Roth Sees Continuing Progress on Making Spectrum Available for 6G
NTIA Administrator Arielle Roth said the 7 GHz band is probably the furthest along of the bands being studied by the administration for a 6G spectrum pipeline (see 2605060011). President Donald Trump gave NTIA a deadline to identify spectrum in that band in a final report in December, and the agency is “fully on track to do that,” she said Thursday at a Free State Foundation event.
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NTIA is also making progress on the 2.7 GHz band, Roth said. She noted that the Spectrum Relocation Fund Panel, which also includes the FCC and OMB, signed off on detailed relocation plans for that band, which were transmitted to Congress. A 60-day congressional review of the plan is set to end June 30, she said. NTIA is hopeful that spectrum relocation funds are then made available “so we can complete … engineering and get the spectrum identified as soon as possible,” with an auction possible during the Trump administration.
Roth said NTIA is also “very excited” about the 4 GHz band, though it isn’t as far along as 2.7 GHz. Spectrum relocation fund money “isn’t available quite yet, but we’re on track to get it.” The nine incumbents in the 4 GHz band have submitted their spectrum “blueprints” to NTIA, she added. The administration’s pipeline plan has been sent to Congress on the 1675-1680 MHz band as well, and “we’re also looking at the 15 MHz above that,” potentially for “direct-to-cell” use.
NTIA recently created a website, spectrum.gov, with a goal of providing more transparency on spectrum. Roth said that when she was a Capitol Hill staffer, she found the process of studying and reallocating spectrum "kind of opaque." NTIA now has a “dashboard of the steps needed to get to identification,” along with information on U.S. participation in international standards meetings and other spectrum information.
In addition, Roth said the BEAD program is reaching an important point. “The states are in the process of negotiating contracts with providers, getting them signed, and finally seeing deployment happening.” While there’s a four-year deadline by statute, “we would love to see projects deployed as quickly as possible,” she said. “We’re very optimistic.”
Building broadband is hard, Roth acknowledged, and NTIA anticipates labor, supply chain, permitting and other issues to arise. The agency is monitoring the health of the fiber supply chain and has commitments from large vendors that they will deliver what providers need “in a timely fashion,” she said. “We also count on the providers to have an open dialogue with us.”
Roth said NTIA sees one of the biggest risks for program default coming from regulatory “experiments in states … that drive away investment,” including rate regulation. States also must abide by NTIA’s requirements “to streamline processing and minimize permitting costs,” she said. There will always be “gray areas where NTIA’s rules are silent, and the states may have their own laws.”