By Bill Maguire
Radio spectrum is the invisible infrastructure beneath nearly every wireless technology we rely on — from our smartphones to our weather satellites to the Wi-Fi in our schools and public libraries. Yet for most community leaders, spectrum policy can feel like an abstraction, something managed far away by federal regulators and large telecom companies. Dr. J. Nicholas Laneman and the team at SpectrumX, the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) Spectrum Innovation Center, are working to change that.
J. Nicholas Laneman is the Founding Director of NSF SpectrumX, the world’s preeminent academic center for radio spectrum research. SpectrumX is funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) through a $25 million, five-year cooperative agreement, with a formal Memorandum of Agreement between NSF, the FCC, and NTIA. Through SpectrumX, 25-plus universities and 175 researchers conduct foundational R&D, develop sensing and measurement capabilities, and translate their findings directly into objective, actionable information for spectrum policy regulators.
I recently had the pleasure of speaking with Dr. Laneman about SpectrumX’s mission, its model for engaging industry and regulators, and most importantly for the readers of this blog what spectrum policy and innovation mean for community leaders and anchor institutions across the country. I’m very pleased to share a summary of our conversation below.
My thanks to Dr. Laneman, professor of engineering and director of the Wireless Institute at the University of Notre Dame, for sharing generously his time and insight.
Connected Communities: For those new to SpectrumX, could you distill the Center’s primary goals, and explain how the organization seeks to bridge the gap between complex wireless engineering and practical regulatory policy?
Dr. J. Nicholas Laneman: Yes, in discussions of spectrum policy, there exists a gap between the technical and practical. To bridge this gap, I like to start with a simple fact: every connectivity solution — broadband, cellular, Wi-Fi, public safety radio, the network on a school bus — depends on a wireless link at some point. And every wireless link depends on radio frequency spectrum, which is a finite resource. There’s only so much of it, and a lot of different users want to share the same airwaves.
SpectrumX brings engineers, economists, policymakers, and scientists together to figure out how spectrum can be used and shared more efficiently and effectively. We’ve filed roughly a dozen formal regulatory comments and, to date, have testified before Congress four times. Critically, we do this as a neutral party. Being the honest broker that everyone can trust is what lets us stand credibly between the technical world and the policy world.
Read the full story on LinkedIn.
Originally published on July 27, 2026, by Bill Maguire on the Connected Communities LLC LinkedIn page.
