Military expected to share airwaves as wireless market explodes.

• Author: Magnuson, Stew

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Wireless killer applications began with email, moved onto texting, then to web-surfing. Live video chat is expected to grow in popularity as 4G networks spread across the United States.

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Where will all the spectrum required to move the exploding amount of data over broadband wireless networks come from?

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As the Federal Communications Commission and the Department of Commerce begin a desperate search to free up airwaves, U.S. military officials concede that they are going to have to relinquish exclusive control over some of the frequency bands in which the services currently operate.

"Ultimately, we are going to have to share spectrum," said Steve Molina, director of the defense spectrum organization at the Defense Information Systems Agency.

It is an important issue because the armed services need to train the way they fight in the United States, he said. There are officials in the U.S. government who make decisions on where and how to use spectrum who don't have a good grasp of what the military needs.

"A lot of folks think we just use [military systems] abroad. That's not the case," Molina said at the Milcom conference here. "Important people don't understand how we use spectrum and why it's so important to the DoD. And that's our fault. We don't have the message out there."

The battle over airwave real estate is expected to grow more intense during the next few years.

The FCC last year released its National Broadband Plan in an attempt to get a handle on the problem of dwindling spectrum. In June, President Obama asked the National Telecommunications and Information Administration to free up 115 megahertz of spectrum that could be used by both government agencies and the commercial market. That is part of an overall push to free up 500 megahertz of new spectrum for the commercial market during the next 10 years. The NTIA, which is under the Commerce Department, is responsible for allocating spectrum to federal departments and agencies. The FCC controls commercial markets.

A few weeks after Molina spoke, the NTIA recommended that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Defense Department share or give up 115 megahertz of spectrum currently used for radars.

Col. Brian Jordan, director of the Air Force spectrum management office, predicts turf wars. There will be competition between the federal and non-federal users, and even competition among the federal...