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74–860 2012

H.R. 3125, THE RADIO SPECTRUM INVENTORY 

ACT, AND H.R. 3019, THE SPECTRUM RELOCATION IMPROVEMENT ACT OF 2009 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON COMMUNICATIONS, 

TECHNOLOGY, AND THE INTERNET 

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND 

COMMERCE 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

DECEMBER 15, 2009 

Serial No. 111–89 

( 

Printed for the use of the Committee on Energy and Commerce 

energycommerce.house.gov 


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COMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND COMMERCE 

HENRY A. WAXMAN, California 

Chairman 

JOHN D. DINGELL, Michigan 

Chairman Emeritus 

EDWARD J. MARKEY, Massachusetts 

RICK BOUCHER, Virginia 

FRANK PALLONE, JR., New Jersey 

BART GORDON, Tennessee 

BOBBY L. RUSH, Illinois 

ANNA G. ESHOO, California 

BART STUPAK, Michigan 

ELIOT L. ENGEL, New York 

GENE GREEN, Texas 

DIANA DEGETTE, Colorado 

Vice Chairman 

LOIS CAPPS, California 

MICHAEL F. DOYLE, Pennsylvania 

JANE HARMAN, California 

TOM ALLEN, Maine 

JANICE D. SCHAKOWSKY, Illinois 

HILDA L. SOLIS, California 

CHARLES A. GONZALEZ, Texas 

JAY INSLEE, Washington 

TAMMY BALDWIN, Wisconsin 

MIKE ROSS, Arkansas 

ANTHONY D. WEINER, New York 

JIM MATHESON, Utah 

G.K. BUTTERFIELD, North Carolina 

CHARLIE MELANCON, Louisiana 

JOHN BARROW, Georgia 

BARON P. HILL, Indiana 

DORIS O. MATSUI, California 

DONNA M. CHRISTENSEN, Virgin Islands 

KATHY CASTOR, Florida 

JOHN P. SARBANES, Maryland 

CHRISTOPHER S. MURPHY, Connecticut 

ZACHARY T. SPACE, Ohio 

JERRY MCNERNEY, California 

BETTY SUTTON, Ohio 

BRUCE L. BRALEY, Iowa 

PETER WELCH, Vermont 

JOE BARTON, Texas 

Ranking Member 

RALPH M. HALL, Texas 

FRED UPTON, Michigan 

CLIFF STEARNS, Florida 

NATHAN DEAL, Georgia 

ED WHITFIELD, Kentucky 

JOHN SHIMKUS, Illinois 

JOHN B. SHADEGG, Arizona 

ROY BLUNT, Missouri 

STEVE BUYER, Indiana 

GEORGE RADANOVICH, California 

JOSEPH R. PITTS, Pennsylvania 

MARY BONO MACK, California 

GREG WALDEN, Oregon 

LEE TERRY, Nebraska 

MIKE ROGERS, Michigan 

SUE WILKINS MYRICK, North Carolina 

JOHN SULLIVAN, Oklahoma 

TIM MURPHY, Pennsylvania 

MICHAEL C. BURGESS, Texas 

MARSHA BLACKBURN, Tennessee 

PHIL GINGREY, Georgia 

STEVE SCALISE, Louisiana 


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SUBCOMMITTEE ON COMMUNICATIONS, TECHNOLOGY, AND THE INTERNET

RICK BOUCHER, Virginia 

Chairman 

EDWARD J. MARKEY, Massachusetts 

BART GORDON, Tennessee 

BOBBY L. RUSH, Illinois 

ANNA G. ESHOO, California 

BART STUPAK, Michigan 

DIANA DEGETTE, Colorado 

MICHAEL F. DOYLE, Pennsylvania 

JAY INSLEE, Washington 

ANTHONY D. WEINER, New York 

G.K. BUTTERFIELD, North Carolina 

CHARLIE MELANCON, Louisiana 

BARON P. HILL, Indiana 

DORIS O. MATSUI, California 

DONNA M. CHRISTENSEN, Virgin Islands 

KATHY CASTOR, Florida 

CHRISTOPHER S. MURPHY, Connecticut 

ZACHARY T. SPACE, Ohio 

JERRY MCNERNEY, California 

PETER WELCH, Vermont 

JOHN D. DINGELL, Michigan (ex officio) 

FRED UPTON, Michigan 

Ranking Member 

CLIFF STEARNS, Florida 

NATHAN DEAL, Georgia 

JOHN SHIMKUS, Illinois 

GEORGE RADANOVICH, California 

MARY BONO MACK, California 

GREG WALDEN, Oregon 

LEE TERRY, Nebraska 

MIKE FERGUSON, New Jersey 


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C O N T E N T S 

Page 

Hon. Rick Boucher, a Representative in Congress from the Commonwealth 

of Virginia, opening statement ............................................................................ 1 

Hon. Cliff Stearns, a Representative in Congress from the State of Florida, 

opening statement ................................................................................................ 3 

Hon. Henry A. Waxman, a Representative in Congress from the State of 

California, opening statement ............................................................................. 4 

Hon. John D. Dingell, a Representative in Congress from the State of Michigan, opening statement ....................................................................................... 6 

Hon. Greg Walden, a Representative in Congress from the State of Oregon, 

opening statement ................................................................................................ 6 

Hon. Jay Inslee, a Representative in Congress from the State of Washington, 

opening statement ................................................................................................ 7 

Hon. Doris O. Matsui, a Representative in Congress from the State of California, opening statement .................................................................................... 9 

Hon. Marsha Blackburn, a Representative in Congress from the State of 

Tennessee, opening statement ............................................................................ 9 

Hon. Jerry McNerney, a Representative in Congress from the State of California, opening statement .................................................................................... 10 

Hon. Edward J. Markey, a Representative in Congress from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, opening statement .................................................... 11 

Hon. Anna G. Eshoo, a Representative in Congress from the State of California, prepared statement .................................................................................. 125 

Hon. Fred Upton, a Representative in Congress from the State of Michigan, 

prepared statement .............................................................................................. 127 

WITNESSES

Dale Hatfield, Adjunct Professor, Interdisciplinary Telecommunications Program, University of Colorado at Boulder ........................................................... 12 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 15 

Steve Largent, President and Ceo, CTIA—The Wireless Association ................. 25 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 27 

Michael Calabrese, Vice President and Director, Wireless Future Program, 

New America Foundation .................................................................................... 33 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 35 

Gordon H. Smith, President and CEO, National Association of Broadcasters ... 52 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 54 

Ray O. Johnson, Ph.D., Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, 

Lockheed Martin Corporation ............................................................................. 75 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 77 

Thomas Stroup, Chief Executive Officer, Shared Spectrum Company ............... 85 

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 87 

SUBMITTED MATERIAL

Letter of December 14, 2009, from Association of Old Crows to Committee, 

submitted by Mr. Terry ....................................................................................... 129 


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H.R. 3125, THE RADIO SPECTRUM INVENTORY 

ACT, AND H.R. 3019, THE SPECTRUM RELOCATION IMPROVEMENT ACT OF 2009 

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 15, 2009 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON COMMUNICATIONS, TECHNOLOGY, 

AND THE INTERNET, 

COMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND COMMERCE, 

Washington, DC. 

The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 9:35 a.m., in Room 

2123 of the Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Rick Boucher 

[Chairman of the Subcommittee] presiding. 

Members present: Representatives Boucher, Markey, Stupak, 

Doyle, Inslee, Matsui, Christensen, Castor, Space, McNerney, Dingell, Waxman (ex officio), Stearns, Upton, Shimkus, Buyer, Bono 

Mack, Walden, Terry and Blackburn. 

Staff present: Roger Sherman, Chief Counsel; Tim Powderly, 

Counsel; Amy Levine, Counsel; Shawn Chang, Counsel; Greg 

Guice, Counsel; Pat Delgado, Chief of Staff (Waxman); Sarah Fisher, Counsel; Neil Fried, Republican Counsel; Will Carty, Republican Professional Staff; and Garrett Golding, Republican Legislative Analyst. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. RICK BOUCHER, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE COMMONWEALTH 

OF VIRGINIA 

Mr. BOUCHER. The subcommittee will come to order. 

This morning the subcommittee convenes a legislative hearing on 

two measures related to the availability of the wireless spectrum, 

which is essential to meeting our future needs for mobile communications services. 

The movement of personal communications to mobile services is 

both dramatic and accelerating. Earlier this year it was announced 

that for the first time, the number of homes having only a cell 

phone and no landline service now exceeds the number of homes 

having only a landline and no cellular service. At the end of 2008, 

there were approximately 270 million wireless subscribers in the 

Nation including an estimated 40 million active users of mobile 

Internet services. Daily, new attractive and useful applications are 

added to wireless services and data rates continue to increase as 

consumers require faster access to mobile communications. As more 

and more Americans use data-intensive smart phones and as servVerDate Mar 15 2010 02:13 Oct 20, 2012 Jkt 074860 PO 00000 Frm 00007 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 E:\HR\OC\A860.XXX A860

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ices like mobile video emerge, the demand for spectrum to support 

these applications and devices will continue to grow dramatically. 

Today, the subcommittee continues its examination of possible 

ways in which federal telecommunications policy can be altered in 

order to meet these challenges with the goal of enhancing the consumer experience and facilitating the future growth of mobile services. 

In July, I was pleased to join with Chairman Waxman, full Committee Ranking Member Barton and Subcommittee Ranking Member Stearns in introducing H.R. 3125, the Radio Spectrum Inventory Act. That measure, now before the subcommittee, would direct 

the NTIA and the FCC to undertake a comprehensive survey of the 

Nation’s spectrum and develop an inventory of each spectrum band 

in the U.S. table of frequency allocations between 225 megahertz 

and 10 gigahertz. The inventory would include the identity of both 

federal and non-federal users of spectrum and the types of services 

they offer in each spectrum band as well as the amount of use in 

each band on a geographic basis. When the inventory is completed, 

the NTIA and the FCC would create a Web site in order to make 

the information gleaned from the inventory available to the public. 

They would report the results of the inventory to the Congress and 

that report would include a description of information that could 

not be made publicly available for national security reasons. It 

would also include a recommendation of which, if any, of the least 

utilized blocks of spectrum should be reallocated for commercial 

uses. The creation of the inventory is an essential step in making 

available more spectrum for commercial and wireless services and 

meeting the extraordinary spectrum demands that our Nation will 

soon face. 

I have also joined our colleagues Jay Inslee and Fred Upton in 

introducing the Spectrum Relocation Improvement Act. This measure would address an urgent need which was brought to light after 

the FCC auctioned the advanced wireless spectrum, the AWS spectrum, in 2006. While that spectrum was auctioned more than 3 

years ago, the winners of the commercial licenses still do not have 

full access to the spectrum because it has not been fully cleared by 

the government users. The bill that we have jointly introduced 

would hasten the process of clearing federal users from spectrum 

that the government has reallocated for commercial purposes. It 

would require the NTIA to publish the transition plan of each federal entity to be relocated after a spectrum auction and it would 

clarify the steps that federal spectrum users must take in order to 

receive payment for their relocation cost from the Spectrum Relocation Fund including a requirement that the spectrum fully be reallocated and vacated by the federal users within one year. 

My goal is to have both the inventory legislation and the bill 

speeding the reallocation of previously auctioned government spectrum through the committee and through the House at the earliest 

possible time. 

I want to thank our witnesses for joining us this morning. We 

look forward to your testimony and your views on the future demand for wireless spectrum and the ways in which we can take 

constructive steps in order to meet those challenges. 


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Mr. BOUCHER. That concludes my opening statement. I am 

pleased now to recognize the ranking Republican member of our 

subcommittee, the gentleman from Florida, Mr. Stearns. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. CLIFF STEARNS, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF FLORIDA 

Mr. STEARNS. Good morning, and thank you, Mr. Chairman. You 

mentioned both of these bills and you have talked about what they 

do, so we are very pleased to have this hearing. I am a cosponsor 

of both of these bills, original cosponsor. 

It is very clear that the United States will need additional spectrum to meet the growing demand for wireless broadband. In fact, 

we may be victims of our own success here. The United States currently leads the world in wireless. Wireless providers have used 

spectrum to provide U.S. consumers with innovative voice and data 

services. The number of mobile voice customers in the United 

States has surpassed the number of wireline customers and the 

number of mobile broadband customers has increased exponentially 

over the past several years. As customers increase the amount of 

time they spend on their mobile devices talking, e-mailing and 

surfing the Internet, cell sites become constrained for capacity. As 

a result, providers need more spectrum, especially in order to increase the speed of mobile broadband services. We are facing, in 

the words of the FCC chairman, a looming spectrum crisis. 

For example, a voice call requires approximately 10,000 bits per 

second while uploading and downloading video requires millions of 

bits per second. Countries will need 1.3 or 1,300,000 megahertz of 

spectrum dedicated for commercial use by the year 2015, according 

to the International Telecommunications Union. Yet the United 

States currently has only 500 megahertz allocated and only 50 

megahertz in the auction pipeline. 

So in order to increase the amount of spectrum available for commercial mobile services, the Administration and the FCC need to 

inventory the current uses of spectrum bands, especially those 

below 3 gigahertz that are ideal for mobile services. The bottom 

line is that we need to know who uses which spectrum bands and 

the purposes for which they use such bands. Once we have the answers to these questions, the government needs to decide whether 

to reallocate spectrum for commercial mobile users. 

If the government is requiring existing spectrum users to vacate 

reallocated bands, the government also needs to establish a meaningful process for reallocating incumbent users. The process needs 

to begin sooner rather than later. Inventory reallocation and reallocation all take time and commercial mobile demand for spectrum is increasing, as I mentioned, exponentially. 

