Democracy at work. When citizens are truly informed, our republic thrives. Get informed straight from the source on cspan. Unfiltered, unbiased, wordforword. From the Nations Capital to wherever you are. Because the opinion that matters the most is your own. This is what democracy looks like. Cspan, powered by cable. Executives from the Telecommunications Industry discussed implementing the 5g spectrum and National Security concerns. Thank you, everybody and im very pleased to be back here with some friends and colleagues in the telecom industry. What we hope to do here is further discuss what weve discussed a moment ago but first let me introduce this group of experts. First we have the former head of an tia a former senior staff around the House Intelligence Committee and among other roles the executive director of the policy coalition. To my immediate right, chris who i think i worked with in cybersecurity and communication5 years. He has a vast folio and at t the small start up company you may have heard of. Just about every Security Policy issue that the Company Faces and also the chair of the policy coalition. To my immediate left, john hunter who is a technical expert on standards, please correct me if i used the terminology wrong. A combat veteran who started off his career as a officer in the marine corps. John had a some combat experiences that directly pertained to some of the issue as we are talking about today. Finally, Patrick Walsh has a host of spectrum and Technology Issues and verizon. So i just want to kick things off and turn to diane first at the highlevel, commercial strength and National Security, diane worked for chairman mike rogers. The very first if im not mistaken the very first u. S. Government entity that publicly stated they constitute a security threat. So like me, diane has worked on the part on the Security Side and also the commercial communication side of things. So a very highlevel question how do you see that relationship, commercial, strength and National Security do you see those as to bifurcated things were together overlapping . They definitely connected and the concept of Economic Security and National Security is well agreed on between all parties. I think theres some concepts in washington, d. C. That get used often and thats one of them. The race to 5g often used. I think we need to start peeling back the onion a little bit more and discuss that means. What does it mean for economic, u. S. And economic power to underpin National Security and why it is important that the u. S. Dollar as the reserve currency for the world . Its because it puts us in a position where we are able to lead. It allows us to lead in standard bodies and manufacturing and deployment and its so incredibly important not only for our own fiscal future but for our allies in order to bring them into the fold so they are making smart decisions along with us and i think sometimes when you have discussions people do tend to follow along different lines and i think the verbiage on this issue sometimes gets a little bit dangerous when you have people talking about planes falling out of the sky, and if it is just dropping calls and as someone said its more than a phone call it, its the data, its collecting everything. I think its so incredibly important that we do events like this where we are able to bring together all sides and talk about how to Work Together to advance the economics of the United States and the National Security of the United States. And it happens and it happens often and weve seen this on ships where policymakers have come together to say semi conductors and manufacturing is incredibly important. Congress appropriated 50 billion. I think that its time for wireless to have our chips moment and coalesce all policymakers about how important it is that we remained dominant in this conversation we have its because weve remained so dominant for so long i think it is a tough conversation its not going to get easier as we go along or as we move to the next. But its important to figure out how to move together and have these conversations. Its not a zerosum game. We all band at the end of the day when we can agree and move forward so again thank you for having this conversation and to be able to communicate or move the ball forward. A lot of this issue and i think that its particularly the case for the wireless carriers is about supply chain and having a diverse set of choices among trusted suppliers so again at a high level and then we can get into of the United States is trying to do at the world radio conference but before we get into that, can you articulate from the Company Perspectives whoever would like to go first how do you see the future of the diverse supply chain and are you concerned the spectrum policy might have an effect. I think it gets down to the global harmonization if you will. These are global manufacturers, state manufacturer equipment for countries around the globe and when we limit ourselves here in the United States to specific bands or unique frameworks if you will, a good example would be and others would argue that that is not a novel approach to making spectrum available but then on the other side of the clan is the fact that youve now created a technology that produces the utility of the spectrum because of some of the conditions you put on that so when you start peeling away those that could use globally i believe youre going to find some hesitancy on the global manufacturers to produce that equipment if there is only a small set of customers that actually need to use that equipment here in the u. S. So the important thing is we look at the Global Landscape to understand where are the sweet spots of the spectrum being used and how can we find a balance to reallocate some of that for commercial access but at the same time understand and appreciate the National Security concerns are amount of some of these Critical Military systems, mid band spectrum touching on their Radar