lanes locally to the road.

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The report then goes on to make recommendations for a few core systems that are required to make this transition to the spectrum superhighways. At the heart of it is a three-tier, multi-tier spectrum

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access system based on a geolocation database. It includes the idea of a primary incumbent, which in the federal bands we assume would be the federal agencies, exclusive secondary users, which could be LTE systems.

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It could be other users that are looking for quality of service in their applications, or general authorized access users, which are essentially unlicensed users but with the ability to be either registered or automatically

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registered. A sensing and other technologies to help with the shared spectrum algorithms, specifically about radars whose information is too sensitive to put in the database,

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will also be part of this. It can protect primary federal users, but a spectrum access system is the best guarantee that unused spectrum will be made available for shared use, similar in some ways to how the

00:23:13.400 - 00:23:25.400

internet is managed today. Years ago, we had few transmitters and many dumb receivers. Today, receivers are smarter, and by the way, they are also transmitters.

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So a receiver management framework is required. This could be done in various ways, and a number of committees under the agencies are looking at this today as a postmortem to the light square GPS situation that was ruled on earlier this

00:23:39.560 - 00:23:55.320

year that could have either been avoided or properly managed if even a rudimentary receiver protection limits were in place so the system planning could have predictability. The report describes a few other mechanisms that we recommend

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to be put in place. One of them is the spectrum management team that would work with the NTIA and work with the agencies, and this would be assisted, this would bring the White House back

00:24:06.360 - 00:24:16.620

in more formal involvement, be a system similar to what we saw in the 70s, but we now have a Chief Technology Officer, and this can be one under their purview, to work with the Office of Management and Budget,

00:24:16.620 - 00:24:30.380

the National Economic Council, the National Security Staff, and the NTIA and the agencies as we said. We also believe an incentive system needs to be put in place for the federal agencies to start to evolve their systems to

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make them more efficient and more aligned with sharing concepts. And we think that a synthetic currency, we call it spectrum currency, could correlate the agency use, could start to correlate against commercial value,

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and also over time as the agencies work towards making their footprints smaller, they can be rewarded with real dollars for doing that, and the early adopters will be the first ones that will be rewarded.

00:24:54.300 - 00:25:07.740

We commend Congress for their work earlier this year in the Spectrum Relocation Fund to make it available for efficiency use. We think that should go one more step. With the idea of getting rid of small bands to large highway

00:25:07.740 - 00:25:22.220

bands, we think that it's time to also make that fund band-independent so that people who are looking to make their systems more efficient have a ready pot to go to to help do that. But we also need to experiment with new licenses.

00:25:22.220 - 00:25:34.060

Today, of course, we have licensed, we have unlicensed, and licensed is a long-term license. But there are room for models in between. Medium and short-term licenses that allow turnover of spectrum

00:25:34.060 - 00:25:48.260

offer access rather than a model of hard asset ownership. It will let many businesses have a license to spectrum, but it provides a mechanism also to generate revenue if that is desired. We believe there should be some immediate actions that take the

00:25:48.260 - 00:25:58.680

form of a pilot. One of them is to create a Spectrum Management Steering Committee by industry. And we, PCAST, just went through this process with the

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Advanced Manufacturing Partnership Steering Committee, whose stellar results came out a year after that report with PCAST this past Tuesday. Second, we believe there should be a large real-world

00:26:10.420 - 00:26:23.380

scalable set of test services, a large and scalable test city, and a mobile test service that can help answer the sharing questions by federal users, commercial users, and policy makers on what needs to be answered,

00:26:23.380 - 00:26:36.940

what needs to be discovered, how we move innovation to reality, and how we get new technologies from the labs to products faster. This test city can be used for sharing a federal spectrum. It can also be used for sharing in public safety spectrum,

00:26:36.940 - 00:26:49.180

which is being currently looked at for that purpose. A third is to fast-track two federal bans for immediate use by general authorized devices. The 3550 ban is a perfect ban for small-cell local

00:26:49.180 - 00:27:00.780

geographies sharing. In this report, we've suggested a number of bans for a second ban that will be determined, we hope, by the FCC and the NTIA. One interesting example, for example,

