Wireless 2020: Spectrum Crisis or Broadband Abundance?

You are invited to attend:

Wireless 2020: Spectrum Crisis or Broadband Abundance?

Microsoft Innovation & Policy Center | 901 K Street Northwest | Washington, DC 20001

As wireless data demand increases at dizzying rates, meeting that demand will necessarily require innovative policy choices that encourage innovation and investment. The outcomes of these choices will shape the future of the Internet and the economy.

Join us and our distinguished panel for a spirited and informative exchange of ideas about the future of Spectrum Policy in the United States.

Free Eventbrite registration required.  Please consider making a suggested donation of $5 or $10 to help support ISOC-DC.

The President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST)—an independent council of experts from industry and academia—concludes that the traditional practice of clearing and reallocating portions of the spectrum used by Federal agencies is not a sustainable model for spectrum policy. PCAST finds instead that the best way to increase capacity is to leverage new technologies that enable larger blocks of spectrum to be shared. One advantage of sharing is that it does not require licensed businesses and government entities to fully clear certain wavelengths already in use—a process that can be time consuming and expensive.

“The norm for spectrum use should be sharing, not exclusivity,” the new PCAST report concludes, noting that a new spectrum architecture and a corresponding shift in practices could multiply the effective capacity of the spectrum by a factor of 1,000. “Spectrum should be managed not by fragmenting it into ever more finely divided exclusive frequency assignments, but by specifying large frequency bands that can accommodate a wide variety of compatible uses.”

– FACT SHEET: Freeing up Spectrum for Wireless Broadband. The Executive Office of the President, July 20, 2012

Panelists:

Michael Calabrese – Director of the Wireless Future Project, New America Foundation’s Open Technology Institute.

Charla Rath – Vice President, Wireless Policy Development, Verizon

Preston F. Marshall, Ph.D. – Spectrum Access Technology, Google

Moderator:

Afzal Bari, Senior Technology and Telecommunications Analyst, Bloomberg Government

With introductory remarks by:

Michael Nelson – Principal Technology Policy Strategist, Microsoft

Paula Boyd – Director, Government and Regulatory Affairs, Microsoft

Schedule

8:30 – 9:00 Networking and breakfast

9:00 –  9:45 Opening remarks and presentations by panelists

9:45 – 10:30 Q & A

Live webcast viewable at http://www.isoc-dc.org/isoc-dc-tv/

Panelists:

Michael Calabrese is the Director of the Wireless Future Project at the New America Foundation’s Open Technology Institute. He also serves as a senior research fellow affiliated with the Asset Building Program.  Mr. Calabrese focuses on developing policies that promote pervasive connectivity, including spectrum policy reform, mobile market competition, wireless broadband deployment and IT investment and innovation more broadly.

Mr. Calabrese currently serves as an appointed member of the U.S. Department of Commerce Spectrum Management Advisory Committee (CSMAC). He also served as an invited expert on the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) spectrum reform working group during 2011-2012.

Charla Rath is responsible for developing and managing Verizon’s public policy initiatives on a wide range of wireless issues including spectrum management and policy, spectrum auctions, secondary markets, 4G/LTE deployment and new business ventures.

Preston F. Marshall – Works at Google investigating new spectrum technology, including spectrum sharing; and new wireless network architectures that can exploit them.

Dr. Marshall’s research focus is advanced wireless systems.  Current research topics include wireless sensors, cognitive radio and networking, and the spectrum policy implications of emerging technology.  He has a particular focus on the problems of network scaling, dense wireless systems, the use of Dynamic Spectrum Access (DSA) to provide methods to address interference, front-end performance, and scaling in emerging dense wireless architectures, as well as decision and information theory application to distributed wireless networks.

Afzal Bari is a Senior Technology and Telecommunications Analyst with Bloomberg Government.  He spent five years as a strategy consultant at the Corporate Executive Board. He holds an MBA from Duke University, undergraduate degrees in information technology and government, and has completed all three levels of the Chartered Financial Analyst program.