Verizon Chairman and CEO Lowell McAdam urged the federal government and the Defense Department to explore options for the sharing of wireless spectrum by the public and private sectors to meet the needs of mobile consumers.

“Government and industry must work together to find ways to use spectrum more efficiently so that we are all truly connected, especially in times of need,” McAdam stated, speaking at the Defense Information Systems Agency’s annual Mission Partner Conference, held in Tampa last week.

And in a gesture of commitment, he pledged company personnel and $5 million to work with the Department of Defense, one of the largest holders of spectrum, to develop workable methods of sharing.

“Today, we are more encouraged than ever by the willingness being expressed in the industry for such a move,” said McAdams.

McAdam also called for the development of a robust secondary market, deeming it a “high priority,” that would make it possible for spectrum to smoothly change hands and for allowing the market to find the highest and best use for spectrum.

The Verizon CEO acknowledged that “information is now so critical to the work of the U.S. military that the Department of Defense has declared cyberspace every bit as important as the traditional domains of land, sea, air and space.

He cited the passage of landmark federal legislation authorizing “incentive auctions,” designed to make spectrum currently used for broadcasting available for mobile services, as a step in the right direction and praised the Federal Communications Commission for its efforts to move more aggressively to putting such auctions into place.

McAdam said “using information as a strategic weapon means we need to be more mobile, more agile, more global and more innovative.”

He also highlighted several technology developments that are forcing the need to take new approaches, outlined in a prepared release:

• The continued growth in global IP traffic, which is forecast to quadruple between 2010 and 2015 (see chart below.)
• The high demand for video over the Internet, making it the biggest driver of Web traffic. Verizon expects it to represent 50% of all Web traffic by the end of this year.
• The explosive growth of the use of mobile devices. Today, there are more mobile devices than there are people in the U.S.
• The growth of the “Internet of Things,” with intelligent chipsets embedded in electronics, appliances, medical monitors, cars buildings and utility grids – all of them connected to the Internet through secure 4G LTE wireless networks.
• A new IT delivery model, the cloud, offers a radically more efficient and effective way for government agencies and businesses to organize work in a rapidly globalizing world.

McAdam said these trends also highlight the important role commercial networks like Verizon’s play in the information ecosystem. He also stressed the importance of incentive auction legislation to help create dedicated spectrum and capital to establish FirstNet, a nationwide emergency response network compatible with existing LTE networks operated by Verizon and others.

Another theme McAdam stressed was the importance for government and private industry to work in coordinated way to safeguard the public in cyberspace.

“In 2011, we analyzed security incidents resulting in 175 million compromised records — the second highest data loss since we started collecting data,” said McAdam, according to prepared remarks delivered at the DISA conference.

He said 55% of these breaches “go undetected for a month or more, with the average being six months. Even after months go by, the vast majority of them are detected by either law enforcement or some other third party, and not by the organization whose systems were breached.”

He concluded: “Today’s highly complex information ecosystem requires a different way of working than the do-it-yourself models of the past, challenging all of us to embrace innovation without sacrificing the security and availability on which the critical systems serving the American public depend.”