Furthermore, one way to make more spectrum available for commercial purposes is to use government spectrum more efficiently 

and simply reallocate the spectrum saved. That was the idea behind the Commercial Spectrum Enhancement Act, which was enacted in 2004. The law is designed to provide funding to upgrade 

the wireless resources of government agencies while clearing additional spectrum for commercial use while the CSEA government 

frequencies identified for reallocation are auctioned to commercial 

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cies of wireless facilities. Pursuant to the CSEA, the FCC held the 

advance wireless service one auction in 2006. Of the $13.7 billion 

raised by the AWS auction, approximately $1 billion has been 

spent to reallocate the wireless operations of 12 federal agencies. 

The reallocation procedures outlined in the CSEA worked well in 

most cases but some problems have cropped up. 

For example, T Mobile paid $4.2 billion to build a 3G network. 

The Department of Defense and the Drug Enforcement Agency are 

behind schedule in clearing some of the spectrum. However, because of unforeseen costs and complexities in their moves which 

have been compounded by the confidential nature of some of the 

agencies’ activities, problems like these have prevented the bidders 

from fully realizing the benefits of their investment in the time 

frames originally promised and may discourage participation in future reallocation auctions. 

H.R. 3019 will make the process more efficient. The goal is to 

better coordinate reallocation so that perspective commercial bidders have increased confidence to bid on the cleared spectrum. This 

not only helps the commercial bidders but also the reallocating 

agencies since they will have increased revenue from the auction 

and a better planned transition. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding this important hearing. I 

look forward to hearing from the witnesses. 

Mr. BOUCHER. Thank you very much, Mr. Stearns. 

The chairman of the full committee, the gentleman from California, Mr. Waxman, is recognized for 5 minutes. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. HENRY A. WAXMAN, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA 

Mr. WAXMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank you for 

holding this important legislative hearing on two bills that if adopted will create incentives for efficient spectrum utilization and enhance our ability to develop forward-looking spectrum policies. Ongoing developments in wireless broadband technology along with 

increased consumer demand have raised questions about the sufficiency of current spectrum allocations for wireless communication 

service. Some experts estimate that the wireless industry in the 

United States needs an additional 150 megahertz of spectrum to 

simply keep up with the explosion in wireless data usage and to 

remain competitive with other nations. 

Before we can start identifying bands of spectrum that might be 

made available for these new services, however, we need to understand how existing spectrum is allocated and utilized. In simple 

terms, we need better information about spectrum usage by federal 

and non-federal entities. 

Accordingly, in July of this year, a bipartisan group of 18 Energy 

and Commerce Committee members introduced H.R. 3125, the 

Radio Spectrum Inventory Act. This legislation represents a critical 

first step in developing a forward-looking spectrum policy. H.R. 

3125 is simply about making spectrum use and allocation transparent. It would direct the National Telecommunications Information Administration and the Federal Communications Commission 


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to develop a publicly available inventory of users and usage in the 

most valuable spectrum bands. 

The bill also directs the agencies to examine whether there is underutilized spectrum that might be reallocated for more efficient 

uses. Of course, any comprehensive look at spectrum must be sensitive to military uses and the need to protect information about 

such uses. The bill therefore establishes a procedure by which information pertaining to national security will continue to be safeguarded. The committee will continue to work with the Department 

of Defense to make sure that we are sensitive to any concerns regarding our national defense. 

I would also like to express my general support for H.R. 3019, 

the Spectrum Relocation Improvement Act of 2009. I commend 

Representatives Inslee and Upton for introducing this thoughtful 

legislation to improve the current spectrum relocation process by 

increasing the flow of information and resources as well as enhancing transparency. 

Thank you again, Mr. Chairman, for holding this hearing. I look 

forward to working with you as we move these important bills forward. 

Mr. BOUCHER. Thank you very much, Chairman Waxman. 

The gentleman from Illinois, Mr. Shimkus, is recognized for 2 

minutes. 

Mr. SHIMKUS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I appreciate the 

hearing. 

I would say that we need to be working on D block, D block, D 

block. If we can’t get the D block right, how in the heck are we 

going to do other allocations of other spectrums? And my focus on 

the D block is, as everyone knows, being involved with the E–911 

caucus, is emergency services and communication, and hopefully 

my colleague Anna will show and even Jane Harman and we will 

say shame on us if we have a next disaster and we are not ready 

to communicate effectively. Shame on us if we have another 9/11. 

Shame on us if we have another Katrina and we have sheriff departments not talking to firefighters, we have firefighters not talking to the National Guard. 

So I appreciate this focus, and we all understand the importance 

of having an inventory but if we can’t get the D block right in a 

timely manner, who are we kidding ourselves? So I would hope, 

Mr. Chairman, and the full committee chairman that we would 

really work on the parameters to push for appropriate and proper 

auction in which we get all the benefits, we bring in additional revenue but we also develop the revenue streams which will allow us 

to provide grants and money to our first-line responders to get this 

one important aspect of our homeland security issues and debates 

in line, and I yield back my time. 

Mr. BOUCHER. Thank you very much, Mr. Shimkus. 

The chairman emeritus of the full Energy and Commerce Committee, the gentleman from Michigan, Mr. Dingell, is recognized for 

5 minutes. 


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OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN D. DINGELL, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF MICHIGAN 

Mr. DINGELL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for convening today’s hearing on H.R. 3125, the Radio Spectrum Inventory 

Act, and H.R. 3019, the Spectrum Relocation Improvement Act of 

2009. These two bills, of which I am an original cosponsor, will aid 

the federal Administration’s allocation of spectrum, a commodity of 

increasing importance, especially given recent advances in mobile 

broadband services. Like all the rest of us, I am concerned about 

the allocation about the future and also about what we have done 

so far and whether it has contributed to the proper use of the spectrum for the future and for all of our people. 

These two pieces of legislation are complementary to the Federal 

Communications Commission’s duty to present to the Congress a 

national broadband plan as mandated under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. To be certain, the success of the development of such a plan and the implementation of its recommendations will be facilitated in no mean degree by a clear and better understanding of the spectrum available for use and a better and a 

more efficient process by which to allocate it for commercial use. 

This I believe will be accomplished in large part by enactment of 

the bills pending for the committee’s consideration today. 

With this in mind, I welcome our witnesses and look forward to 

hearing their views on the legislation before us. In particular, I 

hope they will engage in a frank discussion about the relationship 

between H.R. 3125, H.R. 3019 and proposals currently circulating 

in the FCC to reallocate spectrum from over-the-air television 

broadcasters to mobile communication providers as a part of the 

national broadband plan. 

Thank you for your courtesy, Mr. Chairman, and I commend you 

again for this hearing and the foresight that you are showing with 

it. I yield back the balance of my time. 

Mr. BOUCHER. Thank you very much, Chairman Dingell. 

The gentleman from Oregon, Mr. Walden, is recognized for 2 

minutes. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. GREG WALDEN, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF OREGON 

Mr. WALDEN. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 

First of all, thank you for holding a legislative hearing on these 

two bills. I think that is really important in the improvement of 

our process to have this oversight before we mark it up. 

I want to welcome my Senator, Gordon Smith, who has taken 

over the reins at the National Association of Broadcasters. I am 

still his Congressman, even if he is not now my Senator, but we 

have been friends and colleagues in the legislative arena in Oregon 

and here for many years and we welcome you at the NAB, and now 

that I have sold our broadcast stations and you have gone to the 

broadcasters, I am going to go into pea packing. 

I want to point out a couple of things. First of all, I concur with 

my colleague from Illinois, Mr. Shimkus, on the D block issue. We 

need to resolve that. But I also want to point out another issue 

that has come up related to public safety and I am not sure it is 


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going to get spoken to today, and that is use of the band by amateur radio operators as well. As we evaluate the value of spectrum, 

understand that when 9/11 happened, when Katrina happened, 

when other communication systems failed and even any day when 

there is a hurricane or a disaster anywhere in the world, it is frequently the amateur radio operators who step to the fore with their 

own equipment and provide the emergency communication when 

everything else fails. It is hard to put a value on that unless you 

can put a value on saving lives and helping our law enforcement 

community and our rescue community get through really difficult 

times, so they are there when needed all the time and so that 

needs to be a part of what we consider. 

Regarding the FCC’s notice, I am very concerned about what I 

am reading regarding Professor Benjamin’s comments and his 

paper. He is now a very top advisor to the chairman of the FCC. 

I hope this committee will look at some of the things he has had 

to say including how every dollar of additional cost for broadcasters 

is one less dollar for profit and thus reduces the attractiveness of 

over-the-air broadcasting as a business model but regulation would 

attend to entrench broadcasting in place on the spectrum. Then the 

regulation will not help free up spectrum and should be avoided. 

In other words, he is calling for the death of over-the-air free 

broadcasting, which I think is a real abomination, and we will get 

into that more. 

I know my time is expired, Mr. Chairman, and I look forward to 

hearing from our witnesses. 

Mr. BOUCHER. Thank you very much, Mr. Walden. 

And the Chair now recognizes the gentleman from Pennsylvania, 

Mr. Doyle, for two minutes. 

Mr. DOYLE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding this important 

hearing. I am going to waive opening statement and look forward 

to hearing from the witnesses. 

Mr. BOUCHER. Thank you, Mr. Doyle. We will add 2 minutes to 

your questioning time for our panel of witnesses. 

The gentleman from Washington State, Mr. Inslee, is recognized 

for 2 minutes. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. JAY INSLEE, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF WASHINGTON 

Mr. INSLEE. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you for holding 

this hearing. We know how important this is. 

In my State, as we speak, I have got hundreds if not thousands 

of constituents designing these new Internet and broadband services of the next generation. It is very important to a lot of my 

neighbors, people I represent. It is important to the country as a 

whole for its job creation possibilities. President Obama has recognized broadband infrastructure investment has tremendous job potential but we know we are going to have to have additional allocation of spectrum for commercial use to really reach the fruition of 

the tremendous promise here. And in order to first identify that 

spectrum, I want to commend Chairman Waxman for his inventory 

bill, which is a first step. I am proud to be an original cosponsor 

and look forward to getting that done as a first step. 


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But once the spectrum is identified and ready for auction, we 

really have to assure that procedures are in place this time to adequately guide the auction process. In the 2007 advance wireless 

services auction, the process and reporting requirements were insufficient to appraise the length, complexity and size of federal relocation efforts. They also failed to ensure a timely transition of 

spectrum by federal agencies and business planning by commercial 

bidders. It is this very problem that the bill that I am prime sponsoring seeks to address. 

Fundamentally, our bill will do two things. First, it increases the 

amount and quality of information available to potential bidders 

before an auction occurs, and second, it expedites the flow of auction proceeds to the relocating agency to keep the relocation process on track. I am convinced that this more complete information 

about the effective federal agency systems, the relocation cost estimates and schedules will reduce the risk for potential bidders, will 

ensure timely relocation payment and movement by federal agencies and will ensure that the next generation of consumer-demanded services are delivered. It will not cure the common cold. 

Otherwise it sounds pretty good. 

I want to thank my colleagues, Mr. Upton and Chairman Boucher, for their work on advancing this and I look forward to moving 

this so that we can really fulfill the promise of our brilliant constituents. Thank you. 

Mr. BOUCHER. Thank you very much, Mr. Inslee. 

The gentleman from Nebraska, Mr. Terry, is recognized for 2 

minutes. 

Mr. TERRY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding this legislative 

hearing and I look forward to hearing our witnesses. We have to 

make sure that we do this right and in balance with the spectrum 

that is used in the military. I have the pleasure of representing the 

55th Wing, which is an electronic warfare and information operation out of Offutt Air Force Base right outside of Omaha in Bellevue, and I have a letter from the Association of Old Crows that set 

out some of the issues that we may have discussing here with the 

spectrum and I would like to offer that letter into the record, Mr. 

Chairman. 

[The information appears at the conclusion of the hearing.] 

Mr. BOUCHER. Without objection. 

Mr. TERRY. Then last, in our committee memorandum, it starts 

off with the introduction criticizing the Universal Service Fund and 

calling it ineffective, and then the second paragraph also starts off 

with Universal Service Fund. So somehow Universal Service Fund 

is important in this discussion and I look forward to your comments on how Universal Service Fund affects the spectrum and 

your usage of it. I yield back. 

Mr. BOUCHER. Thank you very much, Mr. Terry. 

The gentlelady from California, Ms. Matsui, is recognized for 2 

minutes. 


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OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. DORIS O. MATSUI, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA 

Ms. MATSUI. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for calling 

this important hearing today. I would also like to thank today’s 

witnesses for being with us today. 

We are here today to discuss how we can promote greater transparency on spectrum issues for expediting the process in which we 

can allocate additional spectrum in the marketplace. According to 

recent estimates, there are approximately 270 million wireless subscribers in the United States but that number is growing. According to recent reports, the current economic recession has increased 

the number of consumers opting for only cell phones over traditional landlines. There is concern that the current allocation of 

spectrum for mobile broadband services is inadequate to meet the 

rapidly growing demand. In fact, the FCC recently warned of a potential spectrum crisis that could threaten the expansion of 

broadband services. While the DTV transition helped free up more 

spectrum, the need for commercial spectrum capacity will only expand as broadband continues to be delivered to more areas. 

To ensure transparency and help ensure we meet demand, Chairmen Waxman and Boucher have introduced the Radio Spectrum 

Inventory Act, and Congressmen Inslee and Upton have introduced 

the Spectrum Relocation Improvement Act. I am a cosponsor of 

both pieces of legislation. Moving forward, spectrum availability 

will be key to ensuring competition, improved public safety, meeting growing demand for wireless services and any proposal going 

forward should ensure underserved urban communities are properly considered. 

I thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding this important hearing 

today and I yield back the balance of my time. 

Mr. BOUCHER. Thank you, Ms. Matsui. 

The gentlelady from Tennessee, Ms. Blackburn, is recognized for 

2 minutes. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. MARSHA BLACKBURN, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF TENNESSEE 

Mrs. BLACKBURN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I want to welcome the panel that is before us today. We are delighted that you are here, and I am also delighted, Mr. Chairman, 

that we are talking about legislation that actually represents what 

is a balanced give and take, and that is not something we often do 

in this Congress. All too often we are talking about taking from the 

American taxpayer and giving to big business, but today we are 

going to be talking about raising money from big business through 

an equal exchange of value for a commodity, and this represents 

good policy and good government and I am pleased we are having 

the hearing. 

