Spectrum Archives

The answer: No one. That's because the Defense Department has neither a CIO nor an assistant secretary of Defense for networks and information integration (that job is slated for the junk heap as part of a grand money-saving reorganization scheme).

But that plan is going nowhere due to congressional opposition. One result is that there's no one around at a high level to fight for the 100 MHz of Defense spectrum that Lawrence Strickling, head of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration said yesterday he wants to transfer to commercial cellular companies in connection with the national broadband plan.

Strickling said he will work with Defense and other agencies to ensure they have the spectrum needed to perform critical missions, but somehow those missions seem far less important than the ability of every 12-year-old in America to stream Hannah Montana videos to their mobile phones.

Will Defense mount a defense of its spectrum? I can't even get an answer to that question -- a reflection of the CIO leadership vacuum.

In hyping President Obama's decision on Monday to allocate 500 MHz of very scarce spectrum for mobile wireless broadband services, his economic adviser Lawrence Summers said this amounted to the best use of spectrum currently used by federal agencies and TV broadcasters.

Summers told a packed crowd at The New America Foundation on Monday that commercial carriers can use this new spectrum to bring about a revolution in life as we know it, especially all the nifty stuff folks can do on their smart phones.

Since I have so far sat out the smart phone revolution, I decided I needed to find out what folks are doing on their gizmos that is so captivating that they tend to walk into light posts or me, rather than look where they are going as they amble down New Hampshire Ave.

I typed "10 most popular iPhone apps" into Google and came up with a list from Apple, which, if it marks the start of a revolution, is one I do not care to join.

Summers and the president also wanted us all to know America's economic future is tied to mobile broadband, an assertion hard to square with the Karate Road "battle action game," which tops Apple's most popular iPhone app list.

Karate Road comes from an outfit called Splax.net, and clicking on the game's URL took me to a website filled with kanji characters. This makes sense because a domain search shows Splax hangs out in Sakura, Japan, instead of a town like Zap, N.D., where the town's 213 residents could probably use a gig bolting together some iPhone apps.

The No. 2 iPhone app on the list is My Signature, described as "an easy tool to help you generate a personalized signature and use it in your email." It also hails from abroad, the University of Nottingham in the United Kingdom.

I can definitely live a rich and full life without either of the above -- or any of other top iPhone apps such as Zoltap: The Insulting Fortune Teller or Your Personal Tarot Card Reader -- but I wonder if the republic can afford taking away spectrum used by the Defense Department for command and control systems to support such silliness.

Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., floated what he considers a nifty idea to finance a nationwide public safety broadband network at a hearing on Thursday of the Subcommittee on Communications, Technology, and the Internet: auction off a mess of spectrum to raise the billions of dollars need to finance the building and operating of the broadband network.

But part of the spectrum Waxman wants to sell -- the 1675-1710 Megahertz band -- supports operation of systems equal in importance to cop and fire comms, the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to help forecast the weather and track oil slicks in the Gulf of Mexico.

Last time I checked it was real hard to retune the frequency of a satellite 22,000 miles in space.