Systems and so i think there is a way that we can do that. I know we are looking into studying a lot on how we can share with and that a ban, but i would say you also have to be realistic and pragmatic and understand when the sharing does not work we need to change the vernacular. I think in the study thats being done today it is all about coexistence. Sharing on the same channel. How do you do that dynamically. A lot of the things that are being studied from that perspective dont exist and that the technology is years away to come into fruition so i think that there is a way to again change the vernacular of what sharing means. If it isnt going to work from the cochannel perspective, then we need to look at perhaps partitioning the ban and reserving a majority of the spectrum for military use cases but at the same time looking at the portion of the band thats internationally harmonized and figuring out a way that we can reallocate that for commercial use. Can you describe the differences between the dynamic sharing and other types of socalled static sharing, temporal . Its the ability to sense the presence from another system and then shift to a good example of that would be wifi the dynamic frequency selection. Certain military systems it senses the presence and moves to a different channel to avoid the interference. Again we dont have that Technology Today and commercial wireless and then there would be the coordination the system whereby a particular user could have access to the spectrum a percentage of the time whereas the other so theres a timebased approach and then the geographic approach is much of what was tried in this concept where the military identified what they call the cooperative Planning Areas where theyve deemed that they are going to use the systems for training and a different geographical areas that they will have to coordinate to make use of the system so theres a lot of ideas around how we can do this to make this work but i would add given the power levels we are talking about, hundreds of megawatts its difficult to find a technology that would allow that to work so i think you need to start looking at other ways of sharing to bring that to fruition. To answer that same connection between spec demand supply or diversity and then we can begin to circle back to what do we do about it . Its very important and as we look at the opportunities with having an auction and making the spectrum available as a reason for the carrier to go out to their sites and upgrade their equipment so they kind of work in tandem as the Technology Evolves and new spectrum becomes available we can take advantage of that. So that allows us to reduce cost and deploy much faster. I think it is very similar to us. Weve had a long discussion for going on years now about how to diverse apply the talks on the supply chains and reinvigorate the u. S. Manufacturing of the telecommunications products. In order for those businesses to thrive they are looking for deployment. We talked to a lot of companies and so to see that deployment it really requires entities like the National Carriers who ultimately deploy some of that equipment and the reality of the situation is theres only two reasons its either because you are refreshing the equipment to do that to the Lifecycle Management or putting new capabilities online so you might be out there deploying new radios that requires spectrum so it basically becomes kind of the reason why you would be out deploying to make new radios that relates to when would you see the deployment of things like this at any kind of scale so they do go handinhandin massive push much less money its not just chump change and enormous diplomatic and political efforts to push the suppliers and advances the diversity. In your view do you think we can get to where the u. S. Government wants to get on trusted suppliers and without more spectrum that is commercially licensed and harmonized with other countries . Theres two reasons to do that, refresh or additional capabilities. At the end of the day if you dont see these in the u. S. Theres got to be investments. We have to prove the technology. It was to break out the issues around vendors into there were still things that need to be done. Youve got to have a reason to do that if you want to see the scale deployments theres got to be additional spectrum online so they have a reason to go out and deploy that the scale. We have been. What we do is we advocate to policymakers on things to help bring to scale its the top way to get them to happen at a quicker pace. We were very forward thinking. They are doing Amazing Things on this space and its imperative on this. With the world radio conference china is supporting harmonization. The United States is supporting 80 less, so china is going to dubai with a pretty aggressive effort to align the world on its preference spectrum. Are you concerned that that will create something of a spectrum island as some people put it and the globally harmonized bands will kind of carry the day with where the standardsetting goes and the suppliers build and tell us on the technical side and the policy side how about plays out . I appreciate and understand the perspective of the department of defense they have National Security systems in the van and if you look at the state to play on the spectrum allocations i can certainly understand why the u. S. Government and in particular the dod would be concerned about how that plays out but as was mentioned earlier, this shouldnt be a zerosum game. It shouldnt be us versus them so i think what you have to do is theres spectrum out there thats being advocated for that china is going to put on the table and then theres a portion of the spectrum thats also harmonized with existing bands so understanding that theres spectrum out there that cant be reallocated without disrupting National Security operations is something that i believe we have to offer but when we do that we need to do it in a mindful manner