Thank you, Chairman Boucher, Ranking Member Stearns and members of the Committee, for this opportunity to testify today on these two important pieces of proposed legislation.

My name is Michael Calabrese, Vice President and Director of the Wireless Future Program at the New America Foundation, a nonpartisan public policy institute here in Washington, DC. On issues concerning spectrum and wireless broadband policy, New America is part of the Public Interest Spectrum Coalition (PISC), which represents national consumer and advocacy groups including Consumers Union, Consumer Federation of America, Free Press, Public Knowledge and others. Most of my remarks reflect comments that we filed on behalf of PISC last month in response to the FCC’s Wireless Innovation Notice of Inquiry (Docket 09-157) and in response to the National Broadband Plan more generally (Docket 09-51).

In addition to explaining why we support these two very complementary bills, I will make the following main points:

• The increasing capability and popularity of smartphones and other wireless computing devices will drive an explosion in mobile data demand.
• Contrary to conventional wisdom, there is an abundance of unused spectrum capacity that can be reallocated band-by-band for exclusive or for shared use.
• The spectrum inventory proposed in H.R. 3125 is critical to identifying underutilized bands and determining how best to expand access and improve spectrum efficiency.
• Actual spectrum use measurements and, ideally, spectrum monitoring, would add an important layer of useful data to the inventory; this and other NTIA/FCC costs for a robust implementation should be funded from unused appropriations for the national broadband mapping data under the Broadband Data Improvement Act.