NTIA Blog

The Institute for Telecommunication Sciences (ITS), NTIA’s research and engineering laboratory in Boulder, Colo., provides critical support to NTIA and other agencies by performing basic and applied research in radio science—which enables every wireless communications device, from smart phones, to military radars, to space satellites to operate.

As part of our efforts to expand the reach of this important work, I am pleased to announce the launch of a new Senior Technical Fellow program to enhance the Institute’s focus on scientific excellence and engineering innovation. It also provides a more formalized way to sustain and share ITS technical expertise with the Institute’s younger generation of engineers. The program recognizes the outstanding technical achievements of senior ITS researchers and allows them to devote more time to training and mentoring junior and mid-level scientists and engineers.

Frank Sanders, who has served as Chief of the Telecommunications Theory Division, has been named as the first senior technical fellow under the new ITS program. He is a renowned subject matter expert on radar system design, radar spectrum emissions, and radar receiver sensitivity to interference, and on the analysis and resolution of electromagnetic compatibility problems. 

Nearly 17 months ago, NTIA kicked off activities to complete the privatization of the Internet Domain Name System (DNS) as promised in 1998 by transitioning our stewardship role over  certain technical functions related to the DNS.

We have reached an important milestone in that process as the two working groups tasked with developing proposals related to the transition have released them for final comment.

These technical functions, known as the IANA functions, play an important but limited role in how the DNS and Internet operate. The DNS allows users to identify websites, mail servers, and other Internet destinations using easy-to-understand names (e.g., www.ntia.doc.gov) rather than the numeric network addresses (e.g., 170.110.225.163) necessary to retrieve information on the Internet.

The IANA transition will advance our commitment to ensuring that the Internet remains an engine for global economic growth, innovation and free speech.

Since March 2014, the Internet community – made up of technical experts, businesses and civil society – has spent hundreds of hours devising a transition proposal that aims to meet the principles we outlined, including preserving the openness, security and resiliency of the Internet.

This post is part of our “Spotlight on NTIA” blog series, which is highlighting the work that NTIA employees are doing to advance NTIA’s mission of promoting broadband adoption, finding spectrum to meet the growing demand for wireless technologies, and ensuring the Internet remains an engine for innovation and economic growth.

Stacy Cheney, a senior attorney advisor in the Office of Chief Counsel, started out his career in a private law firm but realized early on that public service and the issues that NTIA deals with in particular were his true calling.

Many here at NTIA might know Cheney as the attorney who sends you those emails asking you to comply with a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. But he plays a much broader role at NTIA, including contributing to cutting-edge and impactful issues. While some of his job deals with general administrative law like Federal Register notices and FOIA requests, he has worked on many other exciting projects including NTIA’s work related to the Internet’s domain name system and digital copyright law for which he earned gold and bronze medal awards from the Commerce Department.

Nearly everyone is familiar with the need to step outside a building to complete a wireless call. Modern building materials, such as aluminum, steel and even specially-coated window glass, significantly reduce or even block wireless signals

While it might be inconvenient for your average mobile device user, it could become a matter of life or death for an emergency first responder. Police officers and firefighters cannot stop what they are doing to leave a building in order to communicate during a time of crisis.

In recent days, there has been a great deal of discussion about how much spectrum federal agencies use and whether that spectrum is being used efficiently. This is an important conversation to have and one that goes to the heart of NTIA’s statutory mission of fostering full and efficient use of the nation’s spectrum resources in a manner that most benefits the public interest. If we are to make progress toward a more efficient use of spectrum, it is also essential that this discussion include a full and balanced assessment of the challenges and trade-offs that must be addressed.

On Wednesday, President Obama travelled to Durant, Oklahoma, where he announced ConnectHome — a plan to bring high-speed broadband Internet to low-income housing in 27 cities and one Native American tribal community. ConnectHome is just one component of a broader Administration initiative to expand broadband and close the digital divide, and NTIA is playing a critical role in that effort.