As we plot a strategy on how we move forward on broadband and 

how to best utilize the spectrum, I am one of many on this committee, as you have heard, who have long advocated for an effective 

and efficient inventory and assessment of what is available and 

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tant. Mr. Shimkus mentioned D block and some of the work that 

needs to be done as we learn some lessons from that approach. We 

know that this is a robust industry. We know that well over 80 percent of consumers are happy with their wireless service, according 

to a recent GAO study. That is pretty good. Eighty percent of people like the product that is there and that is available. There is 

ample motivation to get as much information as possible on spectrum availability and evaluate all of our options for relocation, so 

I am pleased we are bringing many different parts of this discussion together today, and I yield back the balance of my time. 

Mr. BOUCHER. Thank you, Ms. Blackburn. 

The gentleman from California, Mr. McNerney, is recognized for 

2 minutes. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. JERRY MCNERNEY, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA 

Mr. MCNERNEY. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman, for convening 

today’s hearing on two bipartisan bills that are intended to help 

our country make better use of our spectrum. H.R. 3125, the Radio 

Spectrum Inventory Act, will provide for the gathering of information about spectrum use to increase transparency and help us understand exactly how the spectrum is now utilized. 

This is no small task but it is absolutely essential to make informed decisions on allocating spectrum to meet the ever-increasing demand for wireless broadband spectrum. It has been reported 

that the U.S. allocation of spectrum compares poorly with OECD 

nations and is inadequate to meet the growing demand. We can’t 

let that happen. We are going to do the best we can to help industry take the lead and make our Nation lead the world in 

broadband. 

H.R. 3019, the Spectrum Relocation Improvement Act, streamlines the spectrum auction process and will reduce the time required to reallocate federal spectrum cleared for commercial use, 

allowing licensees to utilize their spectrum without unnecessary 

delay. As a cosponsor of both of these bills, I recognize the importance of properly managing available spectrum. I also understand 

that the sponsors of H.R. 3125 are working with the Department 

of Defense to ensure that the bill also protects ongoing military 

uses of spectrum and I look forward to working with my colleagues 

to improve this legislation. 

I thank the witnesses for taking time to share their perspective 

on this legislation and I yield back the balance of my time. 

Mr. BOUCHER. Thank you, Mr. McNerney. 

The gentleman from Michigan, Mr. Upton, is recognized for 2 

minutes. Oh, not here. The gentleman from Indiana, Mr. Buyer, is 

recognized for 2 minutes. 

Mr. BUYER. Mr. Chairman, I would ask that my time be placed 

upon questions, and I welcome my friends, Steve Largent and Gordon Smith. 

Mr. BOUCHER. The gentleman will have added time for questions. 

The gentlelady from the Virgin Islands, Ms. Christensen, is recognized for 2 minutes. 


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Mrs. CHRISTENSEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am going to also 

waive my opening statement and put it into the record. I would 

like to welcome the witnesses, especially Senator Smith, who I believe is here for the first time. Thank you. I yield back. 

Mr. BOUCHER. Thank you, Ms. Christensen. 

The gentleman from Massachusetts, Mr. Markey, is recognized 

for 2 minutes. 

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. EDWARD J. MARKEY, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE COMMONWEALTH 

OF MASSACHUSETTS 

Mr. MARKEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you so much 

for having this hearing. 

Back in 1993, we were in a world where there were two cell 

phone companies. They each charged about 50 cents a minute, and 

it was analog, but in 1993 this committee moved over 200 megahertz of spectrum and we created the third, fourth, fifth and sixth 

cell phone licenses. They all went digital. And by 1996, the price 

had dropped to under 10 cents a minute. The first two companies 

had moved to digital as well and we had a revolution that was ongoing, and it was so successful that right now there are people sitting out here in the audience checking their BlackBerry rather 

than listening to my opening statement, and that is a tribute to 

what our committee made possible. And now we are on to the next 

stage of this revolution where we know that the Hulu, Google, 

eBay, Amazon revolution is something that continues on. This committee should be very proud of it. And by reallocating even more 

spectrum will make it possible for the entrepreneurs, will make it 

possible for these technology geniuses to once again brand a revolution made in America. We have to stay ahead of this curve. We 

have to make sure that it is something that is American. We did 

that in the 1900s. We have a chance to do it again. 

I congratulate, Mr. Chairman, for your work on this issue. It was 

bipartisan then. It should be bipartisan again. We are into a 

wealth creation. That is what this is all about, and the more effectively that we can think this issue through, which is what you are 

doing, is the more likely that we will create the greatest amount 

of wealth that will help our country become more prosperous, and 

I thank you for doing that. 

Mr. BOUCHER. Thank you very much, Mr. Markey. 

The gentlelady from Florida, Ms. Castor, is recognized for 2 minutes. 

Ms. CASTOR. Because it is impossible, Mr. Chairman, to follow 

Mr. Markey, I am going to submit my statement for the record and 

yield back my time. Thank you for holding the hearing. 

Mr. BOUCHER. Thank you, Ms. Castor. 

The gentleman from Ohio, Mr. Space, is recognized for 2 minutes. 

Mr. SPACE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I welcome our witnesses. I too would waive my opening. 

Mr. BOUCHER. Thank you very much, Mr. Space. 

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ing. We are pleased to have each of you with us today and we very 

much look forward to your testimony. 

Just a brief word of introduction about each of our witnesses. Dr. 

Dale Hatfield is an adjunct professor with the Interdisciplinary 

Telecommunications Program at the University of Colorado. Steve 

Largent, former Member of the House of Representatives and 

former member of this committee, is the president and chief executive officer of the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association, the Wireless Association. Mr. Michael Calabrese is vice president and director of the Wireless Future Program at the New 

America Foundation. Former Senator Gordon Smith, we welcome 

to this committee for the first time in his new role as president of 

the National Association of Broadcasters, and we look forward to 

a long and successful partnership with you. Dr. Ray Johnson is the 

senior vice president and chief technology officer of the Lockheed 

Martin Corporation, and Mr. Thomas Stroup is the chief executive 

officer of Shared Spectrum Company. We welcome each of you. 

Without objection, your prepared written statement will be made 

a part of the record, and we would ask that you keep your oral 

summaries to approximately 5 minutes. 

Mr. Hatfield, we will be happy to begin with you. 

STATEMENTS OF DALE HATFIELD, ADJUNCT PROFESSOR, 

INTERDISCIPLINARY TELECOMMUNICATIONS PROGRAM, 

UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO AT BOULDER; STEVE LARGENT, 

PRESIDENT AND CEO, CTIA–THE WIRELESS ASSOCIATION; 

MICHAEL CALABRESE, VICE PRESIDENT AND DIRECTOR, 

WIRELESS FUTURE PROGRAM, NEW AMERICA FOUNDATION; 

HON. GORDON H. SMITH, PRESIDENT AND CEO, NATIONAL 

ASSOCIATION OF BROADCASTERS; RAY O. JOHNSON, PH.D., 

SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT AND CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER, LOCKHEED MARTIN CORPORATION; AND THOMAS 

STROUP, CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, SHARED SPECTRUM 

COMPANY 

STATEMENT OF DALE HATFIELD 

Mr. HATFIELD. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Chairman Boucher, 

Ranking Member Stearns and members of the subcommittee. I am 

very pleased and honored to appear before you today to testify on 

the topic of radio spectrum management, and in particular on the 

issues raised by H.R. 3125 and by H.R. 3019. 

My name is Dale Hatfield. In addition to the position that you 

just mentioned, I am also the executive director of the Silicon Flat 

Iron Center for Law, Technology and Entrepreneurship at the University of Colorado at Boulder. I should note in the past that I have 

engaged in independent consulting activities including for some 

members that are represented on the panel today. As I detailed in 

my prepared testimony, I have other affiliations but today I am testifying entirely on my own behalf as a private citizen. 

Now, in my written testimony, I present some background on 

spectrum management and then focus on five overarching themes 

or points. It is those five points that I will briefly summarize now. 

First, I have been involved in spectrum management issues for 

over 4 decades and it is very clear to me that we are now at an 


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unprecedented period of demand for access to spectrum in the critical frequency range of roughly 300 megahertz to 3 gigahertz. This 

increase in demand for spectrum is propelled by increases in the 

number of uses of the resource and the number of users and the 

amount of bandwidth or capacity consumed per user per use. While 

the exponential growth in commercial cellular bandwidth requirements is perhaps the most visible, there are a host of other increasing demands for spectrum in this range as well including important 

ones that support public safety, homeland security and national defense priorities. Thus, in my opinion, the spectrum scarcity issue 

that the legislation sets out to address is very real. 

Second, in my written testimony I review five traditional techniques that we have used in the past to accommodate growth and 

demand for the resource: one, going higher in frequency; two, improving the technical efficiency of spectrum utilization; three, reallocating existing spectrum from use to another; four, increasing 

the amount of spectrum sharing; and five, reusing spectrum more 

intensely in the geographic dimension. I conclude that for technical 

reasons, going higher in frequency will be of limited utility in solving the current spectrum crisis associated with wireless mobile 

data applications, and that while further improvements in technical efficiency can help, they are apt to be inadequate in solving 

the problems associated with the orders of magnitude increases in 

spectrum demand. That leaves relocation, increased sharing and 

more intense frequency reuse at least in some services as potential 

solutions, albeit ones with unique challenges of their own. 

Third, setting aside spectrum relocation for the moment, I next 

focused on increasing sharing and in more intense frequency reuse. 

With regard to the former, I comment favorably on past steps that 

the FCC has taken to encourage voluntary sharing of the resource 

through secondary markets. I go on to conclude that a combination 

of increased incentives or mandates for spectrum sharing coupled 

with more decentralized, more opportunistic and more technologically sophisticated techniques for accessing spectrum can be a 

significant helping in avoiding the looming crisis. In terms of increased frequency reuse, I first note that it is not always possible 

because of the nature of some services. In other words, some services like radar require very high power operating over long distances and therefore you can’t reuse the spectrum on a geographic 

basis as easily. I also wanted to note that spectrum reuse may be 

constrained by the availability of suitable antenna locations and 

economic backhaul facilities. 

Fourth, I comment that I am a strong supporter of conducting 

the spectrum inventory called out in H.R. 3125 and hence for the 

legislation itself because I am a strong believer in that old adage, 

you can’t manage what you don’t measure. It is that simple. I go 

on to conclude that a comprehensive and ongoing inventory is necessary to support two of the most promising of the three ways of 

averting a spectrum crisis, that is, relocation and increased sharing. 

Fifth, I observe that while I am a strong supporter of conducting 

spectrum inventories, I also note based on many years of experience that there are potential shortcomings associated with a paper 

study, at least in some services. Therefore, I conclude that the inVerDate Mar 15 2010 02:13 Oct 20, 2012 Jkt 074860 PO 00000 Frm 00019 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 E:\HR\OC\A860.XXX A860

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ventory mandated in the proposed legislation should be augmented 

by selected field measurements to gain additional information on 

actual usage in those bands identified as being the most promising 

for relocation or increased sharing. 

That concludes my oral testimony, Mr. Chairman, and I would 

be happy to respond to any questions that you or the rest of the 

subcommittee might have. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Hatfield follows:] 


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Mr. BOUCHER. Thank you very much, Mr. Hatfield. 

Mr. Largent, we will be happy to hear from you. 

STATEMENT OF STEVE LARGENT 

Mr. LARGENT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I want to thank 

you and the ranking member and say to all the members, hope you 

have a Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, hope you get there. 

I want to thank you for the opportunity also to share the wireless 

industry’s views on the Radio Spectrum Inventory Act and the 

Spectrum Relocation Improvement Act. These bills are much needed bookends for a process that will enable additional spectrum to 

be made available for the wireless broadband initiative and other 

services. 

Today the United States is the world leader in wireless 

broadband. While having less than 7 percent of the global wireless 

subscribers, the United States is home to more than 20 percent of 

global 3G subscribers. Our 112 million 3G subscribers are more 

than any other country and more than the third, fourth, fifth and 

sixth countries combined. Additionally, the most advanced wireless 

devices which are manufactured by global companies and could be 

launched anywhere in the world routinely debut in the U.S. marketplace. As a pair of former NTIA administrators recently noted, 

the convergence of mobile wireless services and high-speed Internet 

access and the evolution of handsets from telephones to powerful 

handheld computers promises to transform the way we work, learn, 

deliver health care, manage energy consumption and enhance public safety. 

The key to translating this promise into reality is access to more 

spectrum. CTIA believes there is an urgent need to identify additional spectrum that can be made available for wireless broadband 

and other advanced wireless services. By providing for a comprehensive and timely inventory of spectrum below 10 gigahertz, 

enactment of H.R. 3125 would represent an important step towards 

meeting rapidly accelerating demand and maintaining U.S. leadership in the global wireless marketplace 

How much spectrum do we need? The ITU projects that by 2015, 

developed countries will need at least 1,300 megahertz of spectrum 

for commercial wireless operations. Since the United States currently has less than 500 megahertz of spectrum available for commercial wireless services, we have asked the FCC to identify additional spectrum that can be reallocated to help us meet the ITU’s 

benchmark. 

Many of our trading partners are taking steps towards this goal 

and the United States needs to keep up if we are to stay ahead. 

A properly constructed inventory effort is a sound place to start. 

The inventory is only the first step, however. Once the inventory 

is complete, policymakers must use it to reallocate spectrum for advanced wireless services. 

History demonstrates that it can take a decade or more to reallocate spectrum for commercial use and put such spectrum in the 

hands of providers of commercial mobile services, more than a decade. Given the exploding demand for mobile broadband, we must 

move more quickly than was the case with either AWS or 700 

megahertz efforts. We simply can’t wait until 2020 or beyond. 


