Wireless technologies connect our nation, power the economy, and reshape critical public services, and they will do so even more in the years to come. These essential tools are leveraged across industries and functions, from manufacturing and agriculture to media and education.
Radio waves, otherwise known as “spectrum,” make wireless technology possible. As demand for innovative wireless services has accelerated, the spectrum environment has become increasingly contested and constrained. At the same time, spectrum stakeholder policy disputes have amplified.
Over the past several decades, the US has been the international leader by developing new, bi-partisan spectrum policies to meet increasing commercial demand. Despite tremendous progress in the last three decades, the country once again finds itself with a need to meet the demands of new innovative technologies and services.
In 2022, Aspen Digital convened government as well as public- and private-sector leaders to address this need, leading to a report that helped to frame the discussion for the Department of Commerce’s National Spectrum Strategy, issued in 2023. In July 2024, we again convened a working session on spectrum policy to build on the achievements of that work and forge new opportunities in policy leadership.
Implementing the National Spectrum Strategy captures this latest round of cross-sector collaboration to make recommendations for a principled and science-based US spectrum policy.
The report offers five broad recommendations, focused on priorities, values and perspectives, access, coordination, and transparency. We hope these action steps will prove valuable to bipartisan policymakers and lawmakers in the effort to support commercial and governmental spectrum needs, now and in the future.