00:27:00.780 - 00:27:16.220

is the 4.9 gigahertz ban, because it can work with existing 5 gigahertz devices and can dynamically share with non- critical public safety systems to help explore sharing. Let me summarize our thoughts to a few questions that have been

00:27:16.220 - 00:27:26.160

brought up publicly since we approved the PCAST report at the end of May. One, federal spectrum. We've only looked at federal spectrum,

00:27:26.160 - 00:27:38.200

but we believe we can build a spectrum superhighway starting there, especially in higher frequency wider bans. Two, technology. The technology we need to get started is here today or can

00:27:38.200 - 00:27:50.460

easily be created from the technology here today. We can start with a spectrum access system, small-cell, radios that work with multiple frequency. That technology is already proven.

00:27:50.460 - 00:28:00.560

This will provide an unprecedented amount of effective spectrum access, clearing versus sharing. Everyone is in agreement that we need to move forward with dynamic sharing.

00:28:00.560 - 00:28:12.640

The only question is when, how, and how fast. The sooner we do, the sooner we make spectrum available and start an innovation cycle. The concept is being discussed throughout the world with

00:28:12.640 - 00:28:22.980

considerable discussion in Europe. The plan in the PCAST report can provide meaningful access to shared spectrum, we believe, in three years. Historically, it's taken an average of more than eight

00:28:22.980 - 00:28:36.580

years to clear and reassign through auction. And the NTIA report, of course, on the 1755 ban talks about clearing and reallocating being well over a decade. Fourth, revenue generation.

00:28:36.580 - 00:28:49.180

Today, we believe it will be minimal from clearing and reallocating federal spectrum. But a spectrum access system in place, the federal government has choice to grow the economy without fees or to look at

00:28:49.180 - 00:29:01.260

user fees, shorter-term auctions, or revenue-generating mechanisms that grant priority access. And fifth, I think most importantly, we need to create a faster innovation cycle for future radio

00:29:01.260 - 00:29:14.240

technologies to attract private sector investment dollars and accelerate the innovation cycle critical to maintain US leadership for the next decades. If we create the spectrum superhighways at a robust

00:29:14.240 - 00:29:27.920

sharing environment, now we will create the market foundation for that innovation and for the innovation of these new technologies to flourish in a way that the internet also did as we go back to the middle 90s.

00:29:27.920 - 00:29:44.020

We invented mobile phones in the 1930s, and we lost that lead in 1991 and only recently gained back leadership in this area, while 80 percent of the cell phones use US-based operating systems, all of the major carrier network

00:29:44.020 - 00:29:57.140

providers are overseas. It's imperative to create the wave that will launch an innovation cycle to foster US-based innovation. If we don't, another country will.

00:29:57.140 - 00:30:06.260

And we will not meet our demand for spectrum. We can't wait. Our report is up on the PCAST site. We look forward to your comments after you read it.

00:30:06.260 - 00:30:27.840

And thank you very much for your attention and for being here today. Thank you, Mark. And I want to thank you and all the members of PCAST for this

00:30:27.840 - 00:30:38.840

groundbreaking report. Mark, in particular, I know you've provided tremendous intellectual direction and energy to this effort, but I'd like to also thank other members of the panel for

00:30:38.840 - 00:30:52.180

their ideas in time to deliver this report. I think we've been very fortunate to have such a strong panel of experts assembled to provide this new thinking on an issue of absolutely critical importance

00:30:52.180 - 00:31:05.720

to the growth of the innovation economy in America. And I'm particularly pleased that this panel of experts has now validated what we at NTIA have been saying for the past year, that we have to find a new way of making spectrum

00:31:05.720 - 00:31:18.600

available for commercial broadband and that the new way has to embrace the sharing of spectrum between federal agencies and the commercial industry. As the PCAST report concludes, the old method of clearing

00:31:18.600 - 00:31:30.020

spectrum of federal uses and then making it available for the exclusive use of commercial providers just isn't sustainable any longer. We've already moved the easy stuff.

00:31:30.020 - 00:31:43.480

To continue this old method of spectrum reallocation costs too much money and takes too much time. The industry and their customers as well as our economy just cannot afford the cost and delay.

00:31:43.480 - 00:31:54.220

And moreover, over the years the critical missions performed by federal agencies have required systems of greater and greater complexity and increased their own needs for spectrum.

