U.S. Proposes Sharing Airwaves
Obama administration officials proposed requiring the Defense Department and other federal agencies to share a chunk of the airwaves they currently use with wireless companies after concluding it could be too expensive and time-consuming to move the federal agencies to other airwaves.
Commerce Department officials released a report Tuesday on a band of government airwaves long coveted by wireless carriers saying that while it would be possible to switch the block to commercial use, it could cost $18 billion and take a decade. Instead of moving federal agencies off of the airwaves and auctioning them off to wireless carriers, Commerce officials instead proposed that commercial and government users share them.