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We recognize there will be critics of the effort to move forward 

with an inventory and relocation of spectrum. They will claim that 

carriers should be more efficient with the spectrum already available, that we can build out way out of the problem or that we have 

already seen an expansion in the amount of spectrum available for 

commercial services through the recent AWS and 700 megahertz 

auctions. There are sound reasons why the subcommittee should 

dismiss these criticisms, and I have discussed these in my written 

statement. 

Finally, once an inventory is complete and spectrum is identified 

for relocation and auction, the improvements to the spectrum relocation process proposed by H.R. 3019 will ensure that the relocation process works smoothly for all parties. 

Thank you for the opportunity to discuss these matters with the 

subcommittee. We look forward to working with you to ensure that 

the U.S. wireless industry continues to serve as an engine for jobs, 

economic growth and the American competitive advantage. Thank 

you, Mr. Chairman. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Largent follows:] 


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Mr. BOUCHER. Thank you, Mr. Largent. 

Mr. Calabrese. 

STATEMENT OF MICHAEL CALABRESE 

Mr. CALABRESE. Good morning. First I would like to thank the 

committee’s leadership for taking up these two very complementary 

and important pieces of legislation on a notably bipartisan basis. 

A national goal of not merely affordable broadband access but of 

seamless mobile connectivity anywhere and anytime will require an 

enormous increase in available spectrum capacity. 

The Apple iPhone has proven to be the canary in the proverbial 

spectrum coalmine. Advanced smart phones consume hundreds of 

times the bandwidth of ordinary cell phones. With sufficient spectrum, pervasive connectivity will rapidly become integrated as well 

in applications for sensing networks, mobile health monitoring, energy conservation, education and more. This exploding demand and 

the continued focus on exclusive licensing by auction has served to 

reinforce the conventional wisdom that spectrum in scarce. In reality, the only scarcity is government permission to use spectrum, 

that is, licensing. Spectrum capacity itself is very abundant. Even 

in the most valuable beachfront frequencies below 3 gigahertz, actual spectrum use measurements show that the vast majority of 

frequency bands are not being used in most locations and at most 

times. This gross underutilization of the Nation’s spectrum resource should be an urgent concern. 

Spectrum is not only an immensely valuable and publicly owned 

resources but it is one that is infinitely renewable every millisecond. That is why New America and the Broader Public Interest 

Spectrum Coalition that we work with strongly support enactment 

of H.R. 3125, the Radio Spectrum Inventory Act. We agree that the 

more comprehensive inventory described in the House bill is needed. A more granular and comprehensive description of spectrum 

use in each market will assist policymakers, entrepreneurs and 

technologists to propose new ways to enhance both access and efficiency. We also agree it is important to extend the inventory up to 

10 gigahertz, as the House bill provides. 

Spectrum mapping would help facilitate expanded access to 

broadband in at least three ways. First, by improving the functioning of secondary markets for license transfers and leasing; second, it will provide information on what it would take to clear some 

very underutilized bands for new uses, and third, and perhaps 

more important, it will reveal the far greater number of frequency 

bands that can be made available for shared access in discrete geographic areas at certain times of the day or year or at certain altitudes or power levels. We expect rural areas to be the most likely 

and immediate beneficiaries of this mapping. 

The one shortcoming of H.R. 3125, in our view, is that an inventory of spectrum assignments should be augmented by actual spectrum use measurements as Dale just mentioned. Measurements 

and eventually a system of spectrum use monitoring can provide a 

more nuanced window into how, when, where and to what extent 

bands are actually in use. We realize that measurements add a 

budgetary cost. Fortunately, we believe appropriated funds are 

available over the next 4 years for a very robust implementation 


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of the inventory act. As part of the Recovery Act, Congress appropriated $350 million for a ‘‘comprehensive nationwide inventory 

map of the Nation’s existing broadband capabilities.’’ Since NTIA 

will award less than half the available funding to the States for 

broadband mapping, Congress could clarify that a portion of the remainder be used to inventory the airwaves as well. 

We also strongly support H.R. 3019, the Spectrum Relocation Improvement Act. Nowhere is spectrum underutilization more evident 

than in many of the bands reserved for use by the federal government itself. While we support H.R. 3019, we also believe the legislation should be broadened to take advantage of a critical opportunity to free up far greater spectrum capacity. H.R. 3019 would 

continue to limit eligibility for radio system modernization to agencies actually clearing off a set of frequencies. While only a tiny fraction of federal spectrum could be cleared and auctioned in the near 

future, a far greater number of bands could be shared more intensively by taking advantage of advances in smart radio technologies. 

Federal spectrum incumbents need the resources to take affirmative steps to enable more intensive access and band sharing by 

other users. This could be a real win-win for the military. New and 

upgraded federal systems could be designed and procured with the 

broader public interest and spectrum access in mind and not only 

in the very limited case of a band being cleared for auction. 

I will stop there. Thank you very much, and I will be pleased to 

take any questions. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Calabrese follows:] 


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Mr. BOUCHER. Thank you, Mr. Calabrese. 

Mr. Smith. 

STATEMENT OF HON. GORDON H. SMITH 

Mr. SMITH. Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Stearns, members 

of this honorable committee, it is indeed a pleasure and a privilege 

for me to be before you to speak a few thoughts about spectrum on 

behalf of the National Association of Broadcasters. 

First, NAB believes that any inventory spectrum should be comprehensive. Let us look at all the bands and all the services including the federal government bands and let us view how each service 

is using its existing spectrum. Second, our national priorities 

should recognize the value that free over-the-air broadcasting 

brings to every American. Broadcasting and broadband are not either/or propositions, as some suggest. I believe that is a false 

choice. Third, we should challenge all services to be efficient and 

innovative users of spectrum. 

Through our recent transition to digital, broadcasting has become 

more efficient. With your help, the transition was a resounding success and the benefits are remarkable. In a digital world, viewers 

receive many new programming streams and a wide variety of content and local news in high definition. It would be shortsighted to 

stunt that growth and dampen what is an even brighter future for 

broadcasting. If broadcasting is limited or eliminated, consumer investment and expectations in DTV receivers would be stranded. 

Consumers spent an estimated $25 billion in HDTV receivers in 

2009 alone. Millions of other Americans invested time, effort and 

funds on converter boxes, and the U.S. government spent $2 billion 

to help them with this. The broadcasters spent an additional $10 

billion to make the transition. 

For years, consumers have been promised that the digital upgrade would usher in a new era of high-quality television with new 

and more diverse programming, more channels and a host of new 

services all for free and over the air. If, as some advocate, that this 

all be done away with, consumers would realize none of these benefits. Through the DTV transition, broadcasters gave back 108 

megahertz of spectrum. Broadcast television is the first wireless 

service to ever substantially reduce its spectrum use while providing an increase in services. 

Then there is mobile DTV. This year, the television industry 

adopted a new mobile digital television standard, turning on the 

green light for manufacturing and implementation, and the results 

are nothing short of stunning. Members of the committee, this is 

a mobile TV. Right now it is playing a program from NBC. There 

are seven channels in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area that 

are doing this. It is also a cell phone. And this combination of technologies is, I believe, the future of mobile wireless communications. 

It is not an exaggeration to say that you will soon be able to receive 

broadcast television signals on almost any device. This is an example. Soon your BlackBerry will be a TV. Your iPhone could be a TV. 

You name it, we are on the cusp of it, and to short-circuit it now 

it seems to me would be very unwise. 

Broadcasting’s ability—and this is very important to understand. 

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ments is unique among all services. At moments of national significance or tragedy when millions of Americans are seeking information, broadcasting is the most efficient delivery system. With each 

new viewers, broadcasters’ use of spectrum becomes more efficient 

without any additional burden on spectrum. By contrast, with wireless broadband, each stream of content to every individual places 

an additional strain on the wireless network, clogging up the bandwidth, and there is more. For example, a company called Sesmi is 

working with broadcasters to provide a blended broadcast/ 

broadband system. If you haven’t seen this, Members, I urge you 

to do it. That system is more affordable, high quality and an alternative, a more affordable alternative to cable and satellite. 

A comprehensive objective examination of spectrum allocation 

and usage is a worthwhile endeavor. Such an analysis if done 

forthrightly and without bias will demonstrate that broadcasters 

continue to be the effective custodians of our Nation’s airwaves. 

Many broadcast services have not been and cannot be efficiently 

replicated by broadband services. Broadcasters, for example, help 

to save lives through timely coverage of natural disasters and other 

emergencies, and by coordinating with local law enforcement officials via Amber Alerts, broadcasters have participated in the recovery of 492 abducted children. 

Mr. BOUCHER. Mr. Smith, if you could wrap up, you are a bit beyond your time here. 

Mr. SMITH. Let us not forget the concerns we all shared during 

the DTV transition. We spent a lot of time to get it right and we 

did it so that economically disadvantaged, the elderly, rural and 

ethnic minorities are not left out with access to critical news and 

information. 

And finally, Mr. Chairman, if my statement is in the record, I 

think it is important that when you consider highest and best use 

and you put all of these public values in, the value of broadcasting 

is self-evident. Thank you, sir. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Smith follows:] 


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Mr. BOUCHER. Thank you very much, Mr. Smith. 

Dr. Johnson. 

STATEMENT OF RAY O. JOHNSON 

Mr. JOHNSON. Chairman Boucher, Ranking Member Stearns and 

members of this subcommittee, good morning and thank you for inviting Lockheed Martin Corporation to participate in today’s hearing on the Radio Spectrum Inventory Act. My name is Dr. Ray 

Johnson and I serve as Lockheed Martin’s senior vice president 

and chief technology officer. My role in the corporation provides me 

with a broad perspective of important spectrum issues relevant to 

the discussion today. I appreciate the opportunity to contribute and 

I am honored to offer input that may help inform your consideration of these important policy matters. 

Lockheed Martin is a global security company that employees approximately 140,000 people in all 50 States. We are principally engaged in the research, design, development, manufacturing, integration and sustainment of advanced technology systems, products 

and services and most of these systems and solutions depend on access to the spectrum that we are discussing. Our customers include 

a broad array of agencies both military and civil for whom we support diverse critical security missions both at home and abroad. At 

any given time, Lockheed Martin Corporation holds approximately 

400 FCC authorizations for a variety of uses including experimental licenses that enable the testing of new technologies as well 

as new applications being applied to existing technologies. 

As a general matter, spectrum scarcity is not a problem that is 

unique to FCC licensees. Based on our understanding, federal government users are experiencing the same pressure as they are required to meet increasing demands of their critical roles and missions. Therefore, it is an important balance that H.R. 3125 achieves 

by requiring an inventory of both federal and non-federal spectrum 

resources to be conducted by the FCC and the NTIA. Although 

through our own activities in developing advanced systems and solutions to meet many federal government needs, we see growth in 

requirements in terms of access to bandwidth-intensive applications whether that is video streaming from an unmanned vehicle 

or surveillance from a high-altitude airship. 

Lockheed Martin endorses the enactment of H.R. 3125, the Radio 

Spectrum Inventory Act. We do, however, have some concerns with 

the bill as it was introduced and respectfully suggest that the bill 

be modified to reflect the following issues. 

First, I note that the stated purpose of H.R. 3125 is to promote 

spectrum efficiency. While the bill does not explicitly require that 

NTIA and FCC conduct an efficiency analysis of spectral usage, the 

proposed section 119(a)(1)(E) as added by the bill steers the agencies in that direction. However, there is no single metric that spans 

all communications and non-communications uses of the spectrum, 

which can be used for point of comparison. The intensity-of-use 

metric is not correlated with effectiveness or efficiency for many 

spectral users. Moreover, efficiency improvements should not be 

equated to the reduction in bandwidth utilized. Measuring spectrum efficiency using as a proxy the price entities are willing to 

pay for a license is also inappropriate. Many critical spectrum 


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users deliver tremendous value to our country most importantly to 

our national and homeland security but do not directly generate 

revenues. 

Second, we are concerned that the bill would inadvertently require FCC and the NTIA to disclose sensitive information that 

should not be disclosed. This disclosure does not only impact the 

federal government but also impacts some FCC licensees like Lockheed Martin. We agree with the Administration’s stated concern 

and note that from any inventory security perspective, it is very 

important to recognize that the release of individual unclassified 

data points can result in sensitive information being improperly 

disclosed when viewed more as an aggregate. 

Third, I would like to raise a concern to the subcommittee regarding the possible misinterpretation of the legislation in two 

ways. One is the potential inadvertent message that it sends to our 

allies in the international community given the scope of the frequencies being inventoried and the provision requiring recommendations for relocation. The Department of Defense and the 

defense industry have worked hard to achieve an international 

spectrum harmonization to support allied interoperability. The 

other concern is the requirement for annual review of spectrum. 

This review can create an impression of volatility and instability in 

spectrum allocations, thus impacting long-term research and development, acquisition and the deployment of new systems and solutions. Suggestions of instability in spectrum access could result in 

a chilling effect in the long-term technology investments. 

Finally, we have identified a few technical issues with the drafting of the bill that we will submit separately to the staff. 

While I am here today to address H.R. 3125, I would like to note 

that we do have some concerns with H.R. 3019 as well and we 

would be happy to offer a follow-up discussion with the subcommittee. 

Mr. Chairman, I appreciate having the opportunity to testify. 

H.R. 3125 is a good start and Lockheed Martin commends you and 

the other cosponsors for identifying the need for spectrum inventory and for taking the initiative to draft legislation to address this 

issue. We hope that you will agree with our suggestions to improve 

the bill and we look forward to working with you and the committee staff throughout the legislation process. I am happy to answer any questions that you may have. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Johnson follows:] 


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Mr. BOUCHER. Thank you very much, Dr. Johnson. 

Mr. Stroup. 

STATEMENT OF THOMAS STROUP 

Mr. STROUP. Good morning, Mr. Chairman and members of the 

subcommittee. Thank you for this opportunity to testify on the 

pending spectrum inventory and relocation bills. My testimony this 

morning will focus on two main points. 