00:31:54.220 - 00:32:10.460

And we have to take this into account as we continue to look for ways to use our spectrum more effectively. Now nowhere is this confluence of factors more apparent than in the 95 megahertz of spectrum located between 1755 and 1850

00:32:10.460 - 00:32:25.240

megahertz that our previous speakers have referred to. Today more than 20 agencies have over 3,000 frequency assignments in this band with uses that range from point to point microwave to covert law enforcement surveillance

00:32:25.240 - 00:32:36.900

operations to air combat training systems where the radio transmitters are literally embedded into the skin of the aircraft. Now we released a study that some of the speakers have

00:32:36.900 - 00:32:52.240

referred to earlier this spring. And we described all these uses and we projected it would take at least 10 years and about $18 billion to clear this band of the federal uses and then make it available to commercial uses.

00:32:52.240 - 00:33:02.720

And keep in mind we have to find other frequencies to which to relocate these uses and that's becoming harder and harder to do today. Now granted these were preliminary numbers but

00:33:02.720 - 00:33:14.220

however you discount them it's still going to cost too much and take too long to reallocate this spectrum the old fashioned way. So the solution as PCAST recommends is for federal

00:33:14.220 - 00:33:27.840

agencies and commercial users to share this spectrum. And while this approach certainly presents some new technology challenges we at NTIA working with the FCC are already moving forward to implement this approach where

00:33:27.840 - 00:33:42.440

we can in the 1755 to 1850 band. Through our advisory committee we have organized five working groups made up of representatives from industry and federal agencies, the public-private cooperation

00:33:42.440 - 00:33:54.580

that John Holdren referred to. And these groups are evaluating all of the different uses in this band and they're going to determine the fastest, most effective way forward to allow for the commercial use

00:33:54.600 - 00:34:06.480

of these 95 megahertz of spectrum. Now in some cases traditional relocation will likely be the recommendation. So systems such as point to point microwave we know those

00:34:06.480 - 00:34:16.340

are relatively easy and straightforward to relocate and we know we have spectrum to which we can relocate those circuits. In other cases such as the satellite earth stations

00:34:16.340 - 00:34:31.840

defining geographic exclusion zones to protect these earth stations may then allow commercial entry in large parts of the country not affected by these zones. But in addition we're now adding a third weapon in this

00:34:31.840 - 00:34:44.440

effort and that's the possibility that industry and agencies can both use this spectrum in the same geographic area through the use of new technologies that will then allow the most efficient use of this spectrum.

00:34:44.440 - 00:35:00.580

These groups are now up and running and we hope to receive their recommendations at the beginning of next year. Now two years ago as John and Jason mentioned President Obama directed NTIA to work with the FCC to find 500 megahertz

00:35:00.580 - 00:35:16.660

of spectrum over the next five years to be made available for commercial broadband services over the next 10 years. And including this 1755 to 1850 band NTIA has already identified 210 megahertz of spectrum for reallocation.

00:35:16.660 - 00:35:29.020

The FCC for its part now having been given the authority to do incentive auctions will be moving forward with broadcasters to make additional substantial spectrum available as we meet the president's goal.

00:35:29.020 - 00:35:42.380

But given the speed at which demand for spectrum is growing there will be a continuous national need to find spectrum for broadband services. And if we can realize the vision reflected in the PECAST

00:35:42.380 - 00:35:57.280

recommendations we can hopefully find a way to support the wireless expansion and the growth and innovation and jobs that it is delivering for the foreseeable future. So Mark the administration and the nation owe you and your team

00:35:57.280 - 00:36:06.500

an enormous debt of gratitude for the work that's been represented in this new report. And for that I want to thank you and all the members of your team for your contribution.

00:36:06.500 - 00:36:23.400

Thank you. Good afternoon. It's a pleasure for me to be here representing the Department of Defense.

00:36:23.400 - 00:36:38.920

But at the outset I'd like to add my thanks to the team for the excellent work and the efforts of the PECAST team. Their efforts have really furthered the critical dialogue on how we meet the nation's broadband needs and we greatly

00:36:38.920 - 00:36:50.160

appreciate their efforts and their thoughts. Military spectrum requirements are diverse and complex given the variety of missions that the department must support around the world.

