Bringing Spectrum Sharing to a "Model City"

As we explore a bold new world of sharing spectrum across government and commercial users, National Telecommunications and Information Administration is continuing the conversation about how to make this vision a reality. NTIA and the Federal Communications held a two-day workshop focused on the Model City initiative, which would establish a pilot program in a major U.S. city or cities that will serve as a test bed to evaluate and demonstrate spectrum-sharing technology in a real-world urban environment. The project would be a public-private partnership launched with the support of NTIA, which manages federal uses of wireless spectrum, and the FCC, which regulates commercial use of the airwaves.

The Model City initiative will bring this exciting technology out of the labs and remote testing environments to prove its functionality and resiliency in the field with a broad cross-section of users, from local emergency responders to commercial wireless subscribers to federal officials. It will demonstrate how the new technology will perform in an actual metropolitan setting with all of its related challenges, such as urban canyons formed by tall buildings that impede propagation of wireless signals and dense populations that place serious constraints on network capacity. The Model City (or cities) will help us understand and define harmful interference, measure spectrum usage efficiencies and study propagation characteristics and waveforms. It will also serve as an urban “sandbox” to develop critical enforcement policies to ensure everyone plays by the rules.