Lack of Good Spectrum Sharing Model Seen as Challenge
The consensus is broad that governmental/commercial spectrum sharing increasingly will be the norm, but one big hurdle is the lack of a good model for what that sharing would look like, said panelists at a Washington Space Business Roundtable lunch Friday. For now, the 3.5 GHz band "is the poster child for trying," said Russ Matijevich, HawkEye 360 vice president-sales. Ligado Chief Legal Officer Valerie Green said that "so far, 3.5 is working pretty well."
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Applying the 3.5 GHz band approach, such as employment of a spectrum access system, to millimeter-wave bands could be problematic, Matijevich said. Given the different beams and capacities and data rates involved, "there are going to be a lot of growing pains as you migrate," he said, but 3.5 GHz "is a good starting point." The FCC calls part of 3.5 GHz the Citizens Broadband Radio Service.
DOD is nervous about sharing, but "there is still a recognition it will be happening, like it or not," said Valerie Samson, Secure World Foundation (SWF) Washington office director. Ligado -- whose plan for sharing the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's 1675-1680 MHz downlink spectrum has gotten resistance from that agency (see 1608120033) -- got some positive feedback from NOAA staffers while at an American Meteorological Society meeting last month about its beta test of a content delivery network to distribute NOAA satellite data, Green said. She said there's considerable intra-government agency and intra-private sector spectrum sharing, and nothing inherently is different about government/commercial spectrum sharing.
Satellite operators will have to be ready under a sharing regime for the government to reclaim spectrum for emergency use, and have plans and backup resources for such events, Matijevich said.
Every nation is facing the same spectrum sharing crunch, Samson said. She said the international community is discussing "a naming-and-shaming" regime to tackle willful interference or intransigent addressing of sharing since the ITU has no enforcement powers.
A big part of spectrum sharing must be first establishing what is being used where, said Matijevich. Many believe the spectrum environment is congested and competitive, but there's a question of whether it's filled with spectrum speculators warehousing and intermittently using what they have, he said. Hawkeye 360 is a startup smallsat operator focused on spectrum mapping, with plans to have three satellites in orbit by year's end and 21 by the end of 2019.
Given the increased democratization of access to space, the international community needs a "safe, sustainable, secure" space environment, with reliable access to space assets that avoids RF interference, Samson said. She noted SWF last week released a handbook on the principles, laws, norms and best practices for space activities. She also said with the rise of smallsat constellations, regulators and policymakers must start considering whether rules that apply equally to all satellite operators, regardless of the size of constellation or of satellite, make sense.