00:36:50.160 - 00:37:05.480

DOD uses federally allocated and regulated spectrum assignments for command and control operations, communications, intelligence, surveillance and target acquisition on land, at sea, in the air and in space.

00:37:05.480 - 00:37:21.420

In the continental United States our systems utilize spectrum which is critical to properly train as we must fight. For example, as Larry mentioned, our air combat training system uses the 1755 to 1850 band to

00:37:21.420 - 00:37:38.520

support combat readiness pilot certification through robust U.S. air crew training which includes our allies. The system is used at training ranges and bases across the United States with over 10,000 training flights per month.

00:37:38.520 - 00:37:52.220

In short, spectrum is the critical enabler that ensures information is dependably available to train our forces and ensure our mission accomplishment. We must also recognize the growing spectrum demands

00:37:52.220 - 00:38:05.520

resulting from our increasing reliance on spectrum dependent technologies. For example, our use of unmanned aerial systems requiring spectrum to process volumes of critical intelligence

00:38:05.520 - 00:38:24.720

reconnaissance data. The inventory of our UASs has increased from 167 in 2002 to over 7,500 in 2010. This has resulted in a dramatic increase in UAS use and training

00:38:24.720 - 00:38:35.120

requirements. But we also recognize the importance of the growing need for spectrum for economic development, technology innovation, and consumer demand.

00:38:35.120 - 00:38:48.580

We are dependent on industry for innovative products that can be used for national security. In that regard, we remain fully committed in support of the national economic and security goals of the President's 500

00:38:48.580 - 00:39:00.060

megahertz initiative. The implementation of more effective and efficient use of this finite radio frequency spectrum and the development of solutions to meet these goals is essential to national

00:39:00.060 - 00:39:13.200

security and economic goals. For example, we continue to work with NTIA and our other administration partners to ensure the balanced spectrum repurposing decisions that are technically sound and

00:39:13.200 - 00:39:28.420

operationally viable from a mission perspective. The results so far have been promising. For instance, the fast-track study effort has resulted in arrangements to geographically share the 1695 to 1710

00:39:28.420 - 00:39:46.280

megahertz and 550 to 3650 megahertz bands. Furthermore, the reallocation feasibility assessment of the 1755 to 1850 band marks another important step. As Larry mentioned, while there are significant challenges yet

00:39:46.280 - 00:40:00.540

to overcome, it is possible to repurpose all 95 megahertz of spectrum based on the conditions that have outlined in the NTIA report. DOD is fully engaged and looks forward to addressing these

00:40:00.540 - 00:40:13.340

challenges by closely working with industry to evaluate sharing possibilities. As also was mentioned, we have been working with NTIA and FCC to determine ways to share spectrum with commercial users

00:40:13.340 - 00:40:25.440

where possible. The medical body area network sensor devices that were discussed previously are being shared in a band that is critical to our safety aeronautical mobile

00:40:25.440 - 00:40:37.400

telemetry testing. We also recognize that innovative spectrum management and sharing arrangements and solutions are necessary to future spectrum repurposing decisions.

00:40:37.400 - 00:40:52.560

The move from an exclusive right spectrum management regime to one focused on large-scale spectrum sharing between federal and commercial systems represents a major shift in the way spectrum is managed.

00:40:52.560 - 00:41:03.600

While this shift represents many challenges, we will continue to work with our industry partners and our government partners to develop equitable spectrum sharing solutions.

00:41:03.600 - 00:41:19.920

We recognize as well the need for us to look forward. We're developing a spectrum strategy focused on our investments in technology and capabilities aimed at more effective and efficient use and management of spectrum.

00:41:19.920 - 00:41:33.420

In many cases, that's a long-term proposition for us. It involves the re-equipment of our entire, in some cases, aircraft, what we have at sea, as well as what we have on land.

00:41:33.420 - 00:41:46.680

The department remains committed to continuing this important work with our interagency partners NTIA, the FCC, and industry. Together, we believe we will address the long-term solutions

00:41:46.680 - 00:41:56.380

to achieve a balance between national security spectrum requirements and meeting the expanding demand of commercial broadband services. Thank you.

