Ex-FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski thinks the FCC will hit the administration’s 2015 target for freeing up 300 MHz of spectrum for wireless broadband, but hitting a second 500 MHz target by 2020 will take “a lot of work,” he told C-SPAN’s The Communicators (http://cs.pn/19u1Td8). He and ex-Commissioner Robert McDowell sat for a joint exit interview of sorts, which touched on the spectrum auctions, the legality of the Open Internet order, and their proudest achievements on the FCC. The program is to air this weekend.
The FCC should focus on crafting rules for the upcoming spectrum auction that ensure more competition in the wireless marketplace, said a pair of economists and a consumer advocate during a Capitol Hill event Thursday. The panel, hosted by the Computer & Communications Industry Association and Competitive Carriers Association (CCA), came ahead of the Senate Communications Subcommittee hearing on the wireless marketplace scheduled for June 4. Witnesses at the hearing will be: CTIA President Steve Largent; Doug Webster, Cisco vice president-service provider routing, mobility and video marketing; CCA President Steve Berry; Consumers Union Policy Counsel Delara Derakhshani; Thomas Nagel, Comcast senior vice president-business development and strategy; and Phoenix Center Chief Economist George Ford.
Mobile Future Chairman Jonathan Spalter asked acting FCC Chair Mignon Clyburn in a letter sent Wednesday to keep wireless issues and spectrum clearly in her sights during her period heading the agency. “Nowhere in the FCC’s domain is the opportunity more vast, the need so urgent, and the right policy so vital to achieving demonstrable results for the U.S. economy, consumers and the continued global leadership of American innovators,” Spalter wrote. Topping Mobile Future’s wish list is advancing spectrum auctions. “The FCC must move aggressively in its efforts to advance timely, well-executed spectrum incentive auctions and rules for the 65 MHz of spectrum that the Spectrum Act requires be auctioned and licensed prior to February 2015,” the letter said. “These rules must maximize the amount of spectrum to be reallocated and guarantee that all qualified entities are able to participate. With spectrum exhaust already threatening cities around the country, delay is not an option.” Spalter also discussed the need to repurpose federal spectrum to commercial and to look for other vehicles for making more spectrum available for wireless broadband. “As President [Barack] Obama has made clear, it is essential that excess government spectrum be reallocated to help expand mobile broadband for American consumers,” he wrote. “The FCC serves a vital role in this process. The FCC, in conjunction with NTIA, should initiate proceedings to establish commercial operating rules for federal spectrum already specified, and to identify additional government spectrum for reallocation."
Future spectrum auctions will be a bust unless the FCC first requires interoperability in the lower 700 MHz band, said McBride Spectrum Partners Senior Partner Vincent McBride, in comments filed at the FCC. “Any future spectrum auctions will be inconsequential and largely an unavoidable disaster without first ruling on and enforcing interoperability across the entire 700 MHz and 600 MHz spectrum bands,” he said (http://bit.ly/12hmRrM). “The fact of the matter is that any sound and prudent judgment based on the situation will tell you that interoperability is a prerequisite before any incentive auctions can take place. The benefits of interoperability are widely shared, and especially meaningful to consumers."
Council Tree and Bethel Native Corp., which challenged in federal court the rules for the AWS-1 and 700 MHz auctions, asked the FCC to reconsider a March order which rejected longstanding petitions asking for revisions to the auction rules. In 2010, the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found problems with the FCC’s revised designated entity rules used during the auction, but let the auction results stand (CD Aug 25/10 p1). “The Reconsideration Order marks the FCC’s latest failure to correct the course first charted under the misbegotten Unlawful Rules,” the designated entities (DEs) said (http://bit.ly/ZBN3O3). “Time after time, culminating in the Reconsideration Order, the FCC has rebuffed Petitioners (and others), electing instead to conduct major spectrum auctions pursuant to the Unlawful Rules.” The March order (http://bit.ly/10YFnbe) errs in finding that the 3rd Circuit’s decision moots the need for other revisions to the rules, the petition said. The order addressed Council Tree’s complaints in a single paragraph, noting that the FCC had altered rules by deleting its impermissible material relationship rule following the 3rd Circuit order. “The FCC adopted the Unlawful Rules just a few weeks before Auction 66 was set to begin,” the petition said. “The rootless, irrational Unlawful Rules turned Section 309(j) on its head, throwing the DE community into disarray at the eleventh hour, and giving the largest incumbent wireless companies a relatively unencumbered path to spectrum acquisition. The FCC refused to grant Petitioners’ requested stay of the Unlawful Rules in advance of Auction 66, allowing those new rules to kill DEs’ bids and facilitate the large incumbents’ dominance. DEs won only 4 percent of the value of spectrum available in Auction 66 (compared to the historical average of 70 percent), while just four companies won 78 percent thereof."
CEA President Gary Shapiro took the opportunity of a Media Institute lunch Monday to again accuse broadcasters of trying to delay the spectrum incentive auction. “Broadcasters appear to be employing every possible strategy to slow walk the auctions,” he said, repeating an accusation he has leveled against broadcasters at recent speaking appearances (CD April 2 p6).
Bridging the rural communications gap has been complicated by uncertainty created by some FCC policies, said stakeholders at a Senate Communications Subcommittee hearing Tuesday. The hearing was the first of the subcommittee’s investigation into the state of the nation’s communications policy, and the first held by it’s new Chairman Mark Pryor, D-Ark. Subcommittee staffers said the panel will also seek to investigate the state of wireless communications and the state of video in future hearings.
Tom Wheeler, considered the frontrunner to be the next FCC chairman, saw his candidacy hit two potential roadblocks this week. Thirty-seven Senators, led by Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, asked President Barack Obama to name Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel as chairman. Fifteen public interest groups, led by the New America Foundation, released a letter Wednesday calling Obama to nominate a public interest advocate instead of Wheeler, former president of NCTA and CTIA. The public interest group letter was expected (CD March 27 p6), but industry officials said the senators’ letter was a surprise.
Like President Calvin Coolidge, the next chairman of the FCC should “more highly value restraint over regulatory action,” former Commissioner Deborah Taylor Tate said in a Free State Foundation piece Tuesday (http://bit.ly/ZVfswC). Tate said the commission should “return to a time when individual commissioners could bring an item before the body for a vote in order to eliminate outdated or unnecessary regulations or rules more efficiently.” She applauded Commissioner Ajit Pai for proposing internal shot clocks and a “dashboard” to give the agency more transparency (CD Feb 22 p6). The FCC should show regulatory restraint in the still-pending Title II proceeding, the addition of extraneous “voluntary conditions” to mergers, and the imposition of overly restrictive rules for spectrum auctions, Tate said. The Title II proceeding looked at reclassifying broadband as a Title II common carrier service, which could subject it to more FCC regulations. “The FCC should be doing everything possible to enable innovation, entrepreneurship, investment, and job creation by removing unnecessary regulatory barriers and refraining from instituting new obstructions to this impressive progress,” she said. “The FCC should remember that every action -- every regulation -- has a cost, which is usually passed on to the consumer."
FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said Friday he will leave the FCC in a matter of weeks. Industry officials told us they expect an announcement from the White House as early as this week on a replacement, with former CTIA and NCTA President Tom Wheeler still considered the likely front runner. In the interim, industry and government officials expect the White House to designate Commissioner Mignon Clyburn as the first woman to chair the commission, until a new permanent chairman is confirmed and in place.