that does not put the United States at a National Security disadvantage visavis china and other military capabilities. I appreciate that but i come from the point of view that we can and must do both because Economic Security is equally as important as National Security. Going back to the same thing that we mentioned earlier if youre going to build a product if you are a vendor trying to build a solution you can use around the world to achieve the scale we dont have the harmonized spectrum bands then the vendors are going to be stuck with a mission to build the products for europe and asia and how does that work and can they achieve the kind of scale necessary, so to me both the availability end of the harmonization is critical to the supply chain because if the u. S. Wants to revitalize like the Manufacturing Base in telecom then there has to be an understanding. With the dod and the sales office and in particular the secretary of Defenses Office in the past collaborated very closely and now we are looking at the low gigahertz and its those partnerships where we are all sitting at the table and have honest and frank discussions where we realize theres a lot of commonality involved and we can create those solutions. You think its possible, not just we can come together and work this out . Not a pollyanna no kind of view of things . We have an existing framework in the spectrum that has been active in 2003 is a fantastic way of creating this Virtuous Cycle if there is a band that is identified for commercial use there are federal incumbents in that and a portion of the auction can go to upgrade their systems. They have to still be comparable but they give the money and they are not impacted on the appropriations side. Thats worked brilliantly in the past and we think we can extend that Going Forward about we need to the authority back from congress. John mentioned and i will tease that out a little bit john mentioned the acronym the americanmade band innovation team. And tia and others to figure out a way to reallocate that spectrum so wireless carriers can operate in a manner that will not diminish the utility and others that youre looking for and when you start putting draconian conditions on spectrum bands where youve got to reduce your power, and minimize where you can deploy geographically, that creates problems from a deployment perspective and youre also disenfranchising many other users access to this. In some case its urban and low environment that are impacted. So the process took a pragmatic approach of looking at i believe its 34 areas across the country. Identify the types of operations in those areas for this particular band and crafted rules around how industry would gain access in those 34 areas. Outside of those areas youve got awful Market Access on a partial economic area called peas and that auction took place. We participated as well as at t and we were able to find good markets we can deploy spectrum and we are in the process of deploying today so despite the challenges we have with the ambit process and trying to coordinate that thats going to continue to be a work in progress. I was taking it back to the work we did during aws three where it took time to work with the department of defense but over time we were able to get into areas where we once were foreclosed access. Its going to involve a continued dialogue. We need to start thinking of that type of of how we can make the rest to that type of thing will make a to make that spectrum available when we start looking at what were trying to share with and i cant stress that enough. Were being asked to share hundreds of megawatts of power that come out of rail systems. We transmit in kilowatts. Kilowatts is what the industries trying to dvd from our side is great but only to find out where getting massive interference in our direction is not going to do the process well i said we need a different approach and the past process figure out how we can look at both sides. The past process was something set up. Its a partnership to advance holistic spectrum sharing in from 3. 123. 45 so as part of that process its only looking dod assets. So we think going through that process, its been a great collaboration with dod, the Defense Industrial base. Academia as well as the Wireless Industry in trying to find a way when youre locally looking at interference one way not interference back towards wireless in, it creates a false narrative that somehow this is going to be able to work when reality is the interference coming back to industry is not going to make a viable situation longterm. Your suggestion is participating. I know everyone is eager to make sharing the work. But we shouldnt take a square peg and try to pound it in a raw round hole when sharing will not work so if you provesharing will not work cochair perspective , were using the spectrum at the same channel the same time. If you proven that cannot work then what do we do with that situation. You have to change it in an accurate way in what spectrum week means. Were studying 123. 5 organizations, bad 77 starts at 300 megahertz so why not offer up 3302 3450 to be part of bad 77 and then recognize its below 3300 down to 3100 should be reserved for dod operations which by the way is not globally harmonized from a 3g perspective so i think theres a way to figure out how we can share this and move forward by protecting National Security equities as well as industryinterests. Is anybody optimistic about when opportunities like that . Ill just leave it at that. Does anybody hopeful about the possibilities that will be from that priority. I think as far as i know the reports that we released in february and august i dont think that there were any surprises. Maybe there were challenges in the lower three gigahertz band. In airborne Radar Systems which have a lower impact area. Hundreds of kilometers. Very difficult to share, if not impossible so i think the support will highlight that and that may be the opportunity to approach this partitioning idea. Still making 3. 