Issa Ties Support of Spectrum Auctions to Rollback of Net Neutrality
SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Unless the FCC does away with its net neutrality rules, Congress probably won’t give the FCC authority for incentive spectrum auctions to move TV broadcasters off their frequencies and let mobile broadband operators bid on them, said House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., after a field hearing on government impediments to job creation in the high-tech sector. “Until net neutrality is rolled back, I don’t believe Congress is going to be willing to give the FCC any new power,” Issa told reporters. The FCC got “administratively what it couldn’t get legislatively,” he said. An FCC spokesman declined to comment.
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Issa also questioned how much money the government should give to TV broadcasters who initially were given their spectrum rights. Though broadcasters certainly paid the previous owner of a station for the asset, initially the broadcast spectrum was given away as a public good, he said. “How much will be paid to someone who didn’t pay for it,” in the first place he said. He said he’s worried the government may get hooked on spectrum auction proceeds as a revenue source. “The real goal is the public good, it’s not the temporary return on some asset,” he said.
The recent spectrum reallocation push “has been propelled almost with a giddiness about revenue that makes policy a second fiddle,” said Milo Medin, vice president of access services for Google and co-founder of the now-defunct M2Z Networks, during his testimony at the hearing. “The statute actually says you're not allowed to use revenue considerations in spectrum policy,” he said. Allocating more spectrum for wireless broadband and for unlicensed use is important, but so is encouraging build out of new wireless technology such as micro and femtocells to increase the capacity of wireless networks, he said. “You can get more capacity out of spectrum by taking one base station and splitting it into several base stations,” he said.
Testimony focused on broad areas such as free trade, immigration reform, and government transparency, where witnesses said the government could improve to help boost economic growth in the high-tech sector. The administration’s recent push to make more government data available is a good start, but is constraining growth and wasting funds in some ways, said Patrick Quinlan, CEO of Rivet Software. His company works with companies to meet SEC financial reporting obligations. “Data.gov gives the impression that government has made data available and accessible,” he said. But the site is very limited and little underlying data is available, he said. With access to standardized underlying government data, private companies could compete to provide that information to those who need it. He pointed to the SEC’s Extensible Business Reporting Language standard (XBRL) for financial reporting as a model other agencies could follow.
Several of the topics raised by witnesses touch on areas of legislation overseen by other committees, Issa acknowledged. “A lot of what needs to be done needs to be done by the Energy & Commerce and tax committees,” he said. Stuart McKee, Microsoft’s U.S. National Technology Officer, said after the hearing he was glad to have a forum for Microsoft to discuss policy areas it thinks are important such as cyber security, H1-B visa reform, international trade and cloud computing.