Welcome to the tech policy podcast, your source for policy, rants, and raves, and the occasional conspiracy theory from tech freedom.

Your Washington, D.C. advocate for the freedom to tinker and innovate. I'm Evan Swartzchabber, your host. On today's show, what the hell is spectrum and how does my cell phone work? Have you

ever wondered how your Bluetooth phone knows how to connect to your speaker or how you can make

that mobile phone call? Technology certainly is incredible, but a lot of times we don't stop to think

just how this stuff works. So today we're going to do a show kind of walking you through

what spectrum is and how it's been such a major part of our tech economy for decades.

Joining me to discuss this is Brent's score up, a research fellow at the Mercatus Center, a research

center based at George Mason University. Brent, thanks for joining me. Evan, thanks for having

me. Great to be here. So Brent, let's start with a very, very basics. What the hell is

Spectrum? Yeah, that's a good question. And spectrum policy is a hot topic on the hill right now.

A large part of that is because last year there was a small spectrum auction where tiny sliver of spectrum sold for about over $40 billion.

And so there's a lot of hill interest.

They see dollar signs and also spectrum is a source of innovation.

I mean, a lot of cutting-edge technologies needed, wireless broadband,

augmented reality, driverless cars, drones, all these things rely on the spectrum. So there's a lot

of interest, and I was, I've been talking about this more, and there's been more interest on the

hill. I was, I spoke about 10 days ago to some congressional staffers about this,

and I'll speak again this week to some congressional staffers. There was a hearing a few months

ago about federal spectrum and Representative Joe Barton, who is a smart guy, has been following this stuff for a long time,

but, you know, he, like a lot of people, just don't understand the basics.

He said outright.

He just, he doesn't understand how this works.

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