123. One available. What hopefully we can get 150 megahertz there spectrum for full power. How would that be done. You mentioned technological solutions, would it be through better efficiency and repacking or how does that show up . How do you make more spectrum out of this finite resource . A lot of our technology involves dod. Theyre already working on the next generation Radar Systems. This could be an opportunity to accelerate that deployment. But also to have greater systems so that when their training here in the United States they reduce frequency that wont impact artificial operations knowing that when they deployed abroad they will have that full range. I would add theyre doing it today. As we said, these systems have the capability to change throughout a very large lot of spectrum. So when we operate we as the military operate in our allied countries. Who by the way have already made a good amount ofthat spectrum available for 5g. Us military has to find a way not to interfere with those overseas 5g networks. So they have the tuning capability already in place today in many of those systems to effectuate that. With respect to the report i would say from the onset, this is a onesided study. This is studying Industry Impact at dod operations to ensure dod does not lose any critical capability. Itsnot looking at it the other way. What weve been trying to do is go out and be pragmatic. Take data on measurements of some of these military systems and share that, introduce that into the process and weve done a number of studies on this. Shared one report already with past members and we have another one that just came out. We will be making that available as well to the group to hopefully impart another perspective on how we can move forward toshare a portion of that and. I love your take on this too. Put that in the category of impact zero some because i could see dods take on that would be okay, how can we frame making more spectrum available for those uses as moving beyond zero some. Is there a way to square that circle . I think there is looking at how we operate today as the military when we are in nato countries and other allied countries and how we have to truncate some of our operations to accommodate that post nation so we do that and i think we can do that here in the us as well. But i would submit to dod if the technology is not today which is isnt, in place that can prove with hundreds of megawatt Radar Systems and still coexist. If that is not available today then we need to figure out a way how to make that work and the way to do that is not cochannel sharing but adjacent chain sharing, they get a portion of the spectrum, we get a smaller portion and careful densities continue to move on without any loss of critical impact. Chris, anything to add. I guess would say that for the whole industry we dont want to see dod losecritical capability. No one is asking that basic lose functionality. The question is how do we balance out the use of dod with the industry. Were seeing Wireless Networks are continuing to grow everybodys using wireless. And so the need for more spectrum is apparent so my biggest concern with the report is that we can not to be pessimistic but we admire the problem so we havent talked about this on the panel but in order to bring spectrum online to take a number of years to study the bad, but through fcc auctions, have to study the band, so going from where we are to issuing a report to actually getting to the new spectrum aligned options in a number of years so do more reports to get to something so the optimistic view would be that we could come out with the process and move the Industry Forward but i think its going to take some leadership on the industry side tried to square those issues and move us through about this issue in a place wheresomething actually happened. To just make this practical policymaking discussion you had it up and ciaa after having spent a lot of time on the House Intelligence Committee. You know what its like to be the one person in government in a room often at the National Security council that meeting. And youre surrounded with all whole bunch of three Letter Agency representatives , many in uniform, i see Michael Daniels out in the audience. I was in rooms with him like this quite a bit. Tell the what its like when youre talking about an issue that is straddles the commercial and traditional security. And how those discussions play out. Is it possible in this environment to create a winwin situation or are the commercial interests going to be seeing as just that. Commercial interests subordinate to National Security. Paint a picture for how that works in our government. So my time in the administration i would say that commerce was not seen as agency found that you are probably on the back bench question in the administration who are you. Maybe they weremore knowledgeable on some of the issues. But i think a couple of things to point out is educational leadership. Maybe at the staff level are knowledgeable on the issues but when you go up higher in the ranks on officials that was quite often a big breakdown in the conversation that we had is lack of education, lack of understanding and then when youre hearing across the conversation about planes falling out of the sky and people just kind of stopped. They dont want to do anything because they dont want to be the one to make the decision and have some catastrophe happened so thats been a big issue is lack of education. I will think and tia is in the scheme of things saw the agency which in this government positions matter. People around the world the department of communications is also his top Tier Organization but in tia is a sub agency went so when youre sitting around the table in an assistant secretary that doesnt help matters. Theyll go get something higher up in the organization to kind of have their secretary call your secretary. So i think there