Since its creation in 2004, the Spectrum Relocation Fund (SRF) has served as an important tool supporting federal agency efforts to make more spectrum available for commercial use. The fund reimburses agencies for some of the costs they incur for repurposing the spectrum they use in performing critical missions on behalf of the American people, opening the door to commercial access to the spectrum.
Modifying agency communications systems to use a different spectrum band or perhaps share spectrum with commercial providers can be exceedingly costly, and agencies typically do not have adequate budgets to cover all the costs associated with such efforts. Congress created the SRF to help defray the costs associated with spectrum relocation or sharing. It supports the efforts of federal agencies as they work to help meet the President’s goal of identifying 500 megahertz of additional federal and non-federal spectrum for wireless broadband services, both licensed and unlicensed, by 2020.
The original SRF enabling statute, however, significantly restricted the scope of activities for which agencies could request funding. Even after changes were made in 2012 to provide additional flexibility for use of the funds, these constraints limited the effectiveness of the SRF in freeing up spectrum. In particular, the SRF provided funds to cover costs incurred by an agency that are associated with spectrum bands identified for auction. But agencies need funds even to identify alternative spectrum bands for systems or to determine whether such systems can share that spectrum with other federal or non-federal users. The original statute, however, did not allow for the SRF to support the early stage research, analyses and measurements that can help create potential repurposing opportunities in the first place.
Last month, Congress made important enhancements to the SRF to address this issue by enacting the Spectrum Pipeline Act. The Act broadens the scope of eligible expenses, enabling agencies to use funds from the SRF to pay for research and related activities that promise to increase spectrum efficiency and that may lead to repurposing of spectrum for commercial use. These modifications provide an initial $500 million in funding as well as a mechanism to replenish the funding pool with proceeds from future auctions. This will provide a sustainable mechanism to help agencies improve the spectrum-related systems they use to perform their missions and allow them to use spectrum more efficiently and innovatively. In turn, this will enable new opportunities that otherwise would not be possible to improve spectrum access for both federal and non-federal users. NTIA is working with the Office of Management and Budget and the agencies to implement the new law. In fact, agencies are already developing R&D proposals.
NTIA is committed to making additional airwaves available for commercial providers to continue meeting the growing demand for wireless services while ensuring that agencies have the spectrum they need to do important work for the American people. We are excited about these enhancements to the SRF because they improve our ability to meet both of these important national goals.