Spectrum is with the military now.

Nearly four years after the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approved a license modification for the satellite communications company Ligado, the company’s dispute with the Department of Defense (DOD) and other national security agencies has spawned a $40 billion lawsuit and feels no closer to resolution.

For telecommunications insiders, the Ligado debacle has become a symbol of our inability to manage our airwaves efficiently. However, the most aggravating part of this years-long dispute is that it may have been avoided if federal experts had properly considered the national security value of commercial wireless technologies.

From walkie-talkies and baby monitors to state-of-the-art Wi-Fi and 5G, all wireless operations use radio waves to send information over the air. Generally speaking, radio waves oscillate at varying frequencies like any other wave. In the context of telecommunications, spectrum typically refers to the different frequency ranges that are available for use. The larger the range of frequencies available, the more data an operator can send.

With commercial use of radio spectrum becoming increasingly crucial for our national security, Congress and the Biden administration must head off current and future tensions between federal and non-federal radio operators. The first step toward preventing future Ligado debacles is putting the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) in the driver’s seat and abandoning worst-case thinking in favor of an approach that considers the national security value of commercial spectrum. After all, the determination of what is and is not in the interest of national security doesn’t reside exclusively in the DOD.

While the radio spectrum is theoretically infinite, the frequency bands that operators can legally use to transmit information wirelessly are limited. Further complicating matters, radio operations add noise to the radio environment, making it more difficult for a receiver to pick up the desired signal and filter out the noise. Radio operations can harmfully interfere with each other when that noise reduces the functionality of the affected system. To maximize the bandwidth available for new uses while protecting incumbents from harmful interference, federal regulators allocate specific portions of the radio spectrum for specific uses.

Since 1978, NTIA has been the expert agency for telecommunications and information policy. Its staff of engineers and technical experts is designed to take a tech-first approach to managing our nation’s radio spectrum. While the FCC is the agency that technically approves allocations for radio spectrum for commercial uses, NTIA manages federal spectrum usage and often works with the FCC to prevent harmful interference by conducting technical analysis on proposed FCC actions. These evaluations are incredibly complex in any circumstance but are even more so when one of the incumbents is the federal government itself.

While commercial operations use significant portions of the wireless spectrum, the federal government remains one of the largest holders of spectrum rights. The DOD, in particular, controls vast swaths of commercially valuable spectrum and is understandably hesitant to give up control of this valuable resource. All too often, pushback from federal entities—most significantly, the DOD through the Interdepartmental Radio Advisory Committee—prevents the agency from exerting its authority and expertise. Agencies have also begun to go outside the internal processes to bring spectrum disputes to the public or lobby Congress to intervene. For example, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration attempted to derail the auction of 24 GHz spectrum licenses out of concern for interference, going around the NTIA process.

The challenges of having incumbents cry havoc after having been included in the process aren’t unique to the federal government. Still, they are exacerbated by outdated views of risk and undervaluing the benefits of making additional spectrum available for commercial use.

Traditionally, regulators look at the worst-case scenario when determining whether services could coexist, regardless of how likely that scenario was. Regulators today, especially at the FCC, tend to embrace a risk-based approach that takes an inventory of all potentially harmful interference, uniformly characterizes the severity of that interference, and assesses the likelihood of negative consequences of that interference. This approach provides a more complete picture of potential harmful interference and tends to result in more efficient management of our airwaves.