Program Links
Wireless Future Metablog
- Open Platforms, Smart transportation & smart grid
- FRPAA re-introduced in the Senate
- 5 Minutes With Harold Feld: The Terms of the National Broadband Plan
- Survival of the Biggest (Not the Fittest): The Evolution Waiver and Set-Top Box Competition
- Recapping last week's Google D.C. Talk on cybersecurity
Featured Publications
Citizens Guide to the AirwavesA Graphic Depiction of the Uses -- and Misuses -- of the Radiofrequency Spectrum
The Art of Spectrum LobbyingAmerica's $480 Billion Spectrum Giveaway, How it Happened, and How to Prevent it from Recurring
The Cartoon Guide to Federal Spectrum PolicyWhat if the Government Regulated Spoken Words the Way It Regulates the Airwaves?
The End of Spectrum ‘Scarcity'
As the FCC begins its year-long process to recommend a National Broadband Plan, one starting point is to unlock publicly-owned assets that can facilitate ubiquitous, affordable broadband access. Wireless spectrum remains the most cost-effective and rapid means to deliver broadband access to rural and unserved urban residents. But as mobile broadband use continues to increase exponentially, demand for spectrum will rapidly outpace availability under current spectrum management policies.
The Wireless Future Program hosted an event with leading technology and policy experts who believe dynamic, opportunistic access to underutilized spectrum – especially federal government bands – is feasible if we can only muster the political will. You can visit the event page here.
The Wireless Future Program also released four new papers on the subject:
The End of Spectrum Scarcity: Building on the TV Bands Database to Access Unused Public Airwaves
By Michael Calabrese, Director, Wireless Future Program
Revitalizing the Public Airwaves:
Opportunistic Unlicensed Reuse of Government Spectrum
By Victor Pickard and Sascha Meinrath, Director, Open Technology Initiative
New Approaches to Private Sector Sharing of Federal Government Spectrum
By Michael J. Marcus, Principal, Marcus Spectrum Solutions
A Potential Alliance for World-Wide Dynamic Spectrum Access: DSA as an Enabler of National Dynamic Spectrum Management
By Preston F. Marshall, Director, Information Sciences Institute, Viterbi School of Engineering, USC and Former Program Manager, DARPA
Next Generation Communications
Essential Building-Blocks For Universal High-Speed Broadband
NAF Comments on FCC's National Broadband Plan
NAF believes that a national effort to invest in the essential fiber infrastructures that interconnect all broadband networks and are essential to high-capacity connections, along with innovative 21st century spectrum polices to tap into the enormous, underutilized capacity of our national spectrum resources can serve as the foundation for high-speed broadband deployment in communities across the country.
Read our full comments here.
Read our rural broadband comments here.
Read our BTOP comments here.
Press
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FCC Filings
Click here for a list of all of our FCC filings.
The Wireless Future Program, along with allies in the public interest and high-tech communities, frequently submits comments in Federal Communications Commission proceedings of relevance to our policy goals.
About Us
New America's Wireless Future Program develops and advocates policy proposals to promote universal, affordable and ubiquitous broadband and improve the public’s access to critical wireless communication technologies. It seeks to promote fair and efficient use of the airwaves to unlock the full potential of the wireless age for all Americans. In each economic era wealth creation has been driven by specific resources. In the agricultural era it was land; in the industrial era, it was energy. Today the American people collectively own the most valuable resource of the emerging information economy: the public airwaves, also known as the electromagnetic spectrum. As the world goes wireless, access to the airwaves is the “oil of the information age;” indeed, economists estimate the commercial value of existing licenses at over $750 billion. Unfortunately, our nation’s antiquated spectrum policies have created artificial spectrum scarcity that reduces innovation and competition, inhibits the rapid deployment of universal affordable wireless broadband services, and sacrifices many billions of dollars in public revenue.
A more-detailed program description is available here.
Program Staff
- Michael Calabrese
Vice President and Director, Wireless Future Program - Sascha Meinrath
Research Director, Wireless Future Program; Director, Open Technology Intiative - Benjamin Lennett
Policy Analyst, Wireless Future Program