00:41:56.380 - 00:42:10.540

Thank you. Thank you. I'm Julius Genachowski. I'm the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission

00:42:10.540 - 00:42:24.680

and the last speaker, which means I'm close to the only thing standing between you and the weekend. Let me welcome Commissioner Rosenworcel, who's here, my newest colleague.

00:42:24.680 - 00:42:35.680

It's a privilege to have her on the commission, and I want to acknowledge the strong support that Commissioner Rosenworcel has already given for the spectrum goals that we're discussing today.

00:42:35.680 - 00:42:46.180

John Holdren, thank you for inviting me and for the work that you do to harness science and technology to the benefit of our country. Thank you, Jason Furman, for your great work to drive economic

00:42:46.180 - 00:42:57.360

growth and opportunity. I saw here coming in friends from Capitol Hill on both sides of the aisle, and thank you all. We've been able to work together in this area toward the common

00:42:57.360 - 00:43:08.200

good. I want to acknowledge the hard work and leadership of my friend and colleague, Larry Strickling of the NTIA, his staff, everyone here from the military and other federal

00:43:08.200 - 00:43:21.800

agencies, including, of course, Terry Takai from the Defense Department. And, of course, thank you so much to each of the members of PCAST, in particular to those of you who invested so much time

00:43:22.320 - 00:43:39.960

and energy and ideas to this project. It is an honor for me to participate in a PCAST event. I'm a geek, like many of you here, and being in this job was not the first time I heard of PCAST.

00:43:39.960 - 00:43:52.320

It's a presidential advisory group that goes back to FDR, that was embraced by President Eisenhower, and over the years has been visionary in laying out ideas and policies for the country.

00:43:52.320 - 00:44:03.060

So thank you to this administration for taking PCAST seriously. Thank you, Mark Warrenberg, for jumping into this particular assignment and doing it.

00:44:03.060 - 00:44:14.220

We saw this from the first day with so much energy and enthusiasm and commitment to our future of innovation in the United States. And I also want to make sure that I acknowledge John

00:44:14.220 - 00:44:31.220

Liebivitz from our team at the FCC. I too got a copy of the book, but I did not read it as carefully as Mark did, mostly because with John working at the FCC, I'm very fortunate that we have just such a great team

00:44:31.220 - 00:44:42.980

pushing these ideas and initiatives forward. Now, the President, as we've heard, has made wireless a priority, recognizing its enormous potential to drive economic growth and opportunity.

00:44:42.980 - 00:44:55.640

Two years ago, the President said we want to, and this is a quote, invest in the next generation of high speed wireless coverage for 98 percent of Americans. This isn't just about faster Internet or being able to

00:44:55.640 - 00:45:07.140

find a friend on Facebook, it's about connecting every corner of America to the digital age. And there's mounting evidence that the wireless strategize we have all pursued, wireless strategies we have all

00:45:07.140 - 00:45:15.880

pursued are working. Across the mobile sector, we see good news. Innovation is up. Investment is up.

00:45:15.880 - 00:45:28.380

We're on track to meet the President's goal of 98 percent coverage ahead of schedule. The U.S. is leading the world in deploying 4G LTE mobile broadband at scale.

00:45:28.380 - 00:45:42.400

With 69 percent of the world's LTE subscribers here in the U.S. making this country the testbed for next generation wireless broadband innovation for the globe. Deloitte estimates that 4G investment and innovation will

00:45:42.400 - 00:45:59.200

create 770,000 jobs by 2016. The U.S. apps economy, which barely existed at the start of 2009, is the envy of the world and has created nearly half a million jobs already and more every day.

00:45:59.200 - 00:46:13.480

Since 2009, just the last three and a half years, the percentage of smartphones globally with American created operating systems has grown from under 25 percent to over 80 percent.

00:46:13.480 - 00:46:27.380

That's an incredible thing in a short amount of time. In 2011, venture investment in Internet startups, heavily mobile focused, reached its highest level since 2001. Annual private investment in our wired and wireless broadband

00:46:27.380 - 00:46:40.160

infrastructure, and of course we need a robust wired infrastructure to support our wireless system. Well, that investment is up 30 percent since 2009. Wi-Fi is booming.

