The report by the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) responds to the policy challenges and technological opportunities that have arisen in the past two years since President Obama issued his Memorandum requiring that the Federal Government make available 500 MHz of Federal or non-federal spectrum for both mobile and fixed wireless broadband use by commercial users within 10 years. The report concludes that the traditional practice of clearing government-held spectrum of Federal users and auctioning it for commercial use is not sustainable. In light of changes made possible by modern technology, it recommends that U.S. policy emphasize sharing of underutilized spectrum to the maximum extent consistent with the Federal mission and that 1,000 megahertz of additional Federal spectrum be identified in which to implement shared-use spectrum pilot projects. The PCAST report, which was informed by the deliberations of PCAST members and prominent spectrum experts from the public and private sectors, identifies actions that should be taken to implement a new “dynamic sharing” model that makes spectrum sharing by Federal users the norm, and also allows sharing with multiple users, under a wide range of conditions, without infringing on each other’s services. The report is available at http://www.whitehouse.gov/administration/eop/ostp/pcast/docsreports. I will present the most important components of this report.
Speaker Bio:
Mark Gorenberg is a Managing Director of Hummer Winblad Venture Partners. In 2011, Mark was appointed by President Barack Obama to the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST), a 21-person advisory group of the nation’s leading scientists and engineers (www.whitehouse.gov/ostp/pcast). Mark is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Corporation, a member of the Steering Committee of Deshpande Center for Technological Innovation at MIT, the Leadership Board of the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT, the Technology Advisory Committee of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), and the Board of the H. John Heinz III Center for Science, Economics, and the Environment. In 2012, Mark also became a Director of the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA). Mark received a B.S.E.E. from MIT, an M.S.E.E. from the University of Minnesota, and an M.S. in Engineering Management from Stanford University.