Saturday, February 22, 2014

DoD treats Spectrum as Territory

The U.S. Department of Defense released a spectrum strategy document on Thursday (press release, pdf). I’ll leave discerning what (if anything) is actually new in it to the Pentagon watchers.

I was struck by the implications of the language used: the DoD conceives of spectrum as a place. Given that military success often seems to be framed as controlling or denying territory, this is not an auspicious starting point for spectrum sharing – which is about wireless system coexistence in many intangible dimensions, rather than all-or-nothing control of territory.