NTIA Blog

This post is part of our “Spotlight on NTIA” blog series, which is highlighting the work that NTIA employees are doing to advance NTIA’s mission of promoting broadband adoption, finding spectrum to meet the growing demand for wireless technologies, and ensuring the Internet remains an engine for innovation and economic growth.

Bart Gibbon is not your average NTIA employee. He is one of a handful of employees at a remote site many NTIA employees might not have heard of before.

Gibbon is an information technology engineer at NTIA’s remote site operations in Gettysburg, Pa., where he has worked since he joined the agency in 2005. He spends his days in a different setting than the typical NTIA employee, but he says his work in the information technology department is just like that of any IT engineer. Up until two months ago, Gibbon was the sole IT employee at the Gettysburg office.

Day-to-day, Gibbon works on maintaining and enhancing the site’s capabilities by applying patches and updates to the servers and assists in responding to help desk tickets. Even though he is not in NTIA’s main Washington office, he says he spends most of his time on the phone with other NTIA employees. He also travels to the main office for meetings about every other month. 

First responders know the deadly consequences of not having a communications network that is reliable and interoperable, a problem highlighted during the September 2001 terrorist attacks and Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy.  

The U.S. Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) is working to ensure our nation’s first responders have access to the most advanced communications when responding to an emergency or natural disaster.

NTIA is working closely with the First Responder Network Authority (FirstNet), an independent authority within the agency, as it works towards creating a nationwide public safety broadband network. In support of that effort, NTIA also is working to ensure states are prepared to take full advantage of this network once it is deployed.

NTIA awarded $116 million in grants to 54 states and territories to help plan for the broadband network that FirstNet will deploy. The State and Local Implementation Grant Program (SLIGP) is helping states prepare for the development and implementation of a more resilient broadband network, which will enable first responders to communicate efficiently and, consequently, save lives.

To support the Administration’s commitment to making available an additional 500 MHz of spectrum for commercial use by 2020, NTIA continues to perform and publish technical studies in bands proposed for sharing. In collaboration with a wireless technology provider, earlier this year NTIA performed ground-breaking interference-effects testing between radar signals and broadband digital communication receivers in the 3550–3650 MHz band. NTIA released two reports today that describe these measurements and analyses.

NTIA Technical Report TR-14-506, co-authored by Geoffrey A. Sanders, John E. Carroll, and Frank H. Sanders of NTIA’s Institute for Telecommunication Sciences in Boulder, Colorado, and Robert L. Sole of NTIA’s Office of Spectrum Management, presents the results of measurements and analyses of the effects of radar interference on prototype LTE equipment. NTIA Technical Report TR-14-507, co-authored by Frank H. Sanders, John E. Carroll, Geoffrey A. Sanders, Robert J. Achatz, and Robert L. Sole of NTIA and Lawrence S. Cohen of the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, presents the results of measurements and analyses of the effects of LTE interference on a type of radar receiver that might eventually share spectrum with such systems.

Access to high-speed Internet has become a necessity for communities and businesses, and the latest data from the National Broadband Map shows that broadband continues to be available to more Americans than ever.

Broadband drives economic growth and innovation – including advances in health care, education, and public safety. Since its launch in 2011, the National Broadband Map has been helping businesses and consumers access broadband by detailing where and what types of high-speed Internet services are available in their communities.

Considering wireline and wireless technologies together, the slowest broadband speeds are nearly ubiquitously available, and access to very fast broadband (over 100 Mbps) has now reached two-thirds of Americans. The data, as of December 31, 2013, shows that 99 percent of Americans have access to wired and/or wireless broadband at advertised speeds of 6 Mbps downstream and 1.5 Mbps up, though this number drops to 89 percent when considering wireline broadband alone.

Building on Administration efforts to make more spectrum available for commercial mobile broadband, NTIA and the Federal Communications Commission’s Office of Engineering and Technology (OET) today issued a Joint Public Notice seeking comment on the possibility of establishing a “Model City” for demonstrating and evaluating advanced spectrum sharing technologies.

America’s future competitiveness, national security, and global technology leadership depend on access to radio spectrum – the lifeblood of smartphones, tablets, and critical federal government systems. Because spectrum is a finite resource, federal agencies and commercial entities together must explore new spectrum-sharing opportunities to meet the exploding demand.

