More Spectrum for Everyone -- Except Feds, Apparently
By
Bob Brewin
President Obama’s memo on sharing the airwaves puts agencies in a difficult position.
That seems to be the thrust of the spectrum sharing memo issued by President Obama last Friday.
He wants to open up federal spectrum to commercial carriers so they can support more iThing users (my favorite are the iPad-wielding toddlers I’ve seen in strollers) while sharply restricting federal users.
The memo says that the National Telecommunications and Information Administration should insure that any “agency requesting a frequency assignment or spectrum certification for systems operating between 400 MHz and 6 GHz verify that it must operate in this critical range, and that it will use the minimum spectrum reasonably necessary to most effectively meet mission requirements.”
I have a hard time comprehending this. The military uses spectrum for critical command and control systems and the weather service uses spectrum to predict storms, while folks toting iThings use them to stream video of programs they could watch on television or music they could listen to on an old fashioned CD player.
Am I missing something here?