Presidential Science Advisory Committee Pushes Spectrum Sharing, Priority-Based Access

The latest Presidential Science Advisory Committee (PSAC) report has given a big push to spectrum sharing. According to The New York Times, this report titled "Realizing the Full Potential of Government-Held Spectrum to Spur Economic Growth," outlines a tiered, priority-based system. Different users would have different priority, possibly based on whether they were a government user, a user who was prepared to pay more for a higher quality-of-service or a casual user who might be assigned the lowest priority and pay the lowest rate. Additionally, the report recommends that United States President Obama issue a Presidential Order to adopt computer technologies so existing radio spectrum for wireless communications can be used more efficiently. The group also set a goal of 1000 MHz that should be identified for sharing between federal and commercial users. The report makes the point that while there is no new spectrum available, new technologies can vastly increase the capacity of existing spectrum to meet increasing demand. PSAC has not released the report, but the details were presented at a meeting last week. The report is expected to be presented to the president in June after final editing. Members of the Committee include Craig Mundie, Chief Research and Strategy Officer at Microsoft, and Eric Schmidt, Chairman of Google.