NTIA is trying to “get to the bottom...
NTIA is trying to “get to the bottom of what do people want, versus what they actually need,” on spectrum allocation, said Chief of Staff Angela Simpson at a Practising Law Institute telecom seminar Thursday. “It’s very difficult differentiating,” she…
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said, especially when counsel is “sometimes advocating wants as needs.” NTIA is looking into what constitutes “effective” use of spectrum, said Simpson. The agency will meet with the Commerce Spectrum Management Advisory Committee next week to take the lessons CSMAC has learned on spectrum management and “turn them into a game plan,” she said. It’s “imperative that the government agencies and private sector continue to find innovative ways” to solve complex spectrum access issues, she said. Spectrum sharing needs to be a key tool, she said. As time goes by and more spectrum gets allocated, relocating spectrum users becomes more complicated, she said. Spectrum sharing is “not a pie in the sky proposition,” but is really possible now, said Simpson. NTIA is staying active in President Barack Obama’s ConnectED initiative, she said. The agency plans to work closely with the FCC, Department of Education and all other stakeholders to achieve Obama’s goal of connecting K-12 to high-speed circuits within the next 5 years, said Simpson. NTIA expects the lessons it learned from the Broadband Technology Opportunities Program to play a role in this discussion, she said. BTOP projects connected 10 percent of U.S. schools to broadband, in a way that saved “significant amounts of money,” said Simpson. She said she hopes the FCC can use those lessons as it looks into E-rate overhauls. The multistakeholder process works, as can codes of conduct. NTIA plans to use such a process in consumer privacy issues, and NTIA will take the lessons it learned from 2013 and expand it to 2014, said Simpson. Facial recognition technology has the potential to significantly improve many services, but brings with it potential privacy concerns, she said. NTIA plans to explore the issue and see what progress it can make on those issues, she said. The agency plans multistakeholder discussions on facial recognition technologies, it said earlier this week (CD Dec 5 p11).