The Government Accountability Office has issued a report calling on the Federal Communications Commission and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration to take steps to ensure improvements to radio signal receiver devices, thereby enhancing the use of the radio frequency spectrum in the U.S.
The GAO said in a report released Thursday that in 2023, the FCC had established spectrum management principles that, among other things, put forward policy and technical considerations that called for non-federal receivers to be designed so that they could reduce interference from signals transmitted in adjacent and nearby spectrum bands.
By having more robust receivers, different services would be able to operate closer together, thereby promoting spectrum efficiency.
The report noted that in implementing the spectrum management principles, the FCC had failed to apply key practices, namely identifying measurable goals related to those principles, strategies to achieve those goals and barriers preventing them. The report recommended that the FCC apply these practices to provide better guidance to those working to improve non-federal receiver performance.
The GAO also reported that the NTIA collects information regarding the performance of federal receivers but while it is sufficient for preventing harmful interference, it is not enough to provide insights regarding other aspects of receiver performance.
The GAO called on the NTIA to evaluate its current sources of information and identify and collect additional data as needed.