To the Editor:
As chair of the National Educational Broadband Service Association, which represents the interests of Educational Broadband Service licensees and educators interested in EBS, I wanted to point out that there have been a number of other proposals submitted to the Federal Communications Commission for the currently unlicensed EBS spectrum other than the now-somewhat-dated 2008 proposal referenced in last month’s article “Ed. Groups Calling For FCC Action” (Oct. 26, 2016). For example, NEBSA was instrumental in bringing varied stakeholders together to submit a consensus proposal to the FCC in 2014.
We believe that our consensus proposal is a better framework than the 2008 proposal because it is both workable and equitable. It would make nearly 4,000 new station applications available for educators across the country, while limiting the number of new station applications that could be filed by existing EBS licensees.
Despite the implications of your article, what has happened with the EBS over the last decade is an important public-policy success—a public-private collaboration resulting in the robust deployment of formerly underutilized spectrum to bring advanced wireless services to millions of users and tremendous educational benefits to all levels of education, from early childhood to postsecondary and beyond.
Lynn Rejniak
Chair
National Educational Broadband Service Association
Reston, Va.
