in 2019, ctia unveiled the idea of a national five-year spectrum plan. at that time i said that this was a good idea to ensure a unified strategy among all agents and federal partners to understand and achieve a defined goal. since then, there have been well-publicized incidents that prove that federal agencies are not on the same page when it comes to spectrum strategy, unfortunately, and in some ways this disharmony is an embarrassment for a functioning government. in my research i found that the country of australia has maintained a five-year spectrum plan at least through 2017. their plan is publicly updated bi annually with their successes, failures, and status reports which are then rolled into an updated five-year plan. the question is for mr. bergmann. what would you say is the status of a unified american spectrum strategy? what a minimum-- what a minimum, at minimum should be included. a u.s. strategy on spectrum and should we use australia's spectrum plan as a model? >> thank you, congressman. >> sure. >> you know, your description of the focu

the regulatory affairs ctia and mary brown, senior director of government affairs systems inc. you will have five minutes for your statements and the little box in front of you we have one minute left will turn yellow and then at the end of five minutes it will turn red and if you speak longer than that, a trapdoor opens under your chair and you are whisked down to the rayburn subway and out of here. with that, i want to thank everyone and you are now recognized for five minutes. >> thank you, chairman, ranking member and member mcmorris rodgers. thank you for inviting us here to testify today. i'm the director of government affairs and public knowledge. dedicated to promoting freedom of expression and open internet and access to affordable communications and creative works. as members of the committee are aware we are in the midst of the conductivity resolution with more services, demand spectrum resources, proceed to satisfy the demand has become increasingly challenging. to meet the challenge we must first use all the tools in the toolbox to provide access to the licensed, u

ctia urges congress to do the same this year. it's in our national interest identify spectrum pipeline of bands that can be auction for exclusive license use. the lower three gigahertz band is a top priority. this band is adjacent to existing for our commercial spectrumum and offers the abiliy to provide large channels making it an ideal fit for congress. for 5g. congress cannot take steps to streamline this access and we support the specter of innovation act which would enhance the process to bring that critical band auction. congress should take steps to identifyul and six are deadlines for future access to other mid band spectrum as well as low and high bands at the same time it extends auction authority. congress is longco leverage congressionally directed spectrum options account auctions to that of the key national priorities including deficit reduction and firstnet there we defer to the committee on an auction procedure be spent and welcome the opportunity to collaborate. we would note chairwoman rosenworcel risa propose u