First, to determine how and if spectrum resources are being used 

efficiently, a spectrum inventory and spectrum database must include data on actual spectrum utilization. Second, until a database 

is compiled and analyzed, we caution against jumping to any conclusions as to what is next for particular frequency bands because 

new technology presents spectrum access alternatives that have 

not existed until now. 

I have been involved in the wireless industry for over 25 years. 

In the early 1990s, I was president of the Personal Communications Industry Association, which helped the nascent wireless industry win the reallocation of fixed microwave spectrum for new 

personal communications services which were the source of competition and innovation that were referenced by Congressman Markey. Then I founded and ran a company called Columbia Spectrum 

Management to facilitate and negotiate the relocation of fixed 

microwave incumbents in FCS bands for the auction winners. 

Since March of this year, I have been the CEO of Shared Spectrum Company. Shared Spectrum is a small technology company 

located in Vienna, Virginia. Since the founding of the company in 

2000, Dr. Mark McHenry has been conducting spectrum occupancy 

studies to document the untapped potential of many unused frequency bands. Attached to my written testimony is a list of our 

public studies to date. The video monitors in the room are also displaying some sample results of our measurements. These studies 

include measurements from New York City, Chicago and Washington, D.C., during periods of anticipated high radio traffic. They 

indicate that less than a third of the allocated radio spectrum was 

being used at any given time. 

To take advantage of this empty spectrum capacity, SSC pioneered dynamic spectrum access, or DSA, technology. DSA takes 

advantage of the empty spectrum capacity by adapting to the spectral environment and changing transmission or reception parameters. This allows for more-efficient wireless communications without interfering or requiring the dislocation of legacy systems using 

the same bands. The company developed DSA over the past 9 years 

for several military projects, and this technology is now being implemented in several military radio systems. We are also exploring 

several commercial applications including new cost-effective rural 

wireless broadband systems that can access preferred lower frequencies. 

As has been pointed out throughout the hearing, the demand for 

spectrum across all sectors and markets is substantially increasing. 

We agree that the necessary first step in confronting the spectrum 

dilemma is to conduct a comprehensive study of the Nation’s spectrum resources. We are therefore pleased to support the Radio 

Spectrum Inventory Act. The bill would provide guidance to the 


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FCC and NTIA to work together to create a database of spectrum 

allocations and assignments. However, it is also important to supplement this data with information regarding the actual use of the 

airwaves. Virtually every service to which spectrum is allocated 

can show a legitimate need for the spectrum, and most incumbents 

will argue that they make effective use of their allocations. Thus, 

compiling a database of spectrum assignments will be interesting 

but that alone will fail to show how much or even if the spectrum 

is actually being utilized. 

Until such a database is compiled and available, we caution 

against any presupposition as to what is next for a particular radio 

band. To assume that the next step following the initial inventory 

would be a traditional reallocation proceeding would amount to a 

plan for years and years of fighting among entrenched interests 

that have no notion or incentive to have their existing spectrum 

rights diminished no matter how little they are utilized. This is 

based on my personal experience where it took 6 years for the PCS 

spectrum to be reallocated and that looked like the fast track compared to more reallocation efforts that typically have dragged for 

more than 10 years. 

As the subcommittee moves forward, we believe that it is also 

important to recognize that new technologies like DSA enable 

more-efficient use of existing spectrum allocations and can create 

new opportunities for sharing spectrum with the existing services 

in underutilized bands. The interest in finding additional spectrum 

for wireless broadband services is more likely to be accommodated 

in a timely manner if a flexible access framework is established 

that includes DSA-enabled sharing with government and non-government incumbents. Such a framework would focus on 

multipurposing legacy bands with flexible overlay rights and responsibilities. Approaches that involve repurposing certain bands 

and relocating incumbents would be too difficult, too costly, too 

time consuming, and in light of new technology, unnecessary. 

Instead, a better policy would build upon the approach taken 

when the PCS bands were made available in 1995. The licenses 

that were auctioned were subject to a non-interference requirement 

with the existing microwave incumbents. While most of those licensees ultimately were relocated to new systems on other frequencies, the advances made in DSA and cognitive radio technology 

now provide the ability to coexist with legacy systems that was not 

available at that time. 

Thank you again for this opportunity to testify. I look forward to 

your questions. 

[The prepared statement of Mr. Stroup follows:] 


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Mr. BOUCHER. Well, thank you, Mr. Stroup, and thanks to all of 

our witnesses for your informative remarks here this morning. I 

particularly appreciate the broad consensus that is evident from 

your testimony about the need to move forward with both of the 

bills that are the subject of our legislative hearing this morning, 

particularly the need for an inventory of spectrum that could be reallocated for commercial purposes. A number of you, most recently 

Mr. Stroup, just mentioned the potential of spectrum sharing as a 

way to accommodate new commercial services within our spectrum 

constraints. Could you talk a little bit about the state of the technology with regard to spectrum sharing and what potential really 

does it hold and what limitations does it face? And who would like 

to begin? Mr. Hatfield. 

Mr. HATFIELD. Yes. Thank you. I think that sharing, you can 

look at it in two ways. It is important to look at it in two ways. 

We have always shared a lot of the existing spectrum and we call 

that static sharing. For example, an antenna pointed at a satellite 

and antennas pointing on the ground are pointing in different directions and that provides sufficient isolation that a satellite system can share with a terrestrial system, and that static sort of 

sharing has been with us for quite some time and used effectively. 

I think the key here is combining the concepts that Tom talked 

about is that a lot of spectrum is not being used all the time today 

and look at more dynamic forms of sharing. In other words, for example, here in town today in D.C., a particular channel might not 

be used by some private microwave, something like that, and that 

spectrum could be shared on a dynamic basis. So I think the key 

going forward—— 

Mr. BOUCHER. So you are not talking about technology in that 

example that would use the same spectrum simultaneously by various users but simply with a phased use of a spectrum by various 

users, each using it fully within that allotted time? 

Mr. HATFIELD. Yes, where they are using it but not all the time, 

or as we can say, there may be directionality or something that can 

be employed that would allow dynamic sharing. 

Mr. BOUCHER. Given that opportunity, talk a little bit if you 

would about the state of technology development for actual simultaneous sharing of the same spectrum. 

Mr. HATFIELD. I am not—— 

Mr. STROUP. I will be more than happy to field that one. 

Mr. BOUCHER. All right, Mr. Stroup. 

Mr. STROUP. We have tested this on multiple occasions with 

members of the military and members of the public present. We 

are currently porting it over to several different radio systems. Our 

expectation is that those radios are going to be ready for testing 

next year and deployed into the field no later than the year 2012. 

Mr. BOUCHER. So there is nothing commercially available today 

that would enable simultaneous use of the spectrum by multiple 

users but you are saying this technology is under development and 

ready for testing essentially next year? 

Mr. STROUP. I would suggest that it is beyond the level of testing 

and is now being deployed into radio systems or being developed 

into radio systems. Within the commercial sector, we have initial 

licensing agreements with two different companies to use it within 


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the TV white spaces. Our expectation is that upon conclusion of 

that rulemaking proceeding, the development of those rules, that 

sometime within the next 18 months that it will be deployed. 

Mr. BOUCHER. Any other comments, Mr. Calabrese? 

Mr. CALABRESE. Yes. You know, as you have heard from three of 

us, there seems to be a far greater opportunity in terms of quantities of spectrum to open it up on a shared or opportunistic basis, 

and there are a couple of important precedents at least to build 

upon. You know, one, I think you are aware is of course the military already allows shared use of certain radar bands so, you know, 

thanks in part to the jump-start broadband act that was over on 

the Senate side some years ago, the military agreed to open up the 

5 gigahertz band based on the technology that uses, you know, dynamic frequency selection. In other words, the devices sense before 

they transmit, and if they don’t detect anything like radar, then 

they operate there and they keep checking, checking, checking and 

they can get off real quick. The other even more important technological I think precedent here to build on is the order last year 

from the FCC on opening the TV white space for unlicensed sharing because what the Commission has required is a geolocation 

database so the smart devices will need to have GPS and Internet 

access. They look up and they get a list of available channels with 

conditions attached. And so we can build on that database that the 

Commission is about to create and add a lot of other frequencies 

over time that would have conditions attached to them. 

Mr. BOUCHER. That is very encouraging to hear. I would just 

note that the first commercial application of the white space technology is now occurring in my Congressional district. 

Mr. CALABRESE. Right. 

Mr. BOUCHER. One other question, my time is expired, but I will 

ask if you have any brief comments about this. Are there shortcomings at the present time in the licensing and spectrum management processes that are employed by both NTIA and the FCC, and 

if you detect that there are any, do you have recommendations for 

how those processes could be improved? Anyone want to answer? 

Mr. Largent. 

Mr. LARGENT. I would just repeat some of the problems that have 

taken place in the AWS spectrum with some of our members as 

being a shortcoming that I think are addressed in both of these 

bills and I think are a definite step in the right direction. 

Mr. BOUCHER. All right. Thank you very much. Anyone else want 

to briefly comment on that? Mr. Hatfield. 

Mr. HATFIELD. I would add that the Commission has done things 

in the past to encourage a secondary market so that—one of the 

problems with the existing system, it is centrally controlled and 

therefore there are a lot of rigidities built into it. The Commission 

to its credit has gone to the use of secondary markets where companies and so forth can lease spectrum, and that has not worked 

out quite as well as some of us would have hoped, so I think there 

is possibilities to continue to encourage the secondary market to reduce some of the rigidities associated with trying to centrally manage the resources. 

Mr. BOUCHER. Thank you, Mr. Hatfield. 


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My time is expired. The gentleman from Florida, Mr. Stearns, is 

recognized for 5 minutes. 

Mr. STEARNS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. Largent, one of my questions for us is, when we had the auction and the DTV transition and we raised about $19 billion, the 

bill that Mr. Barton sponsored and I was cosponsor, I think it became the backbone of the fourth-generation wireless service. Now, 

that was one approach. Now, the other approach appears to be the 

stimulus package. They put in $7 billion to provide grants, and I 

guess the question would be, the auctioning of the spectrum it appears to be would be a more efficient way to do it than just giving 

out the stimulus package. You might comment on the two approaches here and which one you think is more advisable. 

Mr. LARGENT. Well, let me just say this. The bottom line is, we 

need to have additional spectrum in the wireless space in order to 

meet not only the demands but the promise, the hope of the 

broadband world and so however you get to that point, that is subject to debate and can even become partisan, but the bottom line 

is, more spectrum is needed and sooner rather than later. The fact 

is, the last two tranches of spectrum that were allocated for wireless use, the AWS auction, 700 megahertz auction, both of those 

auctions took over 10 years to come to fruition. One was about 12 

years, the other was 16 years to get it to come to fruition, and our 

thought is, is this is really a process that we are in the process of 

developing today that should have begun years ago if it still going 

to take somewhere between 12 and 16 years. So I guess the bottom 

line is, is that there is different ways to get to the bottom line but 

the important thing is to get to the bottom line and that is additional spectrum for the wireless industry. 

Mr. STEARNS. The members of your association, are they going 

to benefit from this $7 billion in the stimulus package? I mean, I 

understand it is going to all go to develop the wirelines but do your 

companies see it as a positive? 

Mr. LARGENT. I would say that the majority of the money that 

has been allocated is not going to the companies that are in our 

association. 

Mr. STEARNS. You mentioned just briefly, the chairman talked 

about T Mobile and then the spectrum reallocation you sort of indicated the problem in the transition, and I mentioned in my opening 

statement. I would think if we want other commercial carriers to 

compete and get involved, this would be a flag to them that if it 

is going to take too long they have got this investment I think of 

over $4 billion. I mean, how long can they continue to deal with 

that procrastination? So I mean, you might give us some ideas on 

what can be done to improve this reallocation timeframe and perhaps what we in Congress should be aware of. 

Mr. LARGENT. Well, actually, the second bill that we are talking 

about today, 3019, actually goes to that subject, that once the spectrum is identified, the spectrum is auctioned, then getting the people that are on the spectrum off the spectrum more expeditiously 

is really helped by this particular bill that we are talking about 

today. So, you know, my hat is off to you. I think Congress has—— 

Mr. STEARNS. So you think that will do it? 


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Mr. LARGENT [continuing]. Gone forward, made mistakes, recognized those mistakes and is now trying to correct them, and that 

is a real positive movement. 

Mr. STEARNS. And you feel pretty comfortable that will solve the 

problem? 

Mr. LARGENT. No, I am not positive it solves all the problems 

that are involved but it solves the problems that we know of with 

the auction process that took place 2 years ago. 

Mr. STEARNS. Mr. Hatfield, what steps can be taken to make 

more efficient use of commercial and government spectrum that is 

already deployed? 

Mr. HATFIELD. In my written statement, I go through the list of 

sort of five techniques that can be used, and the two probably that 

haven’t been talked about as much here is, one, more technical efficiency. It is like getting more miles per gallon on your car. I mean, 

there are sort of two ways we can improve our transportation efficiency. One is by more miles per gallon or by carpooling, for example, and sharing that we have talked about here is the carpool 

analogy but we also need to look at ways of more efficiently using 

the spectrum, getting more bits per second per hertz, as I would 

say in technical terms. And there are a couple ways of doing that. 

One is through compression, reducing the number of bits that have 

to be sent. The other is using more efficient modulation techniques. 

What scares me as an engineer is those techniques only look like 

they can provide us with incremental improvements, and I am not 

saying we shouldn’t do it, we absolutely should because it is crucial, and they are happening, but the difficulty is, they are probably not going to be adequate. So that leads us then to the need 

for more sharing or reallocation. 

The other way, just to complete the thought, is through more intense reuse of the spectrum. For example, with your cell phone, the 

tower may be 2 miles away and therefore you are taking up an 

area with a 2-mile radius. If you shrink the cell down, then you can 

reuse that same channel more and more times in a city like D.C., 

so you can use the same channel several hundred times. And so 

you can see the cellular carriers have made enormous investments 

in more cell towers. That helps a lot. As you can keep getting the 

cell smaller, of course, then you have to get that information in the 

cell tower back to some central location and that is where I believe 

your broadband policy of getting fiber out there intersects with the 

wireless industry because the wireless industry needs to get the 

wireless data back to their central point and that requires 

broadband facilities. So I think there is a real link here between 

what is being done in the broadband policy and the wireless industry. 

