Bush Announces Spectrum Management Overhaul

Yesterday president Bush issued a “Memo on Spectrum Policy,” which sets the stage for a fundamental reform of the way radio spectrum is used and managed in the United States. With the establishment of this “Spectrum Policy Initiative” the White House hopes to “unlock the economic value and entrepreneurial potential of U.S. spectrum assets while ensuring that sufficient spectrum is available to support critical Government functions.”
Claiming that “the existing spectrum [management] process is insufficiently responsive to the need to protect current critical uses,” the Memo outlines several tasks to begin immediately, involving the cooperation of more than a dozen government departments and agencies.
The effort will be headed up by the Department of Commerce and has two major goals: the first is to basically examine and overhaul the way the government uses spectrum for its own purposes. This sounds like a process of inventory-taking and, possibly, a whittling-away of some spectrum currently claimed for government use that sits mostly unused. This “freed” spectrum will likely be auctioned off to the highest bidder, ostensibly to allow for things like more wireless network traffic capacity. Continue reading “Bush Announces Spectrum Management Overhaul”