Spectrum license exclusivity must go: Mozilla advisor

In order to achieve better spectrum sovereignty for Indigenous communities in Canada, the government has to scrap the guarantee of exclusivity from existing spectrum licenses, so regulators can reassign unused bands, according to one policy advisor. “This is a profound and fundamental thing, because spectrum licenses, especially the ones that go at auction offer, as a general rule, exclusivity throughout the entire country,” policy advisor with Mozilla Corporation Steve Song said Tuesday at a panel event. The panel, hosted by the Internet Society (ISOC), discussed spectrum and Indigenous connectivity, after the Department of Innovation, Science, and Economic Development (ISED) issued consultation documents on spectrum policy aimed at freeing up the resource to rural Canada. The three consultation documents concern the creation of a new regime for licensing unused spectrum, “reintroducing and increasing” deployment requirements for cellular service, and updates to the licensing framework for satellites. “The idea here is that spectrum is a natural resource, it's not something that the Internet service providers are creating … and it's not just telecom, that we can use spectrum for. This is the same as the government putting up solar panels over all tribal lands and taking all of that sunlight, and then selling it and keeping the money,” said Indigenous law & policy fellow at the University of Arizona, Darrah Blackwater, arguing that Indigenous communities should have ownership over their own spectrum. “There's a much bigger picture here that I think needs to be addressed and discussed as we have these conversations about consultation and what this management should look like in the future.” Song said that now is the right time for Indigenous communities to elevate their advocacy. In the last couple of years the price of access technologies like LTE and 5G have dramatically decreased while manufacturers producing low cost equipment have increased, and regulators are realizing that exclusive licenses are largely leaving spectrum fallow in rural areas. Song said that there have been successful attempts around the world to improve spectrum sovereignty. In Mexico, lobbyists successfully got the government to set aside spectrum for Indigenous communities specifically for access in underserved areas. In the U.S., there’s what Song called an innovative tiered access approach, where the primary exclusive spectrum holder is the military which auctions some of it and keeps a piece for general access. In the U.K., which the Canadian consultation is based on, two licenses were created -- one for where spectrum has been licensed but is not being used and one for micro licenses for parts of LTE or 5G bands that are unassigned. “In order to introduce these two new kinds of licenses… ISED has to do one really fundamental thing that the incumbents are probably not going to like very much, and that thing has to change the nature of existing exclusive spectrum licenses,” Song said. In Mexico and the U.S., there is no guarantee of exclusivity but rather a guarantee of non-interference, according to Song, who said that change can allow regulators to reserve the right to issue spectrum to whom they see fit if it's not being used. Based on what happened in the U.K. there’s concern that the policies aren’t geared toward community networks or cooperatives and that it centers around private LTE networks, Song said. Civil society input is important, he added, to ensure that community networks don’t face barriers when applying or paying for spectrum. “Those are the details we want to focus on and I think, for instance for Indigenous communities there's an easy ask there to say 'there should be no fees here.'” OpenMedia’s executive director Laura Tribe also criticized ISED’s consultation process, arguing that the narrative around spectrum is “completely dictated” by Canada’s big telecom companies are rarely reported on in the general media unless it regards the amount of dollars the government has made from from spectrum auctions or high consumer prices. “The fact that is a public resource, the conversations around it are really actually quite closed. And when they do get opened up to the public they're not framed in a way that's actually asking the public to participate… it’s framed in a way that only those that already know the answers can participate,” she said Tribe added that Indigenous broadcasting and telecom stakeholders are often not told about consultations or asked to participate. “Time after time after time, at best, they're an afterthought,” she said. “And even when they are , they're not given the same power or credibility as well-known well-resourced companies who define themselves as the experts because they hold all the information and they refuse to share it.” -- Reporting by Jenna Cocullo at jcocullo@thewirereport.ca and editing byMichael Lee-Murphyat mleemurphy@thewirereport.ca.

Spectrum license exclusivity must go: Mozilla advisor

News | 09/21/2021 6:36 pm EDT

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