With mobile broadband use expected to explode in coming years, significantly more spectrum is needed, but the FCC can't just rely on U.S. TV stations to give up their underused spectrum, said the authors of the study, released by the Technology Policy Institute (TPI), a conservative think tank, Friday. The U.S. government should create a new agency, the Government Spectrum Ownership Corp. (GSOC), that leases spectrum to individual government agencies, the study recommended.

The GSOC, by leasing spectrum to agencies, would encourage efficient use of spectrum, with agencies returning unneeded spectrum, said Lawrence White, co-author of the study and an economics professor at New York University. That returned spectrum could be auctioned to commercial mobile broadband providers, he said.

Government spectrum is "the elephant in the room, the 900-pound gorilla in the room," White said at a TPI forum Friday. "There's a lot of spectrum, and there's a strong suspicion not all of it is being efficiently used."

The model for the GSOC is the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA), which subleases buildings to other agencies. That model discourages agencies from overestimating their real estate needs, White said.

On Wednesday, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski announced that the agency's national broadband plan, due out in mid-March, would seek to free up 500MHz of spectrum over the next 10 years for mobile broadband use. In his speech, Genachowski highlighted a plan to offer incentives for TV broadcasters to voluntarily turn over unused spectrum in exchange for a piece of the profits from an auction of that spectrum.