00:46:40.160 - 00:46:51.820

Wi-Fi, born of U.S. policy innovation and where the U.S. continues to lead, hotspots, Wi-Fi hotspots are increasing dramatically in the U.S. We're seeing increasing integration between Wi-Fi and

00:46:51.820 - 00:47:04.360

cellular and software and devices of real benefit to both consumers and our spectrum efficiency goals. Now, U.S. innovators and entrepreneurs have made this progress possible.

00:47:04.360 - 00:47:16.780

Smart government broadband policies have facilitated real progress with so much progress. Why are we here? Well, we're here because our success around mobile is

00:47:16.780 - 00:47:32.120

creating enormous new challenges. As we began pointing out in the FCC's national broadband plan, demand for spectrum is increasing, increasing exponentially, and increasing far beyond what anyone had

00:47:32.120 - 00:47:41.860

previously anticipated, and increasing here in the U.S. before it's increasing at these rates anywhere else in the world. As a consequence, American mobile networks are running at the

00:47:41.860 - 00:47:58.500

highest utilization rate of any country in the world. An increase in spectrum demand will go up as time rolls out, not down, creating even more of a spectrum crunch. We need, we all agree, more spectrum capacity,

00:47:58.500 - 00:48:12.720

more spectrum efficiency, and we need it soon. It's a very real challenge. Now, it's the kind of challenge we want because it comes from too much demand.

00:48:12.720 - 00:48:29.120

Believe me, it's much better than the opposite problem. But it's a real challenge. And as the wireless world has changed so dramatically and so quickly, we know that the old ways of unleashing spectrum for

00:48:29.120 - 00:48:40.420

mobile and mobile broadband are not enough. Historically, as you've heard, our basic strategy has been to clear a band of spectrum and reallocate it. It's a strategy that has delivered tremendous

00:48:40.420 - 00:48:53.620

benefits for America. With new spectrum, we not only add capacity, we enable innovation, new technologies, new architectures, new network concepts.

00:48:53.620 - 00:49:07.660

The original 800 megahertz bands brought us analog cellular. PCS brought digital. And the DTV transition has brought us 4G. Landmark changes to the FCC's part 15 rules enabled Wi-Fi and

00:49:07.660 - 00:49:17.020

Bluetooth. It's hard to even imagine modern life without these innovations. But none of them existed before they existed.

00:49:17.020 - 00:49:25.660

None of the spectrum strategies that we use today, like auctions on license others, existed before they were recommended, invented, put in place.

00:49:25.660 - 00:49:36.900

Now, wherever possible, as we go forward, we have to continue to clear and reallocate, to clear and efficiently use spectrum for flexible broadband use.

00:49:36.900 - 00:49:47.520

Sometimes this may be a matter of will, sometimes it may require new approaches. Incentive auctions proposed in our national broadband plan and adopted by Congress on a bipartisan basis earlier this

00:49:47.520 - 00:49:59.440

year is one new way to reallocate commercial spectrum to flexible use, a very significant spectrum policy innovation, which together we've put in place. And of course now I look forward to working with my

00:49:59.440 - 00:50:12.100

colleagues at the FCC and other agencies and with the industry to implement. But in order to keep pace with our nation's demands we need to continue to develop new tools to supplement the old ones.

00:50:12.100 - 00:50:27.500

Spectrum sharing is one such tool. This is why PCAST's efforts are so valuable. Just as incentive auctions are a big new idea, a new tool for freeing up spectrum for commercial use,

00:50:27.500 - 00:50:42.160

PCAST's recommendations on government, commercial sharing are another big idea for freeing up spectrum for commercial use. Both ideas will help drive our economy and job creation.

00:50:42.160 - 00:50:55.140

And I'm pleased to report that at the FCC we've been working hard already on various spectrum sharing initiatives. I was pleased to hear some of the, my predecessor, my, the earlier speakers referred to the medical body area

00:50:55.140 - 00:51:15.360

network authorization that we put in place recently at the FCC. This is a new spectrum based technology that will allow for patients to be untethered from the wires that now connect them to monitoring devices at ICUs and hospitals ultimately at home.