This post is part of our “Spotlight on NTIA” blog series, which is highlighting the work that NTIA employees are doing to advance NTIA’s mission of promoting broadband adoption, finding spectrum to meet the growing demand for wireless technologies, and ensuring the Internet remains an engine for innovation and economic growth.

Isha Carry has spent her entire career at the Commerce Department, but one could hardly accuse her of being complacent. Carry began working at Commerce at age 16 in the U.S. Travel and Tourism Administration. In her 22 years with the department, she has held several positions with many different responsibilities. Her experience ranges from serving as program assistant at the International Trade Administration (ITA) to IT specialist in the Office of the Secretary.

Carry currently works in NTIA’s Office of Policy Coordination and Management (OPCM).  She uses her varied skills and experience to fill several roles for OPCM, and is often considered the “go-to” person to get things done. Her day could range from dealing with property management and FirstNet’s move to new workspace to production of NTIA’s Congressional budget submission. Carry is looking forward to expanding her role in the development and implementation of NTIA’s budget in the upcoming fiscal year.

Three years ago this month, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) endorsed a set of principles that encouraged its members to implement policies that call for a common approach to Internet policymaking that center on ensuring the openness of the Internet. The Internet Policymaking Principles (IPPs) include many of the same principles the United States has long advocated in its approach to Internet policymaking, standards and governance including calls to ensure the openness of the Internet, protect and promote the free flow of information on the Internet, and use of the multistakeholder approach to tackle Internet policy challenges.

In celebration of the three-year anniversary of the IPPs, today I met in Paris with a number of foreign government representatives and other stakeholders to discuss ways we can continue to advance the goals outlined in the OECD’s IPPs and the joint challenges we face. These principles, which were inspired by Internet principles adopted by Brazil, were developed in 2011 as OECD members sought ways to spur economic growth as well as respond to threats to online freedom worldwide and advance a more inclusive approach to Internet policy development.

The Internet has been an engine for global economic growth, innovation and societal change for more than two decades. It has torn down walls between countries in an unprecedented way and is an important tool for the free exchange of ideas.

NTIA today released the Fourth Interim Progress Report on the Obama Administration’s initiative to identify and make available 500 megahertz of federal and non-federal spectrum for commercial wireless broadband use by 2020. This report also includes a plan for federal agencies to conduct quantitative assessments of their actual spectrum usage in 960 megahertz of additional spectrum, as directed in President Obama’s June 2013 Memorandum.

America’s future competitiveness and global technology leadership depend on access to radio spectrum – the lifeblood of smartphones, tablets, and other data-hungry wireless devices.  That is why President Obama’s June 2010 Memorandum set a bold goal of nearly doubling the amount of spectrum available for commercial use by the end of this decade. Between October 2010 and September 2013, NTIA formally recommended or otherwise identified for potential reallocation up to 405 megahertz of spectrum.

With the start of summer comes the beginning of the hurricane season along much of the U.S. coast.  And with hurricanes comes the increased possibility that communications could be disrupted.

Less than two years ago, Hurricane Sandy left a trail of death and destruction including disrupted communications for millions of people and thousands of businesses along the East Coast. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has reported that about a quarter of cell sites across 10 states and the District of Columbia were knocked out of service during the peak of the storm.

As the Executive Branch agency primarily responsible for advising the President on telecommunications and information issues, the U.S. Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) has been working with other federal agencies to help Americans remain connected in the wake of natural disasters or other emergencies.

Today NTIA is hosting the first of several workshops focused on community broadband as we explore ways to build on the momentum of our successful broadband grant programs and look at what comes next.

The 2009 Recovery Act included more than $7 billion to expand access to high-speed Internet services to close the digital divide and spark economic growth. Through our Broadband Technology Opportunities Program, NTIA invested about $4 billion of that in 230 projects across the country that have built critical network infrastructure, opened or upgraded public computer centers and established broadband adoption programs. And through our State Broadband Initiative Program, we invested another almost $300 million to help states collect broadband data for the National Broadband Map and expand their statewide broadband capacity.

Today, these investments are enabling one-to-one computing programs and replacing old-fashioned textbooks with engaging online instructional materials in North Carolina classrooms. They are allowing Arkansas physicians to remotely examine patients located hundreds of miles away in far-flung rural corners of the state. They are supporting digital literacy training in low-income Latino communities across California. And they are bringing 4G LTE wireless broadband service to parts of the Navajo Nation that previously lacked even basic landline phone service.