DoD relinquishes spectrum to sate wireless industry demands.

• Author: Magnuson, Stew

The military needs to train in the United States the way it fights overseas, but to do so requires the use of radio spectrum.

That never used to be a problem. The military had its exclusive reserved bands, and the TV stations, police and ham radio operators had theirs.

Then came the cellular phone.

The commercial wireless industry began to grow at leaps and bounds, and seemingly overnight, the airwaves were crowded.

"Military growth is increasing exponentially as well," said Frederick D. Moorefield Jr., director of spectrum policy and programs at the office of the Defense Department chief information officer. Unmanned aerial vehicles require spectrum for command and control and to transmit sensor data. Jet fighter cockpits and ground combat vehicle cabins are becoming more connected.

Weapon testing stateside requires more bandwidth, as does a new generation of radars that now must detect smaller targets at longer ranges, Moorefield said.

Not a day goes by when there isn't some kind of interference incident as the bands grow more crowded, he added.

"I can give you a whole list of interference incidents. Radars, wireless land devices, unlicensed interference problems. We get them every day," he said at a National Defense Industrial Association breakfast.

President Obama in 2010 asked the Federal Communications Commission and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration to Free up 500 megahertz of federal and non-federal spectrum by 2020 in order to make it available for fixed and mobile wireless communications. The Defense Department must now figure out how to share the airwaves. It's a tough technological challenge and a serious one. Radio interference can cause deadly accidents, Moorefield said.

"Historically, the DoD would have seen this as a threat. We see it as an opportunity. Not only to balance the need to support the economic goals of the country, but also to assure our national security needs are being met," Moorefield said.

The commercial wireless industry is asking the government for more spectrum. The explosion of mobile computing devices is fueling the demand.

Traffic levels are expected to keep rising. U.S. mobile data use doubled from 2012 to 2013 and will increase by 650 percent by 2018, according to trade group CT1A-The Wireless Association.

The average mobile connecting speed was 2.6 megabytes per second in 2012. That is expected to increase to 14.4 megabytes per second by 2017, the association statistics...