Congress could still find a way to pass spectrum legislation this year without the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, telecom industry lobbyists said. The super committee’s co-chairs said late Monday that the panel had failed to reach a deal. The House and Senate have signaled that they hope to push spectrum auction legislation forward in December through regular order or by attaching it to a must-pass vehicle like an omnibus appropriations bill. Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., said he'll press to get spectrum legislation passed. “Winning ideas like S.911 cannot keep falling victim to this partisan stubbornness,” he said Monday evening. “I will continue to pursue all avenues to get S.911 enacted this year."
Many broadcasters and all wireless companies are sitting out a plan (CD Oct 21 p2) by some stations to act as Internet backhaul providers for carriers, our survey of those industries found. No carrier has agreed to join the efforts of the Coalition for Free TV and Broadband, though several have expressed an interest in the technology, members said. They said the coalition has been adding some broadcasters, including the owner of five stations in North Carolina, and the operator of another 36 outlets is likely to join. Other executives and engineers who consult for the TV industry said the technology changes needed for stations to become ISPs of a sort would be expensive. They're skeptical that what they called an initiative undertaken at a late date will pick up enough momentum to either delay the auction of TV stations’ channels the FCC wants to hold or gain carrier backing.
The Senate could take up spectrum in an omnibus bill this year if the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction fails to reach a deal including spectrum, Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said at a public safety press conference Tuesday. Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., and other lawmakers said they would support that approach. Schumer and other members of Congress urged the super committee to include D-block reallocation in its recommendations.
With the Thanksgiving deadline fast approaching for the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, observers are growing skeptical that the super committee will meet its goal of finding $1.5 trillion in deficit reduction. Democrats and Republicans on the special committee seem to agree spectrum auctions should be included, but they continue to disagree on larger, unrelated issues, Hill and industry officials said. Auctions could still make the cut in a smaller package to mitigate an automatic, across-the-board budget cut in January 2013 known as a sequester, telecom industry lobbyists said.
The Rural Cellular Association formally presented a study it commissioned, “Non-Interoperability at 700 MHz: Lower Revenues & Higher Prices,” during a meeting with Wireless Bureau staff. “The study concludes that the continuation of non-interoperability in the 700 MHz band will result in a number of negative outcomes regarding revenues and federal budget contributions from future spectrum auctions; the potential to fulfill the goal of ubiquitous mobile broadband; and competition, innovation, and pricing in the wireless market,” RCA said in a filing at the commission (http://xrl.us/bmibt4).
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.
Chances appear very good that a spectrum sale will be part of any legislation recommended by the Joint Committee on Deficit Reduction, CEA President Gary Shapiro said in an interview on C-SPAN’s The Communicators, scheduled to be broadcast over the weekend. Shapiro was asked repeatedly about recommendations the group made in an Oct. 27 letter to the super committee (http://xrl.us/bmhuym). Shapiro said the likelihood the committee will recommend spectrum auctions is “well over 90 percent.”
The Rural Cellular Association turned up the heat on the FCC and Congress in an effort to get them to mandate device interoperability across the 700 MHz band, releasing a study by Information Age Economics on the economic effects of doing nothing (http://xrl.us/bmhsag). RCA filed the report Thursday with the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, which is expected to consider spectrum auctions as a way to raise revenue to lower the deficit.
Makers of consumer electronics are starting to join the mobile DTV push by terrestrial broadcasters, the head of Gannett’s group of 29 TV stations said. Broadcasters are targeting an array of consumer devices including cellphones and tablets to receive the signals of TV stations, Dave Lougee told a news conference Tuesday held on the formation of a TV group on spectrum: “We are gaining the commitments now from consumer electronics manufacturers and distributors to push this forward.” The broadcasting industry “will have some announcements in the very near future,” he told us: “We're not going to get ahead of our partners here."
Spectrum auctions appeared in a summary of a plan by Republicans on the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction. Democrats and Republicans presented proposals last week behind closed doors. The GOP plan “did include spectrum sales, but no specifics, and lumped it in with other items that would raise several billion dollars,” said Vince Jesaitis, government relations director of the Information Technology Industry Council. Spectrum was not mentioned in the summary of the Democratic plan, “but I know they consider it to be in the mix,” he said. He predicted that details on spectrum won’t be fleshed out “until the broader framework” is developed. The recent spectrum letter by four super committee members (CD Oct 11 p4) to President Barack Obama “is a clear sign that they are seriously considering including additional auction authority,” he said.