Working to expand broadband access and adoption is a core mission of NTIA.  And for the past six years through our broadband grant program, we’ve been working with communities across the country to build high-speed networks in our most rural villages, set up computer labs in inner-city housing projects, teach critical digital literacy skills to people who may never have turned on a computer before, and so much more. 

In Oklahoma where President Obama made his announcement, NTIA’s Broadband Technology Opportunity Program (BTOP) funded two infrastructure projects, built by Pine Telephone and the State of Oklahoma, which are playing an integral role in providing broadband to the Choctaw Nation. The projects are partners in the ConnectHome initiative to serve Choctaw public housing residences.

Unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) have the potential to provide a wide range of innovative and beneficial services to businesses and consumers in the United States. From enhancing news gathering, improving agribusiness, providing new delivery models, to providing Internet in remote areas, the possibilities for UAS are staggering.  Consumer trust and responsible operation are keys to fully tapping the transformative potential of unmanned aircraft.

Earlier this year, President Obama called on NTIA to launch a multistakeholder process to develop best practices that enhance privacy and promote transparent and accountable operation of UAS by commercial and private users. The end goal is best practices that mitigate consumer concerns while promoting growth and innovation in this exciting sector.

In April, we received more than 50 comments regarding the most pressing UAS issues and potential solutions. This input will be the basis of the group’s initial discussions. 

Promoting and preserving the digital ecosystem is a core mission of the Department of Commerce, and the security and resiliency of that ecosystem is vital.  For the digital economy to thrive, users must trust that their personal data and the systems and websites they use every day are as secure as possible.

To help support this goal, the Department of Commerce announced in March an initiative to address key cybersecurity issues facing the digital economy that could be best addressed by a consensus-based multistakeholder process.  Based on input from a broad range of stakeholders, we are today announcing that the first cybersecurity multistakeholder process will launch in September and will focus on vulnerability research disclosure. The goal of this process will be to bring together security researchers, software vendors, and those interested in a more secure digital ecosystem to create common principles and best practices around the disclosure of and response to new security vulnerability information.

Recognizing the growing importance of wireless broadband to the U.S. economy, President Obama five years ago last week set a bold new goal aimed at ensuring that enough spectrum is available to meet the surging demand for wireless connectivity. As the President noted in a June 28, 2010 memorandum, “The world is going wireless, and we must not fall behind.” The President called on NTIA and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to make 500 megahertz of federal and non-federal spectrum available for commercial wireless broadband by 2020. As we move into the second half of this ten-year challenge, I wanted to take the opportunity to review the progress we have made and the hurdles still left to surmount. 

Five years out, there is little debate about the accuracy of the President’s prediction – the public’s demand for wireless “smart” devices has continued to grow exponentially along with the need for spectrum to help power this technology. Nearly two-thirds of Americans now own smart phones compared to just 35 percent in 2011, according to the Pew Research Center. 

This post is part of our “Spotlight on NTIA” blog series, which is highlighting the work that NTIA employees are doing to advance NTIA’s mission of promoting broadband adoption, finding spectrum to meet the growing demand for wireless technologies, and ensuring the Internet remains an engine for innovation and economic growth.

Laura Breeden has certainly made her mark on the digital world. While she describes herself as a “minor player,” Breeden, director of external affairs for the Office of Telecommunication and Information Applications’ Broadband USA program, has spent much of her career tracking the evolution of technology and the Internet.

Breeden’s work in this area began in 1983 when she joined BBN, a Cambridge, Mass., high-technology research and development firm. Her project, CSNET (the Computer Science Network), was funded by the National Science Foundation to connect university and corporate computer science departments around the country and the world via ARPANET, the platform that would eventually become the modern-day Internet. She helped link research networks in Japan, Korea, France, Ireland, Denmark, Great Britain, and Germany to their counterparts in the United States.