To the extent the Commission steps away from direct regulation, engineering must step in and assume greater responsibility to anticipate the electromagnetic environment in which your equipment will operate. The public needs to be confident that systems will function in that environment without causing harmful interference to others. As you know far better than I, ultra-wideband offers the promise of new radar and imaging services that can save lives. It can help rescue hostages, locate disaster victims trapped under rubble of a collapsed building, detect hidden flaws in the construction of highways or airport runways, secure our homes, and maybe even provide high speed Internet access to the classroom. One year ago, the Commission issued a Notice of Inquiry to explore these issues.
Comments are in.
While we still need to build on the record developed in our inquiry, I believe that we should go forward with a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that will address possible revisions to our rules that would permit deployment of ultra-wideband services. It is my hope that we can initiate such a proceeding within the next few months, with the goal of completing our study during the next year. But we cannot do it alone. We must have the active involvement of our colleagues elsewhere in the government who are spectrum users or managers. And we must have the active involvement of your group and others in the private sector who would be affected by our actions.