Licensed Spectrum Boosts The Economy And U.S. Wireless Standing

The passage of 2021’s Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which allocated $1.2 trillion of new money for rebuilding and expanding America’s roads, bridges, tunnels, and transit systems, was the culmination of several years of bipartisan discussion and debate about how to address our crumbling public infrastructure and make smart investments in future infrastructure needs.

Included in the package is $65 billion in funding to address broadband access and affordability to help connect all Americans to the internet. While this level of public funding is historic, it is worth observing that in the U.S., internet service providers have invested more than a trillion dollars in private capital to build, maintain, and densify U.S. wired and wireless broadband networks.

Research from Compass-Lexecon shows that in the last decade alone, wireless network operators have invested over $265 billion in infrastructure spending while auctions for licensed exclusive use spectrum have raised over $155 billion in revenues. These capital investments reverberate through the economy: the aggregate spending on wireless capacity created 1.8 million jobs, directly or indirectly, and generated $450 billion in economic activity in 2020 alone.

Wireless networks are modern infrastructure as critical to our nation as roads and bridges as drivers of economic and social benefits. For example, in the most densely populated population centers of the United States it can be impossible or enormously costly for the government to increase or widen their roads. New Jersey recently proposed a $10 billion project to expand an eight mile stretch of the New Jersey turnpike that leads to Manhattan in the hope of alleviating some of its congestion.

However, a world in which automobiles could communicate with each other via 5G would effectively increase the capacity of roads by allowing them to invisibly yoke to other cars and travel together at the same speed, eliminating the space that cars operated by fallible drivers need to maintain between each other.

Ubiquitous 5G would effectively increase the capacity and productivity of our other infrastructure, not to mention create jobs, boost productivity, and accomplish a wide range of technological achievements such as the introduction of driverless cars, virtual reality, and a range of applications that have the potential to help us reduce energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions.

4G and 5G cellular networks are pillars of our economic success. And these networks are powered by exclusive-use licensed spectrum acquired at auctions held by the Federal Communications Commission that provide incentives for wireless companies to use that spectrum efficiently. Auctioning more licensed spectrum is critical to the U.S. maintaining global competitiveness and spurring innovation.

As part of the omnibus spending bill passed at the end of last year, Congress reauthorized the FCC’s authority to conduct auctions only through March 9. With very little time to waste, the 118th Congress must immediately craft and pass long term auction authority legislation with a focus on creating a long-term pipeline of licensed spectrum ahead of this looming deadline.

Spectrum policy has always included a balance of licensed, unlicensed, and shared spectrum. Exclusive-use licensed spectrum allows for predictable, consistent performance at high power levels. It has enabled new technologies like 5G Fixed Wireless Access (FWA), which is bringing new broadband competition to cable into the marketplace.

Last year, the House passed the Spectrum Innovation Act of 2022, requiring the FCC to auction spectrum in the 3.1-3.45 GHz band. Despite bipartisan support, special interests successfully killed the bill in the Senate, arguing that a new shared spectrum framework based upon the Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) —an unproven spectrum sharing regime – should be the model for spectrum allocation going forward. While it may hold promise someday, the U.S. can’t share its way to building the best wireless networks in the world. That will only happen with adequate and sustained investments in more licensed spectrum. Otherwise, the success the U.S. has seen in mobile wireless connectivity may melt away.

Our country was not gifted the most robust mobile wireless networks in the world. It took hard work by the private sector to build them, using the essential raw material – exclusive use spectrum – made available by the government. But our continued leadership in mobile wireless is not a given; failure to invest in exclusive use, licensed spectrum may eventually leave our networks too congested to function properly.

I respect those who push the boundaries of what is possible, which spectrum sharing advocates certainly have done. But the nation cannot chase what’s around the corner at the cost of what we have today. And demagoguery does not replace the simple fact that unlicensed and shared spectrum models have access to many hundreds more megahertz of key spectrum than our nation’s wireless carriers.

Now is not the time to upset the apple cart on spectrum policy—there’s too much at stake. The increases in jobs and economic activity to date from the deployment of wireless networks built upon exclusive use licensed spectrum are clear proof points. It is time for Congress and the FCC to give the wireless industry the resources it needs to continue to benefit consumers and power our economy.