The Risks and Rewards From Weaponizing Specrum Planning at the International Telecommunication Union

With rare exception, national governments reach consensus on allocations of radio spectrum at quadrennial conferences convened by the International Telecommunication Union (“ITU”). Recently, this essential, but seemingly routine exercise, has become more contentious, stressful, and less predictable. New and recurring factors collectively generate greater uncertainty whether nations can reach timely consensus on spectrum allocations and standard “rules of the road.” This paper explains why some nations, including the United States, have become dissatisfied with the ITU’s pace and procedures for allocating new and additional frequencies required by both emerging and existing services, such as the fifth generation of broadband wireless. A uniform, global frequency allocation promotes efficiency, uniformity, and technology optimization. Many stakeholders benefit from cost savings accruing when handsets have fewer chipsets, tuned to different frequency bands, and a single production line can produce equipment useable in most countries. However, an increasing number of national government officials and private sector delegates to ITU conferences have expressed impatience with the ITU and implicitly the consensus building, and harmonization processes undertaken by this agency of the United Nations. Acting unilaterally, well before the ITU reaches a global consensus, may enable nations to exploit first mover advantages in the telecommunications marketplace, both home and abroad. More nations also may see upside benefits in pursuing domestic policies that promote trade, national security, intellectual property rights, and political goals. Such emphasis may reduce the ability of the ITU to achieve its mission to promote affordable and universal access to telecommunication and information networks, services, and applications and to achieve social, economic, and environmentally sustainable growth and development among all nations. The potential for greater distraction and conflict arrives just as the ITU needs to accommodate the interests of new participants involved in providing Internet of Things devices and services, many of which require large bandwidth and low latency. This paper identifies risks and rewards resulting from a more muscular, unilateral, and nationalistic approach to spectrum planning and standard setting at the ITU. While the assertion of “digital sovereignty” may promote a nation’s individual objectives, it also may generate countervailing harms including non-uniform spectrum allocations and standards that reduce scale economies in equipment manufacturing and increase cost to consumers. Worse case scenarios challenge whether the ITU can continue to serve as a legitimate, trusted, and reliable forum for consensus building, without delay and distraction. Even as some nations consider a “go it alone” spectrum policy, other nations favor expanding the ITU’s mission to include Internet governance. Facing the prospect for ITU legitimization of national efforts to restrict Internet access and increase surveillance of users, the U.S. and other developed nations reject such “mission creep,” but doing so may underscore the importance of the ITU’s global role, if properly limited to core responsibilities. This paper assesses efforts by the U.S government to expedite the domestic spectrum reallocation process for 5G wireless service while simultaneously taking aggressive steps to protect national security by restricting or prohibiting Chinese manufacturers and carriers from accessing the national market and encouraging other nations to do so as well. Such actions can accrue substantial funds from spectrum auctions and possibly enhanced marketplace prospects for domestic designers and fabricators of chip sets used in smartphones. However, the paper also identifies the potential harms including opposition by China and other national governments to U.S. desired outcomes at ITU conferences. Additional self-inflicted harm can occur when different U.S. government agencies fail to resolve disputes well before ITU conferences, as occurred in 2019 when the FCC’s emphasis on expediting 5G spectrum reallocations generated concerns from senior Department of Commerce officials on behalf of agencies with “mission critical” spectrum requirements for weather forecasting, space exploration, and national defense. Such unresolved squabbling has the potential to exacerbate already growing opposition to U.S. spectrum planning goals at ITU conferences. The U.S. faces the prospect of considerable opposition to some spectrum planning objectives at the same time as internal quibbling prevents or delays formulation of a single set of positions that the U.S. should have promoted through liaison with other nations well before the onset of the next ITU spectrum planning conference.