Mr. STEARNS. Mr. Chairman, I don’t have any further questions 

but I thought Dr. Johnson might want to comment if he wanted to 

on the same question. 

Mr. JOHNSON. The commercial receiver standards, the military 

already has these standards for radars but none of those standards 

exist for commercial systems so there may be opportunities to take 

advantage of some of those standards that have been developed. 

Mr. BOUCHER. Thank you very much, Mr. Stearns. 


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The gentleman from Michigan, Chairman Dingell, is recognized 

for 5 minutes. 

Mr. DINGELL. Mr. Chairman, thank you. 

I would like to welcome our panel, particularly Mr. Largent, our 

former colleague and friend. Welcome back. 

I have some questions. Since there are so many, I have to do all 

this with yes or no’s. Mr. Largent, yes or no, has CTIA or anyone 

else conducted usage studies which measure actual traffic to see if 

the spectrum is being used? 

Mr. LARGENT. Are you talking about the spectrum that has been 

allocated for commercial mobile wireless? 

Mr. DINGELL. Just have spectrum studies been completed to tell 

us whether the spectrum is being used. 

Mr. LARGENT. I am not sure I understand the question, sir. 

Mr. DINGELL. Has anybody made any studies to find out if the 

spectrum is properly being used? CITE, FCC, anybody? 

Mr. LARGENT. Well, what I can tell you is, that the commercial 

mobile wireless spectrum that we have available to this industry 

today is used more efficiently than any other country of the world. 

Mr. DINGELL. I am going to take that as a no and I thank you 

for that. Now, do all CTIA carriers operate at full capacity on their 

allotted spectrum today? 

Mr. LARGENT. No, sir. 

Mr. DINGELL. Has FCC conducted any usage studies which examine whether the spectrum either by your members or anybody 

else is being properly and adequately used with regard to that 

spectrum which is assigned to them? 

Mr. LARGENT. I am not aware of any. 

Mr. DINGELL. So the argument seems to be here I think that you 

have enough spectrum for now but will need it 10 years from now 

or at some future time. Is that correct? 

Mr. LARGENT. We have enough spectrum for right now but we 

will need spectrum before 10 years. 

Mr. DINGELL. And I thoroughly agree with you. Our problem 

here is to see how we are going to get that spectrum efficiently allocated, because as you will remember from your time on this committee, we had a serious problem with regard to the fact that the 

spectrum was just thrown out by the FCC and by the government 

to be sold for budgetary reasons as opposed to addressing the proper use of the spectrum. 

Now, to all witnesses starting on your right and my left, how do 

you view H.R. 3125 and H.R. 3019? Do you view it as complementary to the FCC’s work to develop a national broadband plan, yes 

or no? Starting on your far right, if you please, sir. 

Mr. HATFIELD. A simple yes or no answer? Yes. 

Mr. DINGELL. Mr. Largent? 

Mr. LARGENT. Yes. 

Mr. DINGELL. Sir? 

Mr. CALABRESE. Yes, very much. 

Mr. DINGELL. Sir? 

Mr. SMITH. The answer is yes but I believe it could be expanded. 

Mr. DINGELL. Next witness, please, sir. 

Mr. JOHNSON. No. 

Mr. DINGELL. No? And the last witness? 


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Mr. STROUP. Yes. 

Mr. DINGELL. Now, if the completion of national broadband 

should be delayed pending enactment of H.R. 3125 and H.R. 3019, 

how long should such delay be, starting again on your far right and 

my far left. How long could or should that delay be? 

Mr. HATFIELD. I think the requirement is so great that we do not 

want to wait pending taking some of these steps pending the inventory. 

Mr. DINGELL. Mr. Largent. 

Mr. LARGENT. And I would agree with that. The sooner the better. 

Mr. DINGELL. Next witness, please. 

Mr. CALABRESE. Yes. Likewise, there are bands and things—— 

Mr. DINGELL. How long should the delay be while we wait for 

those studies to be completed, next witness. 

Mr. SMITH. Chairman Dingell, the answer is, delay is not good 

but delay is frankly better if you don’t have the right information, 

so if you need the right information, delay may be necessary. 

Mr. DINGELL. Yes, I am no special pleader for delay. My concern 

is that if we do this, we do it well, and I am not satisfied that up 

until this time we have been doing these things well and I am very 

much troubled that we will expand that bad history by again doing 

things poorly—— 

Mr. JOHNSON. We agree with that. 

Mr. DINGELL [continuing]. And winding up with a mess on our 

hands because we have built upon a faulty edifice. Next witness, 

sir. 

Mr. STROUP. We would recommend moving forward with the 

spectrum inventory including the actual measurements, which will 

help identify bands that are particularly useful for spectrum sharing. 

Mr. DINGELL. All right. Mr. Chairman, I note I am 4 seconds 

over my time and I yield back with thanks to you. 

Mr. BOUCHER. Thank you very much, Chairman Dingell. 

The gentleman from Oregon, Mr. Walden, is recognized for 5 

minutes. 

Mr. WALDEN. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Again, 

thank you for this hearing. I want to thank the witnesses for your 

testimony as well, all of you, and especially Dr. Johnson. I appreciated your technical counsel on the legislation as well. 

Senator Smith, I want to go to you regarding this notion put 

forth by the distinguished scholar in residence at the FCC for First 

Amendment and spectrum, Dr. Benjamin. In his paper, and this is 

just from May of this year, he writes, ‘‘The most obvious desirable 

regulations are probably those that are pure dead weight loss, regulations that cost broadcasters significant amounts of money but 

have no impact on their behavior. This category would include onerous record-keeping requirements, ascertainment requirements, et 

cetera. These are unlikely to have any impact on programming and 

thus will likely be pure cost.’’ His thesis is in this paper which I 

will ask unanimous consent to put in the record called ‘‘Roasting 

the Pig to Burn Down the House: A Modest Proposal,’’ is to make 

it so costly on broadcasters that they surrender their spectrum, and 

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stand why he is now in this position at the FCC, and I will follow 

up on that. But given the fact that we just went through a $2 billion DTV conversion and you are on the cusp of a digital television 

technology that is mobile and you make the argument in your 

statement about how every new subscriber to that free over-the-air 

digital mobile service makes that even more efficient because you 

are not adding to the stream. If we follow Professor Benjamin’s 

counsel or the FCC does, aren’t we just throwing that $2 billion 

into a paper shredder? 

Mr. SMITH. Congressman, yes, you are throwing $2 billion of U.S. 

taxpayer money away. You are throwing away potentially untold 

billions that the U.S. citizens have spent in detrimental reliance 

upon the Congressional urging of the digital transition. Suffice it 

to say, my phone has been ringing off the hook ever since this gentleman’s work has been revealed. That said, I think what he does 

is simply try to monetize highest and best use in pure dollar terms, 

disregarding all the other public values that are served through localism, local news, local sports, local weather. These are things 

that I think, you know, particularly when it comes to emergency 

information, Amber Alerts, how do you monetize that? And I am 

hesitant to say it, but when it comes to broadcasting and the 

broadcast airwaves, they have always been a public option to make 

sure that everybody gets served, and he seems to be suggesting 

that that maybe should be yesterday. 

Mr. WALDEN. Dr. Johnson, I raised the issue in my opening 

statement about the amateur radio broadcast service, and I failed 

to disclose that Mr. Ross and I are the two licensed amateur radio 

operators which gives us license to be real hams and politicians, 

and I am just curious as you look at the spectrum from a technical 

perspective, what should amateur radio licensees be concerned 

about and what threats and value do you see in that spectrum? 

Mr. JOHNSON. I won’t be able to give you a full detailed answer 

because I have not looked at that particular issue in detail. I would 

support, however—and I also am a ham radio operator. 

Mr. WALDEN. Oh, very good. 

Mr. JOHNSON. I would support, however, your thesis that the 

ham bands have been an important backup system for the Nation’s 

security and I think they are also a valuable resource for citizens 

who have an interest in that kind of technology, and although 

there are other avenues to address those same issues now outside 

of the ham bands, I think they are still important and we would 

be happy to look at the technical details of the challenges to that 

particular band. 

Mr. WALDEN. Mr. Hatfield, do you have any comment on the 

amateur radio band? And tell me you are a ham radio operator too, 

would you? 

Mr. HATFIELD. You know, I think my license just expired but the 

way I got into this business was starting as a ham. I think I was 

13 or 14 years old, something like that. I think the problem that 

the amateur radio community has is that they do provide a very, 

very vital final sort of backup communication network that is just 

absolutely—it is totally decentralized so there is nothing central 

that can fail, and that is really critical. The problem is, if you tune 

across the band, so often they are idle, and if somebody was really 


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clever, maybe we could figure out ways that we could do a little bit 

of sharing there that would not diminish the amateur opportunity 

at all for use in emergencies but in non-emergency times might be 

used for some other vital public interest purposes as well. 

Mr. WALDEN. Mr. Chairman, I know my time is expired and I am 

going to excuse myself. Mr. Buyer is going to take over for our side. 

We have a classified briefing with the Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense on Afghanistan and Pakistan that I am going to 

go to. So again, I thank you for your testimony and look forward 

to working with all of you and others on this issue as we move forward in a thoughtful and constructive way on appropriate use of 

spectrum. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. BOUCHER. Thank you very much, Mr. Walden. 

The gentleman from Indiana, Mr. Buyer, is recognized for 7 minutes. Oh, I am sorry, Mr. Buyer, if you can withhold, I need to go 

in order here. The gentleman from California, Mr. McNerney, is 

recognized for 5 minutes. 

Mr. MCNERNEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will try to be brief 

here. 

First of all, I want to thank the panel. I found the testimony very 

informative, and I didn’t hear anyone say well, no, I don’t like this 

legislation. I think Dr. Johnson had a little reservation about some 

of the definitions so I appreciate that, and I am going to ask you 

in a minute to expand on that. But first I want to say, expanding 

the range to 10 gigahertz, there would seem to be a disagreement 

between Mr. Calabrese and Mr. Hatfield on that, and I am not sure 

exactly why you would think that going up to 10 gigahertz isn’t 

that useful, Mr. Hatfield. Is it Dr. Hatfield or Mr. Hatfield? 

Mr. HATFIELD. My doctor is honorary, so—— 

Mr. MCNERNEY. OK. Well, that is good enough for me. Dr. Hatfield. 

Mr. HATFIELD. I think the answer is, there may be some confusion. It is the range up to roughly 3 gigahertz that is really critical 

to people like the cellular industry, so that is the most critical. On 

the other hand, if some of the services we might want to relocate 

could go higher, it would still work OK if they went higher in frequency so therefore I think you can make an argument that we 

ought to look all the way up to 10 to see if there are any opportunities, for example, that some could be reallocated from below. 

Mr. MCNERNEY. So there are physical limitations after 3, say, 

line of sight and so on? 

Mr. HATFIELD. Yes, that is correct for mobile applications. Now, 

for certain radar applications, for example, being up there where 

you have line of sight, it might work perfectly fine. So that is what 

I think is perhaps the basis for the difference. I would support 

going up higher for that purpose but we mustn’t kid ourselves. 

There are technical limitations that would prevent it from being 

used for certain applications. 

Mr. MCNERNEY. Thank you. 

Dr. Johnson, you did mention the idea that there is no single 

metric for efficiency. Is there anyone out there that you are aware 

of or that would be useful or sort of a set of definitions? 

Mr. JOHNSON. We think that a single definition like intensity of 

use is not appropriate. We propose using a variety of metrics that 


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correspond to the critical parameters related to the particular system and application that is being used. For example, metrics for 

communications systems would be different than those for radar 

systems. 

Mr. MCNERNEY. So are you going to supply the committee with 

that information? 

Mr. JOHNSON. We would be pleased to work with the committee 

to develop those metrics, absolutely. 

Mr. MCNERNEY. I will be interested to work with the committee 

on examining that metric definition. 

The last thing I have is the notion that the paper inventory isn’t 

going to be adequate, and I didn’t quite appreciate that. You know, 

I come from a technical background and I was a test engineer and 

a field tester, but when Mr. Stroup showed the graphs with all 

those blank spaces, people that own spectrum are going to say well, 

jeez, we use all of it, we don’t need to reallocate and so we are 

going to need to actually do quite a bit of testing to validate, and 

it seems to me like a fairly—just on the basis of what was spoken 

here this morning, a fairly big task to really judge how much spectrum is available out there. Could you comment on that? 

Mr. STROUP. Yes, Congressman. We submitted some suggestions 

in our written testimony as to some short-term approaches as well 

as longer-term approaches. We would recommend approximately 10 

to 20 stations supplemented by mobile testing and an overall 

longer period of time and a larger number perhaps in conjunction 

with universities and other organizations to be able to compile an 

ongoing inventory of how the spectrum is actually being used. 

Mr. MCNERNEY. That is going to take a lot of resources, a lot of 

time and a lot of money. Even what you have called a shortcut 

seems like a fairly big undertaking. 

Mr. STROUP. I believe that the NTIA and other organizations, the 

National Science Foundation are already compiling this information so some of it is there. Our studies or many of our studies are 

already available publicly and can be integrated into this database, 

so it is not as large an undertaking as it may seem but I do agree 

that overall long term there is a great deal of data that will be 

compiled. The Illinois Institute of Technology is actually conducting 

ongoing studies in Chicago. They have over 2 terabytes of information that has already been collected from that location. 

Mr. MCNERNEY. Mr. Calabrese. 