00:51:15.360 - 00:51:26.960

I'm pleased we got this done at the FCC and we would not have been able to without the cooperation of the NTIA and the Defense Department. Let's take a moment to reflect on what spectrum sharing means.

00:51:26.960 - 00:51:39.360

In a sense, and John Leibowitz has told me this repeatedly, spectrum has been shared since the Commerce Department began issuing radio licenses 100 years ago. Our system of licensing and allocations is a way of dividing

00:51:39.360 - 00:51:51.300

spectrum up in frequency and geography to allow multiple uses and users. Sharing is completely consistent with exclusive licensed use while also creating new opportunities for

00:51:51.300 - 00:52:01.340

unlicensed use. Now, of course, most current approaches to sharing tend to be static in nature. And what's new and exciting and embraced by PCAST is the prospect

00:52:01.340 - 00:52:14.140

that technology can turbocharge sharing not only in frequency and space, but also in time. In fact, cutting edge wireless technologies like LTE and the latest flavors of Wi-Fi do just that.

00:52:14.140 - 00:52:27.280

They provide mechanisms for finite amounts of spectrum to be shared among millions and millions of users. Sharing between commercial and federal users can pay major dividends for everyone involved.

00:52:27.280 - 00:52:37.440

I mentioned the ways, as others have, the ways it can drive our economy, innovation and job creation. From the perspective of government users,

00:52:37.440 - 00:52:53.340

it can also help narrow the growing gap between the functionality and cost of military and other government communications equipment and commercial. It can do this by allowing federal agencies and shared

00:52:53.340 - 00:53:04.380

bands to tap into the massive $300 billion global supply chain for commercial wireless equipment. I've seen a lot of ideas presented and developed in Washington.

00:53:04.380 - 00:53:17.120

I completely believe that this idea is a win-win idea for both our economy and our military. Looking into the future, we'll increasingly see different sharing approaches for different circumstances and

00:53:17.120 - 00:53:26.920

different bands. I expect we'll see greater use of the dynamic frequency selection methods, which allow unlicensed networks to coexist with radar systems in the 5 GHz band.

00:53:26.920 - 00:53:39.520

We may see licensed terrestrial mobile networks coexist with airborne systems, taking advantage of some of the interference management features built into LTE. This is why the new tests in the 1.7 GHz band are so

00:53:39.520 - 00:53:52.980

important, why we were pleased to receive an experimental license application from the industry and why we're working very hard with NTIA to move this forward quickly. Now, while the FCC has pioneered the development of

00:53:52.980 - 00:54:03.020

white spaces sharing in the TV band, I think we'll see the concept extended, as the PCAST recommends, to other bands, too. And today I'm pleased to announce our plan to begin a

00:54:03.020 - 00:54:14.620

proceeding to move forward on small cell use in the 3.5 GHz band. I'll work with my FCC colleagues to issue a notice of proposed rulemaking later this year.

00:54:14.620 - 00:54:26.720

I expect it will consider some of the amazing ideas contained in the PCAST report and other ideas. I look forward to working with our partners at NTIA on this important effort and getting it moving.

00:54:26.720 - 00:54:41.160

Now, I know we're all committed to working together to maximize the usefulness and availability of the 3.5 GHz band at all spectrum. 3.5 in particular can become a powerful proving ground for

00:54:41.160 - 00:54:54.200

technologies to help solve some of the thorniest spectrum management challenges. The small cell opportunity is a significant one and it would be consistent with our history of innovation to identify a band

00:54:54.200 - 00:55:06.820

that helps jumpstart an area of innovation which the U.S. can leap. Working together, we can unleash the full potential of wireless to drive a bright future for all Americans.

00:55:06.820 - 00:55:27.700

That's why I am, and I know we all are, so grateful to PCAST for this report. Thank you, PCAST, and thanks to all of you. Well, thank you, Julius, and thanks to all of the panelists.

00:55:27.700 - 00:55:40.900

That concludes our event. We thank the audience as well, those who have made it here in person to hear these comments and those who have watched over the web.

00:55:40.900 - 00:55:57.300

The PCAST report is, I understand, now posted on the PCAST website in full. So as others have said, we look forward to the comments of those of you who read it and would like to send us your thoughts.

00:55:57.300 - 00:56:00.300

Again, thanks for being here.