However, he said that the committee’s authors believed that agile radio technologies that make it possible for computerized radio systems to share spectrum on a vastly more efficient basis would make it possible to move from an era of scarcity to one of abundance. The central point of the report is that while there is no new spectrum available, new technologies can vastly increase the capacity of existing spectrum.

The report concludes that the radio spectrum could be used as much as 40,000 times as efficiently as it is currently and the committee recommends an approach that could increase capacity 1,000 fold, Mr. Gorenberg said. “We’re living with spectrum that is of a policy that was really set in motion by technology of 100 years ago,” he said. “That’s led to a fragmentation of the spectrum that has led to inefficiency and artificial scarcity.”

Except for several unlicensed frequencies established by the Federal Communications Commission that gave rise to data services like Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, today much of the radio spectrum is licensed to both commercial users and government agencies who have no incentive to use the spectrum they control efficiently, he said.

The new radio technology was pioneered during the late 1990s and is described as “cognitive” or “agile” radio. Such computer-controlled radios inside a cellphone can rapidly switch the frequencies they broadcast and receive on based on an arbitrary set of rules. One analogy to describe the technology might be a freeway system, in which individual vehicles could quickly switch lanes or drive more closely together.

The report, which is titled “Realizing the Full Potential of Government-Held Spectrum to Spur Economic Growth,” calls for a tiered system in which different users would have different priority, possibly based on whether they were a government user, a user who was prepared to pay more for a higher quality-of-service,” or a casual user who might be assigned the lowest priority and pay the lowest rate. Unlike today’s unlicensed Wi-Fi spectrum, which can be used freely, the newly available spectrum would require devices “register” in a database that would then control the terms of their access to the spectrum.

“One of the reasons we think we will see this dramatic economic expansion around radio-based systems in the future is that we can have a dramatic lowering of the apparent cost of gaining access and that will be facilitated by the registration system,” Mr. Mundie said.

The report also calls on the president to create a “synthetic” currency that could be used to entice federal agencies into offering more spectrum to the system. “The agencies don’t have an incentive to move forward,” he said. “We think a carrot approach is a much better approach.” The proposed system would in effect increase an agency’s budget if it was willing to give up, or share its spectrum.