are a lot of things that can happen to change not only the tone of the conversation but the process. Something, then commented on his part is the process broken or are people not following the process but i often say this, its not to sound like pollyanna but there is a sweet spot and we have to figure out how we come together because it is imperative to the leadership of the United States. One of the lines we have in one of our papers is that if considerable world in which theirs up while way or ticktock equivalent china based National Champion in every sector of the economy. Which i think is certainly a distinct possibility if china leads the 5g economy in the coming decade. Or theres no weapons system or Technology Band or Mitigation Strategy that could secure us interests in that setting. Do you think that statement is alarmist or overstated or is that what were looking at in the future where china uses spectrum, the spectrum advantage to secure a market advantage in the supply chain . I will say ive recently become aware china is now gaining to acquire low local maps and while way has been there for a long time and through United States and allied countries that weve made good work discussing the security imperative of moving off for an adversary in your network and now theyre moving to acquire spectrum and when you look at that game again, when you get into an uncomfortable place in this conversation because onlythen will we come together in order to figure out how to solve some of these problems. I think weve already seen some of that happened so chinas belt and road initiative, theyve mixed been making offers people cant refuse. Gaining access to criminal minerals. So theres no reason to think they wouldnt try the same tactics when it comes to spectrum whether theyre going to lead on 5g for 64 those types of things i dont know thats a way to prevent that from happening and proactively have to strategy tomorrow. Thats what we were talking earlier about 23 and other things, those are opportunities for the us to continue to show leadership and the chair was talking about this, the leadership weve shown in the past, if we can show that leadership proactively thats our best opportunity. Anything to add to that . Domestically this administration is working diligently on developing a National Spectrum strategy as they plan to release leader bashir followed up with an implementation planso the good news is the work is already underway. And tia is very busy meeting with federal agencies on a daily basis to come up with a strategy and once we do that, there has to be some sort of pipeline for spectrum Going Forward so we would hope once the strategy is released we can come up with a pipeline bill that identifies this timetable so that the industry can plan ahead and develop a roadmap to deploy these new bands and technologies so im optimistic about this one. I think its something thats implicit that we need to make it exquisite, none of this happens without them being able to auction more self i just want to even that way with more. A skeptic might say that carriers have several more years not just of spectrum but youve already deployed, where not even talking about nurturing. Were talking about 3 to 5 years from now, why do you need a pipeline now and thats a business question thats certainly above my capabilities so id love to hear from your perspective about the planning process and what the Company Needs to deploy 3 to 5 years from now, why do you need spectrum now . It takes several years to make broadband available so you have to start early and develop this roadmap in a timetable. I think back to the most recent spectrum auction. In a Perfect World government would have made it available for millimeterwave. The idea of a see band providing higher frequencies. But its not a Perfect World so we made the best of it. Thats why its so important to focus on 6g because thats where the growth is going to be. We can supplement it with higher band frequencies but as the chairwoman said we need to focus. Whats the timetable, are we talking about 20 years from now, three years from now, whats the ballpark. I think our network team would say we have a good mix of spectrum assets right now but 3 to 5 years from now we will start approaching spectrum and were already deploying technology that to the boundaries as shannon said that we can carry. Were already exploring cell sites and using small cells. Deployment millimeterwave spectrum in high traffic areas like stadiums and arenas. And in denser urban areas. We will need to refresh likewise and honestly having legislation that codifiesthat , nothing focuses the mind like a deadline so having the deadline really does help get all the folks on the samepage. Chris, john. Its also about the technology so with 4g, with 5g were doing 50 megahertz channels, 60 are talking about 100 megahertz channels so the next evolution of technology requires more bandwidth so we have to keep that in mind as well. Another thing with the use cases, use cases drive a lot of the spectrum utilization so the things that the consumers are demanding how we can deploy that, some of the automation aspects and use cases the chairwoman talked about. So every next generation is going to demand more spectrum. I think its also important to understand that from his jury almost every generation from 1g to 2g to 4g its about 10 year increments on average. But i think what youre seeing here is where going to see an advance of 60 more so than what we saw from 4g to 5g and were starting to see that in perspective were probably about threeyears into our five g deployments. So if 60 is going to advance it will require 100 megahertz channels and in very use cases are going to come along and start planning now and once you deploy that spectrum you can start looking at legacy bands andhow to supplement that Going Forward. Anything to add on it pipeline . It just takes a number of years to bring from online not only in terms of the