House Republicans were reportedly close late Thursday to agreeing to a modified two-month deal on the payroll tax extension. They didn’t announce the deal before our deadline. The two-month deal agreed to last week by the Senate did not include spectrum auctions as a spending offset. Earlier this week, the House took the first steps toward setting up a House-Senate conference to work out a one-year extension, and the Senate reportedly will nominate conferees as part of the agreement with the House. The conference, which includes House Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton, R-Mich., and Communications Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore., is expected to consider including spectrum authorization in the final package (CD Dec 21 p4).
AT&T and T-Mobile both face some tough decisions in the aftermath of their failure to consummate their merger. AT&T’s proposed buy of its smaller rival has preoccupied both companies since March, before it was officially ended Monday. AT&T had been soldiering on for almost four months after the Justice Department sued to block the deal in a surprisingly quick decision Aug. 31.
The House GOP authors of spectrum legislation hope to negotiate the payroll tax cut extension with the Senate, but that could be tough because senators have largely returned to their states for a month-long break. After voting Tuesday to move to conference, Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, named as conferees House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore., and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton, R-Mich. However, at our deadline, Senate and House Democrats still had not agreed to participate. Members of the Senate have already left for the holidays, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., refused Tuesday to call back his members. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., also said she would not appoint conferees.
The fate of spectrum legislation remained in flux Monday as members of Congress continued to squabble over an extension of the payroll tax cut. Lobbyists consider the payroll bill the “last train out of town” this year for spectrum legislation. Spectrum reform was nearly left behind when the Senate agreed late Friday on a bipartisan basis to a two-month rather than year-long deal (CD Special Bulletin Dec. 17). But in a surprise move, House Republicans vowed to pull back the measure and lobbyists now view a two-month extension as dead in the water.
It seems unlikely spectrum negotiations are finished between the House and Senate Commerce committees, despite frustrations voiced by each side, multiple telecom industry lobbyists said Thursday. But governance of the public safety network continues to divide the chambers, they said. Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., complained Wednesday that the House had halted talks on a spectrum deal (CD Dec 15 p1). House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore., responded that he’s waiting for the Senate to pass its own spectrum legislation. Congressional leaders said Thursday they were moving closer to agreement on a payroll tax cut bill, which has been used as a vehicle for spectrum legislation.
CBS said it agreed to buy WLNY-TV Riverhead, N.Y. a full power DTV station on Long Island. The station has pay-TV distribution around the New York, Connecticut and New Jersey region, and is not affiliated with a major broadcast network. CBS also owns WCBS-TV New York. Terms weren’t disclosed, but Wells Fargo analyst Marci Ryvicker said the transaction was a smart one for CBS to make. Owning two stations in the largest U.S. media market, CBS could probably increase margins at the two stations by 10 basis points, and potentially increase revenue at WLNY-TV by adding new programming and through retransmission consent revenue, she said.
A spectrum venture of three cable companies agreed to sell 122 AWS licenses to Verizon Wireless for $3.6 billion, the companies said Friday. SpectrumCo is a joint venture of Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks, and the licenses cover 259 million POPs. The consortium was the third-highest bidder in the AWS-1 auction, which ended in September 2006, behind only T-Mobile and Verizon. The deal likely faces pushback similar to that aimed at AT&T for its proposed buy of 700 MHz spectrum from Qualcomm, a smaller deal now stalled at the commission. (See story in this issue.)
House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, may add spectrum auction authority to a larger spending package that’s to be voted on this week on the House floor, a Boehner spokesman told us Friday. Boehner is discussing using spectrum as a “pay-for” for a payroll tax extension, the yearly pay correction for doctors serving Medicare patients and other items in the package, the spokesman said. If the spectrum proposal goes straight to the floor, it would skip a vote by the full Commerce Committee that had also been expected for this week. The House Communications Subcommittee approved draft spectrum legislation on Thursday (CD Dec 2 p1) amid objections by Democrats.
The House Commerce Committee didn’t vote on two FCC process reform bills at a markup Wednesday. Votes were scheduled on HR-3309 and HR-3310, but the committee spent more time than expected debating other unrelated bills. Chairman Fred Upton, R-Mich., said votes on the FCC bills will likely be postponed until next week. The exact day hasn’t been determined, a committee spokesman said. The markup began late Tuesday with opening statements, in which Republicans took shots at the FCC for the agency’s handling of the AT&T/T-Mobile deal. “Now that the matter is under consideration by the Department of Justice and AT&T has withdrawn its petition, I question the value of the FCC moving forward until the litigation is resolved,” Upton said. Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, said he was “disappointed” to hear the FCC was planning to reject the deal and had considered not allowing AT&T to withdraw its application. The FCC must “operate in a transparent and accountable manner,” Upton said. “A number of process disputes have arisen in recent years,” under chairmen from both political parties, he said. However, Ranking Member Henry Waxman, D-Calif., said the larger bill HR-3309 “would not reform the FCC but disable it.” Waxman said he supported “the purpose” of HR-3310, a smaller bill that would consolidate many FCC reports and eliminate others. “But further work is needed to improve the bill before it goes to the floor,” he said. Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., agreed process reform is needed at the FCC, but said the Republicans “go too far” in HR-3309. Dingell complained about the FCC process leading up to the agency’s net neutrality order, and their unresponsiveness to his questions about voluntary incentive spectrum auctions. But Dingell said the GOP bills had “no hope” of being taken up in the Senate.
A spectrum auction markup may happen next week in the House Communications Subcommittee, multiple telecom industry lobbyists said Tuesday. Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore., had been waiting for the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction to finish its work; the super committee announced its failure Monday (CD Nov 22 p2). The Commerce Committee didn’t comment. Wireless industry groups lamented the super committee’s failure as a lost opportunity to authorize voluntary incentive auctions. “The wireless industry’s need for additional spectrum is well documented,” said CTIA Vice President Jot Carpenter. “If the supercommittee process doesn’t provide a path to addressing our need for more spectrum, then there are other vehicles available that will ensure our members can access unused or underutilized spectrum and meet consumers’ demand for wireless broadband services.” The Wireless Communications Association is disappointed in the super committee’s failure, WCA President Fred Campbell said. “Failing to adopt spectrum legislation this year would be a significant blow to mobile broadband providers.” Carpenter said in an interview he is optimistic Congress will find a vehicle for spectrum in December or early next year. But he said he doesn’t believe it’s “realistic” to attach it to an appropriations omnibus, as some have suggested, because of procedural hurdles. The spectrum legislation is not a spending bill so there is a “question of germaneness” linking it to appropriations, Carpenter said. In addition, Republicans may object to using the omnibus because the additional revenue from spectrum could be used to increase the size of the spending bill, he said. While there have been attempts, spectrum auctions historically have never made the cut on an appropriations bill, he added.