funding to provide for such a telecommunications research May 9th, 2021   [viewed 45 times]
Determining how much funding to provide for such a telecommunications research initiative involves, of course, a complex set of budgetary tradeoffs among research programs and between research and non-research activities. The committee does not make a recommendation for a specific funding level but notes that funding should be consistent with the vital role played by telecommunications in the U.S. economy and society and with the direct contributions made by the U.S. telecommunications industry to the nation’s economy and security. Funding should also be consistent with telecommunications’ role as a critical element of information technology (some 16 percent of the total federal networking and information technology research and development budget today goes to telecommunications Finally, the investment should be large enough to support a critical mass of researchers and research; one estimate can be drawn from the predivestiture Bell Labs, whose budget of over $500 million (in today’s dollars) for basic research was sized to provide the breadth and depth to comprehensively address telecommunications research issues. The federal government should establish a new research organization—the Advanced Telecommunications Research Activity—to rejuvenate fundamental and applied telecommunications research in the United States and to stimulate and coordinate activities across industry, academia, and government that can translate research results into deployments of significant new telecommunications capabilities. In light of the findings presented above, the committee believes that a new national research organization, which it dubs the Advanced Telecommunications Research Activity (ATRA), should be established by the federal government. This recommendation is inspired in large part by the enormous leaps in telecommunications technology historically attributable to DARPA and Bell Labs and the success of broad industry consortia such as SEMATECH. Recommendation 1 and Recommendation 2 below both contemplate significant federal support for telecommunications research. However, their full effects will come only with the participation of both service providers and equipment vendors. ATRA would provide (1) a forum for convening federal research sponsors, academic researchers, and industry to identify research that is relevant to industry’s most critical needs and (2) a mechanism for the telecommunications industry to pool funds to conduct precompetitive research. Government matching funds would provide an additional incentive for industry participation. More info: what is icnd