study and making it available and you also have to have that product built to meet those requirements so theres time for everyone in the industry to conquer. So if you look at historically the auctions youve seen it takes several years for all those things to come together so theyre thinking were going to need additional structures tend to five years from now but understanding what that spectrum is going to be, its critical to do that now. We have five minutes left and i want to leave a couple more minutes if there are burning questions from the audiencebut i wanted to ask one final question. China mentioned technological evolutions. Not looking for mega moonshot here but how do we get out of this zerosum game. Thats the moonshot were looking at but from that you can make a lot of process with marginal innovation. Can you talk about what the chairwoman mentioned a couple of things. She mentioned interests and ideas about building receiver efficiency in federal procurement. Are there any other technological evolutions that are, if youve got a moonshot please lay it out there but you think it would actually create, would allow us to make more spectrum out of what we have. Theres one provision in the booktv. Org, National Defense authorization act about making money available to study more dynamic Spectrum Technologies and i think thats critically important. If were going to advance this notion of sharing as i said the things that were talking about today, the sheriff exists today so its critically important that not only dod get the resources they need to advance spectrum sharing for their own internal use also partner with industry to figure out how we can come together and come up with a sharing regime that will advance this vision down the road having the ability to dynamically Share Technology without causing harmful interference to each others operation so im encouraged by the provision in the ndaa and hopefully that will get past but hopefully we can make that happen. Theres a spot where you could say that would be progress and we as an administration should embrace that. May be incrementally it can be updating the federal government management spectrum, the government master file. Its decadesold. Its not automated. Its updating that and giving them modern capabilities. Its not moving the shots, its incremental but itsvery important. We dont have the policies in place for spectrum sharing. With a high coming on line we talk about receivership standards. Possibly start sharing broadband and again, ill always put a plug in for elevating ntia. Kristin any thoughts dont call it a moonshot. Youre right in a sense that there are a lot of technologies in the process and bringing some of that to reality to actually work with help push this issue forward and has to be done but i wouldnt call it a moon shot. Im suggesting the moon shot would be actually getting past the zerosum game. Its possibly incremental approaches. So i think we will close with this. Where has industry and government collaboration been successful on spectrum issues so far . Lets close with that. Lets give a positive story to end on. I would say a shift that things have changed really was the working group process established during the aws three effort in the round of 2013, 2015 time frame. That was an opportunity for industry and government to come together and find out ways how we were able to share that spectrum, protect dod equities at the same time and allow industry to hold some access on a national scale. I thoughtthat process worked very well. At the time that was the highest roast auction in us history. I believe it was 43 billion it netted the treasury. So we do have examples of how sharing can work and the reason that was able to work was because of the systems that were in the band. Those systems are not hundreds of megawatts systems. There much more Tactical Systems at a lower power scale that we were able to facilitate the sharing regime that worked well for everyone involved. We have past precedent and its a very good question because you need to take what works and figure out and move that forward despitesome of the technological challenges we are facing. The only thing i would add is that the only way we can solve this is by partnering with the federal agencies, understanding their systems needs. Us sharing is a great example of this with aws three where we were able to share frequencies. About a variety of securiy issues and how can we deal with that. We had the same thing happen on broad National Security so i have no reason to believe it would be any different in this case. We ought to be able to sit down to understand what their concerns are and work toward some solution. That might be pollyanna ish to some degree but we have the history of doing that so i dont see why we can to solve the problems on those particulars as well. And i would close saying u. S. Congress understood that they were not in the business of running networks so they contracted with at t and i think they should look at further opportunities with u. S. Carriers and others to help collaborate and coexist more than just seeing it as we do our thing you do your thing. Thank you all. Thats a very positive way to close this out and with that collaboration in mind, to harken back to the history we won world war ii but largely because the industrial capabilities collaborated with the military capabilities into the same thing happened it in different ways in the cold war era. I think our strength isnt just commercial strength or military intelligence capabilities. Its a unique combination of the two, so thats what we are going to try to do in these papers with of the paper coming out in the next couple of weeks laying out some concrete recommendations about how we play to our strengths pleural, commercial and defense. Thank you all for being here and again to csis for hosting this great discussion and look forward to continuing it. Thanks. [applause] on twitter, cspanwj. Welcome