Lofgren Seeks to Keep Some Spectrum Unlicensed in Rush for Auction Revenue
SILICON VALLEY -- Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., said Wednesday she wants to make sure that the zeal for raising federal revenue doesn’t prevent adding “open space for innovation” in the airwaves. The Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction is looking to spectrum auctions “to raise money for the federal government,” she noted at the Silicon Valley Wireless Symposium, organized by Joint Venture Silicon Valley. But Lofgren said she wants to make sure that when it comes to adding spectrum for broadband “not everything gets auctioned,” so unlicensed capacity is available. “We need to think about how we can incent additional efficient use of spectrum,” she added.
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The lawmaker was downbeat about her opposition to the proposed Stop Online Piracy Act, “to stop this freight train from rolling over the Internet” and doing “tremendous damage to the innovation agenda we support,” by cutting back immunity for intermediaries from copyright infringement liability. “If I had to bet, I'd guess it moves forward quickly,” she said. But Lofgren said she took heart from her success in working with fellow Judiciary Committee member Darrell Issa, R-Calif., on a letter this week opposing the bill.
Lofgren hailed House passage last week of a five-year moratorium on new state and local taxes on mobile services. “Very high taxes have been assessed against wireless access that are discriminatory” and in some cases higher than those on alcohol and tobacco, she said. “Taxing it as though it’s a sin” is contrary to the national interest in developing mobile technologies, Lofgren said. “What’s going to happen in the Senate, I don’t know,” she said. “Doing anything in the Senate is difficult because it takes 60 votes."
Lofgren said she doesn’t think Congress will pass legislation on e-commerce taxation this year. “But I think we're getting close,” she said. The trick will be to protect small businesses that “Amazon would like to squash” in the process,” Lofgren said.
Some broadband-stimulus projects may have trouble hitting 2013 milestones to avoid forfeiting federal money, said Senior Vice President Susan Walters of the California Emerging Technology Fund, a nonprofit set up by the Public Utilities Commission. “It’s going slowly,’ she said. “We're concerned.” The projects would offer broadband to about 200,000 homes in the state that can’t get it now, Walters said. “We're doing a lot of work helping people through” California Environmental Quality Act requirements, “through the permitting process,” she said.
"Smartphones are not the same as computers yet,” Director Allen Hammond of Santa Clara University’s Broadband Institute of California said in discussing the digital divide. The widespread use of advanced handsets is narrowing the broadband gap but not closing it, he said, because many business and employment tasks can’t be done easily on them and use doesn’t teach computer skills required in many jobs.