Mr. CALABRESE. I mentioned in my written statement that the 

costs are really coming down for doing this so, for example, Offcom, 

which is, you know, the British telecom regulator, recently completed a nationwide drive test of their airwaves. They mount measuring devices just on the rooftop of a national vehicle fleet, which 

we could do with the Postal Service or whatever, and then, you 

know, that gets downloaded over wi-fi. There are also very inexpensive devices now to have a monitoring network. That is being field 

tested in the D.C. area fairly soon by a company. We are hoping 

to have one on the roof of our building downtown. 

Mr. MCNERNEY. My time is expired. Mr. Hatfield, do you have 

a very quick response? 

Mr. HATFIELD. Just as I say in my written testimony, I said one 

of the things we can do is focus on those bands which look the most 


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promising, so do the measurement first on the most promising. Second—well, why don’t I just stop there. 

Mr. MCNERNEY. I guess it comes down to one of our favorite 

Presidents saying ‘‘trust and verify.’’ Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. BOUCHER. Thank you very much, Mr. McNerney. 

The gentleman from Indiana, Mr. Buyer, is recognized for 7 minutes. 

Mr. BUYER. Thank you. 

Mr. Largent, are you familiar with this latest GAO report that 

came out titled ‘‘FCC Needs to Improve Oversight of Wireless 

Phone Service’’? 

Mr. LARGENT. I have not read the entire thing but I am aware 

of it. 

Mr. BUYER. Are you aware of the recommendations of GAO? 

GAO recommended that the FCC, number one, improve its outreach to consumers about its complaint process, related performance goals and measures and monitoring complaints; number two, 

develop guidance on federal and State oversight roles; and three, 

develop policies for communicating with States. Are you familiar 

with the three recommendations? 

Mr. LARGENT. Well, I am more familiar with the facts that they 

uncovered first that was in that report that showed that 84 percent 

of—— 

Mr. BUYER. That is where I am going. You are getting ahead of 

me. 

Mr. LARGENT. Oh, sorry. 

Mr. BUYER. Let us just go right there. I mean, what I am asking 

is, they have these recommendations based on, and so I want to 

ask you to comment about what they are based on. I mean, my 

gosh, when we look at all the choices that consumers have here 

going into the Christmas shopping season and the levels of satisfaction, would you please comment on the basis and the facts that 

they relied on for these recommendations? 

Mr. LARGENT. Well, I think it is not the way I would have written the report based upon the statistics that they found in the 

study. Knowing this industry as I have for the last 6 years and seeing the consumer complaints decline every year and the consumer 

satisfaction go up every year, we feel like that that is a movement 

in the right direction. Eighty-four percent approval by our consumers is not good enough for us. We continue to want to raise 

that even more but it is a heck of a positive mark for the industry 

and I hope to be able to sit before you in a year or two and be able 

to talk about how we are no longer 84 percent, we are even higher 

today. But, you know, I think that the report did highlight some 

things that the FCC can be about that would improve their service 

but the bottom line is, is that I think it is a star for the wireless 

industry to show the improvement of our service for our customers. 

Mr. BUYER. Regarding your member companies when they make 

strategic judgments in competition, wouldn’t consumer satisfaction 

be one of those important elements? 

Mr. LARGENT. Absolutely. It is the key statistic that they look at 

all the time. 

Mr. BUYER. You know, I get excited when I listen to my good 

friend Mr. Markey share his excitement about competition in the 


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marketplace, and so I would share with my good friend Mr. Markey, when you rejoice in competition in the marketplace and what 

it is bringing consumers relative to choice, do not be so eager to 

get more government control if in fact the marketplace is driving 

consumer satisfaction. 

The other point I would like to, if I had a little latitude, Mr. 

Chairman, because I am also cosponsor of this legislation, I would 

like to kind of shift gears and turn to Mr. Smith and ask a particular question, and matter of fact, it may drive, Mr. Chairman. 

I think we should take a really good look here at Comcast and 

NBC. So I am going to ask a question about Comcast and NBC, 

Mr. Smith. I have got some concerns about your member companies out there. I have got concerns about consolidation in the marketplace. I have got concerns about what type of new business 

model does this bring, what is its impact and how does it drive a 

new model for advertising. You held up your phone and you talked 

about this as a multimedia platform. As we have a marketplace as 

you try to judge into the future, it is all about individualizing of 

advertising, and I can almost see if we are going to permit the marketplace to begin to mine and profile people that pretty soon even 

advertising how it is even driven not only upon a web, you could 

almost have individualized advertising occurring upon TV. So as I 

try to think about in the future and how a vertical integration is 

this kind of deal when you have this many eyes of Comcast and 

being able to control content, it almost turns our present business 

model inside out, upside down. I welcome your comments on mine. 

Mr. SMITH. Congressman, some of my members are for it, some 

of them are very concerned about it, and I am with my friends. 

Mr. BUYER. Very good, Senator. 

Mr. SMITH. The NAB has not taken a position on this at this 

juncture. We are simply going to watch and see what kind of conditions develop but we are very attuned to the issue and the problems that you just cited. 

Mr. BUYER. You know, the Supreme Court long ago talked about 

the importance of having diversity out there among our media, and 

that was back in the 1940s, with regard to ideas. I mean, if I were 

one of your member companies and I am a small company and I 

have a couple of NBC affiliates and maybe a CBS affiliate, can’t 

you relate to their concerns even about retransmission rights and 

fees and what impact is that going to have or upon others whereby 

is there going to be cost shifting because of this vertical integration? 

Mr. SMITH. Well, obviously I am more than interested. I answer 

their phone calls because, yes, they are concerned with the very 

issues that you identify, but I assume that the FTC, the FCC and 

the Department of Justice will look at all of these things and propose conditions if this is to go forward at all. And at this juncture, 

it is the feeling of the association that we should allow the process 

to work. 

Mr. BUYER. One of the concerns I have, Mr. Chairman, and why 

I would encourage you to place your eyes and considerations on 

this issue is defined by the silence. When there is silence in the 

marketplace because of this type of deal, that tells me that there 

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pany were to come out and come against this type of merger, what 

type of repercussions in the marketplace would in fact occur. So the 

fact that there is silence out there is beginning to bother me, Mr. 

Smith, that a lot of your member companies while they may confide in that phone call with you that there is a reason that they 

are not coming out publicly because they don’t want to get jammed 

in their negotiations. Am I close here? 

Mr. SMITH. Well, I think they are very interested observers of 

this process and they share the concerns you have expressed. 

Again, we have networks, we have affiliates. They are have most 

issues in common but this is one where there needs to be an accommodation, an understanding and a legal structure put in place that 

allows both to survive. 

Mr. BUYER. Mr. Chairman, I would just encourage us to put our 

eyes to have a better understanding so that we can try to see over 

the horizon the impact that this type of merger is going to have on 

a multimedia platform and advertising model. 

Mr. BOUCHER. Thank you very much, Mr. Buyer. Let me assure 

the gentleman that our subcommittee will conduct at least one 

hearing on the Comcast NBC acquisition at the appropriate time 

next year. That announcement has already been made, and the 

gentleman is quite right in expressing the need for us to focus on 

this very carefully. It is certainly our intent to do so. 

The gentleman from Michigan, Mr. Stupak, is recognized for 5 

minutes. 

Mr. STUPAK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I apologize to our witnesses for not being able to hear their testimony. I was in with constituents and had to take a couple of other meetings. 

Mr. Largent, I have a question for you. Recognizing the challenges that Congress and the FCC will face in trying to relocate as 

much spectrum as possible, are companies within the CTIA exploring the possibility that a dynamic spectrum access that Mr. Hatfield suggested as a possible solution? 

Mr. LARGENT. I would say our companies are at a point where 

they are exploring every opportunity, every option that is available 

to them including how to utilize their own spectrum that they currently have, use it more efficiently and look at every other avenue 

that is available to them in the years ahead to access more spectrum. 

Mr. STUPAK. Are any of the companies within your organization 

using the dynamic spectrum access? I mean, are any of them trying 

to borrow, if you will, during a peak time surrounding system? Is 

that going on now? 

Mr. LARGENT. I am sure they are looking, as I said, at every option that is available to them. 

Mr. STUPAK. Mr. Smith, good to see you and thanks for being 

here. Let me ask you this one. I think it is important that we look 

for or search for a solution to the spectrum crisis that preserves 

free over-the-air broadcasting while fostering wireless broadband 

deployment. In your testimony, you cite how the use of white space 

spectrum in rural America is a way to support both of these public 

interest goals. Is this solution workable in urban centers as well? 


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Mr. SMITH. It may well be. However, we do have a concern about 

interference and want to make sure that we don’t degrade other 

signals. 

Mr. STUPAK. Let me ask you this. Has NAB conducted any studies that show how much spectrum is needed to fulfill future business plans of mobile TV, multicasting and HD television? Have you 

done some studies? 

Mr. SMITH. We are doing a study right now on that very question 

because we understand the importance of this issue and want to 

have the best information possible. 

Mr. STUPAK. Any idea when that study may be done? 

Mr. SMITH. I don’t have a date but I will get that to you, Congressman. 

Mr. STUPAK. OK. Thanks. 

Mr. Hatfield, we talked a little bit about the spectrum crisis. Do 

we only have to worry about that for the high population centers 

or is this a national issue? I mean, in my rural area, we have a 

lot of places where we don’t have anything, so—— 

Mr. HATFIELD. Exactly. It is primarily a large urban area issue, 

and even within that urban area there are some real hotspots. An 

example would be a football stadium on Sunday afternoon. Having 

said that, I think I tend to divide the problem into two parts, and 

that is the urban problem and the more rural problem, and we 

need these more dynamic ways to be able to use the spectrum in 

the rural areas that is not needed because of the lack of population 

density. 

Mr. STUPAK. Well, let me ask you this. Is more access to spectrum the only issue the FCC and this committee should be focused 

on or are there other efficiency gains that can be explored with 

next-generation smart phones? 

Mr. HATFIELD. As I indicated in my written testimony, I don’t 

hold out an awful lot of hope for some of the traditional solutions 

for the major urban areas, but there are certainly the examples 

that I gave like compression and so forth that we should be pursuing. I don’t think those technical solutions solve the problem 

completely. 

Mr. STUPAK. Well, if we start using these smart phones, wouldn’t 

the manufacturers sort of help alleviate some of these problems we 

are going to see with trying to free up more spectrum? Can that 

be a solution? Can we find it more in manufacturing as opposed to 

the FCC and government? 

Mr. HATFIELD. I don’t see how the handsets by themselves can 

do an awful lot to improve with the exception of the sort of dynamic spectrum access where the handset is smart enough that is 

looking around to see what other spectrum might be available and 

moving to it so we can use the intelligence in the handset to find 

additional spectrum. I am not sure how intelligence in a handset 

will improve the efficiency of existing spectrum use beyond sort of 

incremental improvements. 

Mr. STUPAK. Mr. Calabrese, did you want to add something on 

that? 

Mr. CALABRESE. Yes. You know, I talk in my written statement 

about the importance of encouraging hybrid networks because, you 

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ciency limits. We are also reaching limits in terms of how close the 

carriers can bring cell sites and backhaul to the consumer so you 

need to shrink the cell size, get more refuse, and one way to do 

that is, right now we have, you know, pending at the FCC are rules 

to extend the cutter phone device choice to wireless, and when consumers have the choice of any device, the devices increasingly will 

be of a type that they will decide on the fly what is my most economical path, and in most cases that will be, like in a place like 

this, at home, in offices and public spaces, it will be over unlicensed 

spectrum into local backhaul, into consumer-provided backhaul, 

and that will offload a lot of traffic from carriers. 

Mr. STUPAK. Thank you, and thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. BOUCHER. Thank you very much, Mr. Stupak. 

The gentleman from Massachusetts, Mr. Markey, is recognized 

for 5 minutes. 

Mr. MARKEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, very much. 

Mr. Hatfield, you are talking here about capacity for dynamic 

sharing of a spectrum so that we can make more efficient use of 

currently allocated spectrum. What percentage of our spectrum 

needs do you think can be satisfied just by use of dynamic sharing? 

Mr. HATFIELD. I have not looked at it, candidly, in that sort of 

quantitative way but I think—well, I am not going to answer you 

very satisfactorily. But I think it is sufficient enough that it would 

be a significant help. I don’t think it gets us all the way there. 

Mr. MARKEY. So what you are talking about here is something 

which is supplemental to what the needs are going to be in the future but not a substitute for transfer of spectrum in order to deal 

with the issue. Is that right? 

Mr. HATFIELD. I guess I would put it slightly different. I think 

we are probably going to need to use all of these different techniques. 

Mr. MARKEY. Well, yes. I use polysyllabic words and you put it 

in very simple English. We will have to use everything. 

Do you agree with that, Mr. Largent? This reminds me a little 

bit of a discussion of CAFE standards, you know, improvement of 

efficiency of vehicles or appliance efficiency where we are saying 

can we use new technology here to get better efficiency out of these 

automobiles or out of the appliances which we use but at the same 

time you also want to do the research on all new technologies, you 

know, all electric vehicles, whatever to move out of the old technologies, and that is kind of what of we are talking about here: how 

do we get the additional spectrum but also squeeze out the maximum efficiency out of the old technology. So how do you view it, 

Mr. Largent? 

Mr. LARGENT. Well, I would say I have a chart here that I will 

submit for the record and give to you if you would like to look at 

it but it basically talks about how efficient different countries utilize the spectrum available to them, and in the United States we 

have 270 million consumers and we use per megahertz 660,000 

consumers per megahertz of spectrum used, and that is the most 

efficient by a factor of at least two of any other country save Mexico actually. They have 79 million users there. But we absolutely 

are using our spectrum available to us in the most efficient way 

possible and sometimes by a magnitude of two. 


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Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Smith. 

Mr. SMITH. Your question to us about—— 

Mr. MARKEY. About this balance between squeezing efficiencies 

out of the old technology as opposed to moving over a spectrum to 

augment what we now have allocated so that we can maximize the 

wealth-generating opportunities. 

Mr. SMITH. I think it is one of the miracles we have before us 

is how much more efficiently we are using the spectrum now and 

certainly broadcasting has invested billions to achieve that efficiency. I do believe because we have seen the explosion you spoke 

of at the beginning of the hearing, Congressman, that there are 

going to be compression technologies that will provide some of the 

answer here so that we can preserve the broadband and the broadcast values that the committee seeks to serve. 

Mr. MARKEY. Thank you. 

Dr. Johnson. 

Mr. JOHNSON. Yes, Congressman, I would like to make a couple 

comments. First of all, the Department of Defense, one of our principal customers, is driven toward increasing efficiency. We mentioned briefly in my testimony the use of unmanned aerial systems 

and streaming video and the intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance needs in Iraq and Afghanistan that are driving that efficiency as they are with the commercial market. Lockheed Martin 

has developed spectrum management tools that are being used by 

our customers to increase that efficiency but I would also like to 

point out that in the federal, non-federal kind of binary view of 

things, it is really not that. It is not a binary view at all because 

it is important to realize the Department is a major consumer of 

commercial equipment and using commercial systems both terrestrial and space so they have to balance that accommodation between commercial and federal needs. 

Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Stroup. 

Mr. STROUP. Yes, I would emphasize that the military is deploying dynamic spectrum access. It is being built into several military 

radio systems. 

Going back to the question about utilization, emphasizing the 

point that you made regarding the PCS allocation proceeding, that 

spectrum was encumbered by over 1,500 microwave apps which ultimately the PCS licensees received that via auction with the understanding that they could not interfere with them and we are 

recommending building on that model, being able to utilize the 

technologies available today where they may not actually have to 

be relocated but actually could share the spectrum. 

Mr. MARKEY. Yes, I think we have to be inflexible in terms of the 

goal which we are trying to reach here but flexible in terms of what 

the final combination looks like, but I think it will involve obviously substantial portions of both, increased efficiency and more 

spectrum as well, and we have to ensure that we encourage both 

to be maximized so that we do make ourselves as competitive as 

a Nation as we can looking over our shoulders at number two and 

three in the world, as you said, Steve, so we maintain this lead. 

So we thank you all very much. 

I thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. BOUCHER. Thank you very much, Mr. Markey. 


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The gentleman from Pennsylvania, Mr. Doyle, is recognized for 

7 minutes. 

Mr. DOYLE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I just want to start by thanking all the witnesses but especially 

I want to thank Dale Hatfield for his years of dedicated public 

service and his assistance to policymakers and helping people 

across the country to better understand the technologies behind 

these issues. I never had a chance to tell him that personally and 

he is here and I want him to know that, so thank you, Mr. Hatfield. 

Mr. Largent, Mr. Smith, you both talk a lot about mobile video 

broadcasting, and I am curious, do you think people want to watch 

a limited number of channels at a set schedule on a device about 

this big or do you think they want to watch their choice of programs when they want to watch them, and should that consumer 

preference drive spectrum decisions? 

Mr. LARGENT. Well, I would say that from my personal experience, the older I get, the harder it is to watch television on a 

handset, but, you know, we are serving closer probably now 280 

million customers in this country will probably be the statistic at 

the end of this year and I would say that there probably is consumer uptake of that particular service as it becomes available and 

it is available now. 

Mr. DOYLE. Mr. Smith. 

Mr. SMITH. Congressman Doyle, I don’t believe they should be regarded as exclusive. I think we can do both. And I know young people are highly interested in mobile TV and I suspect many who 

don’t have to wear these are as well. That said, I think it is very 

important that these new inventions like Hulu coming along are 

using broadcast content, it won’t be many years until your laptop 

will have a broadcast signal too, and so it is not either/or. It is 

both. 

Mr. DOYLE. But it seems to me—and I agree, I think it is young 

people because I couldn’t watch TV on this either. But it seems to 

me those same people are the ones that don’t want a set schedule. 

They want to watch their show when they want to want their 

show, and that being the case, you know, as we talk about where 

is the best place to allocate spectrum, it just—I just saw a note 

here, ‘‘I want to watch the Steelers beat the Seahawks in real 

time.’’ Right now the Steelers aren’t beating anyone. Eddie, were 

you responsible for that? 

Mr. SMITH. And Congressman, to that point, I hear your point 

but I also hear Congressman Markey’s point. I hear people say no, 

I want to watch it when it is really happening and it is just part 

of being the American tradition, particularly when it comes to 

sports. People are very anxious to see it live in real time. 

Mr. DOYLE. Mr. Hatfield. 

Mr. HATFIELD. First of all, I want to thank you for your kind remarks earlier but I think as an academic stepping back from this, 

you have asked a very, very fundamental question. If people want 

to watch content simultaneously, than that old broadcast model is 

a very efficient way of doing it. If people want to watch individual 

things, then the more cellularized approach is more efficient. So 

here your decision or our decision is how that balance should be 


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made, and of course on the broadcast side we probably have this 

additional public interest benefit that may sway the decision but 

I think from an engineering standpoint, that is the fundamental 

question, how much of it is individual choice and what time you 

want to watch it and how much of it do you want to watch simultaneously with other people in the country. 

Mr. DOYLE. Does anyone else want to chime in on that? OK. 

I just have one other question. Mr. Smith, in the Pittsburgh area, 

roughly about 8 percent of the people in my region get their broadcast with rabbit ears, you know, over-the-air broadcasting, and I 

was just curious if you have any numbers on how many people— 

yes, 8 percent watch with rabbit ears. How many people—do you 

have any numbers on how many people watch HDTV over the air 

with, you know, the rabbit ears versus relying on standard def? Is 

there any kind of figures like that? 

Mr. SMITH. I have heard the range from 8 percent to 20 percent 

but I think there are a couple of other factors that are important 

depending on your Congressional district. For example, Mr. Barton’s district, it may go as high as 40 percent, and over the air 

tends to be about people who are rural, who are poor, who are elderly, who have also invested in the digital transition. 

Mr. DOYLE. Do you think they have HDTVs? 

Mr. SMITH. I believe the figure of $25 billion, which is an estimate of what people have spent in the digital transition, I think 

many of them do now and they really like high definition and they 

don’t want to see it degraded and they are beginning to really 

value the multicasting so that they get a religious channel, a 

weather channel, a Hispanic channel, a Korean channel. This is the 

miracle that is now made possible because we all did this and it 

is a very exciting future that I hate to see clouded by ill-considered 

ideas that pit broadband against broadcast. I do think in the fullness of time there will be technologies that will provide for both. 

Mr. DOYLE. Thank you. 

Mr. Chairman, I have no more questions. I will yield back. 

Mr. BOUCHER. Thank you very much, Mr. Doyle. 

The gentleman from Washington State, Mr. Inslee, is recognized 

for 5 minutes. 

Mr. INSLEE. Thank you. 

Mr. Largent, we know Americans are going to be looking at their 

cell phone much more frequently and on an hourly basis. I just 

wonder what suggestion you could give us on things we could do 

here or FCC to promote investment in the networks that are really 

going to be necessary. Just give your general thoughts about that. 

Mr. LARGENT. Well, number one, I would applaud what the FCC 

did in November by approving the tower siting initiative. We have 

been fighting this battle for a long time, giving local jurisdiction, 

States the ability to object to tower siting proposals but doing it in 

a timely fashion, and that goes a long way to helping this industry 

provide more service to this country, so I really applaud the FCC 

for their action on the tower siting. The two bills that we are looking at today are kind of the beginning of the process, the end of 

the process. The spectrum inventory bill looks at the possible spectrum that is out there, how it is being used and what spectrum 

could be identified for higher and better use perhaps. And then 


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your bill comes in at the end of the process and says here is a more 

orderly fashion to move the current spectrum holders to their new 

spectrum and do it in a more efficient, effective way and do it faster, so both of these bills are good bills and go a long way to improving a process of acquiring additional spectrum which the wireless 

industry is sorely going to need in the years to come. 

Mr. INSLEE. I want to make sure I didn’t miss anyone. I didn’t 

hear any good or even not-so-good constructive criticism of our bill, 

and I want to make sure I hadn’t missed any. Does anyone have 

any suggestions on the bill I am working with Mr. Upton on that 

you would suggest to improve the product? We are always looking 

for good suggestions. This might be the first hearing in American 

history where there isn’t any constructive criticism, so this is quite 

an achievement. 

Mr. Calabrese, you have suggested broadening the purpose of the 

spectrum relocation fund to support modernizing federal systems 

and allowing for a greater degree of band sharing. Could you give 

us any sense what you would be suggestive of as far as cost and 

what type of approach? 

Mr. CALABRESE. It is very difficult to know the exact cost. In fact, 

I would assume probably, you know, first of all that the agencies 

that would be proposing to modernize their system to free up spectrum for sharing that they would be in a sense second in line. You 

know, there would first from that spectrum relocation fund the priority for those agencies that needed to migrate off a band so that 

it could be cleared for licensing as we did with AWS, you know, the 

fundamental purpose of your bill. But then secondarily, you know, 

like now we have remaining funds and then I think they should— 

agencies should be able to apply to the technical panel that you 

propose in the bill setting up which would then recommend to 

OMB which of those, you know, on a competitive basis which of 

those would have the greatest impact in terms of freeing up spectrum for the commercial sector or for spectrum efficiency, and it is 

really a great benefit because it would make those agencies more 

effective with more modern communication while also freeing up 

spectrum. 

Mr. INSLEE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. BOUCHER. Thank you very much, Mr. Inslee. 

I am going to ask unanimous consent on behalf of the gentleman 

from Nebraska, Mr. Terry, to insert in the record a letter concerning the subject matter before us of the Electronic Warfare and 

Information Operations Association. Without objection, that will be 

made a part of the record. 

[The information appears at the conclusion of the hearing.] 

Mr. BOUCHER. And the gentlelady from California, Mrs. Bono 

Mack, is recognized for 5 minutes. 

Mrs. BONO MACK. I thank the Chair. 

I would like to ask a question of Dr. Johnson. In your testimony, 

you indicated that future government spectrum needs will be focused on high-bandwidth uses such as video for UAVs or high-altitude surveillance aircraft. Is that correct? 

Mr. JOHNSON. Yes, that is correct. 

Mrs. BONO MACK. Can you please provide an estimate of the percentage of the DOD’s high-bandwidth video capacity used by UAVs 


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and other surveillance aircraft that is currently provided by commercial satellite systems using spectrum above 10 gigahertz? 

Mr. JOHNSON. No, I can’t provide that but we can provide that 

after the hearing. 

Mrs. BONO MACK. Thank you. And do you believe that most of 

the future high-bandwidth video capacity for the UAVs also will 

use spectrum above 10 gigahertz? 

Mr. JOHNSON. I don’t know the answer to that. 

Mrs. BONO MACK. OK. Thank you. If I can get the answers in 

writing after the hearing, that would be great. 

At this point I would like to yield the balance of my time to my 

colleague, Steve Buyer. 

Mr. BUYER. Thank you very much. The question I have—and I 

thank you for yielding—is about the delays in the delivery of spectrum and its impact on delivering commercial systems. So when 

you look back even back in 2006 when T Mobile paid a lot of money 

out there, $4.2 billion, for spectrum, you know, we are 5 years 

down range now and we still don’t have systems being delivered, 

and so when we lay out these timelines for the delivery and they 

are not met, so I look at this legislation before us and I am interested in your opinions if I were to offer an amendment, and Mr. 

Markey talks about giving encouragement. What about if I were to 

offer an amendment that has a penalty clause so that if a government department or agency does not deliver the relocation at the 

timeline that is specified whether it is classified or unclassified, 

then that department or agency is to pay interest on the monies 

relative to where that spectrum is located? So you can figure out 

what the economic impact would be, so if DOD says well, it is too 

difficult for us to deliver the spectrum from Mobile, Pensacola, to 

Jacksonville because we have our classified issues. Well, deal with 

it then. Tell us what they are. You said you could deliver on a particular date, then deal with it. And so I am interested if I were to 

offer such an amendment as an incentive, because if we ask for 

these companies to put billions of dollars—you are asking for the 

next auction. We do the next auction. Government takes the money 

and we use the money yet aren’t delivering when we said we 

would. 

And so in the end, Mr. Smith, you talked about public values. 

Public values are based upon virtues. If you are going to have a 

deal, you can’t have a deal without fidelity and fidelity requires two 

people, and so if government is not upholding its fidelity, then 

maybe we should have an encouragement clause called a penalty 

clause. What are your ideas, your thoughts, Mr. Largent? 

Mr. LARGENT. Well, I like your thinking going into this but I 

would prefer—I mean, I am just thinking about this freewheeling 

right now so I wasn’t prepared for the question, but as I think 

about it, I think perhaps you could build incentives for the people 

that are moving off the spectrum to get off so that you give them 

the spectrum relocation money. You would give them, you know, 

some amount of money if they are off in a year and you give something less than that amount if they are off in 2 years, so you give 

them more money to relocate the faster they are able to relocate 

as opposed to the same amount of money whenever they relocate. 

Mr. BUYER. Well, we can incentivize and penalize, right? 


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Mr. LARGENT. We like incentives. 

Mr. BUYER. I understand. 

Mr. Smith? 

Mr. SMITH. Congressman, NAB really doesn’t have a dog in the 

fight, so to say, but having said that, I applaud the way you are 

thinking because I think it would have the effect of incentivizing 

more interest in spectrum auctions if they knew that there was a 

two-way street and they would be treated fairly. 

Mr. BUYER. Thank you. I would like to explore this idea with not 

only my colleagues but with you on how we can build this into this 

piece of legislation. Thank you. I yield back. 

Mr. STUPAK [presiding.] I would have to put a second degree 

amendment on your amendment and we would have to punish all 

Members of Congress who spend that spectrum money five times 

over. 

Mr. BUYER. I agree with you. 

Mr. STUPAK. And with that, I think we will close this happy 

hearing. Thank you to all of our witnesses. Have a good holiday 

and thank you for being here. 

[Whereupon, at 12:00 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.] 

[Material submitted for inclusion in the record follows:] 


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