The FCC should write a bold National Broadband Plan with a clear vision and policies that can ensure wider broadband access, adoption and competition, public-interest groups said Wednesday during a briefing on Capitol Hill. Speakers from the Consumer Federation of America, Free Press, Consumers Union and other organizations praised FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski’s goal of offering 100 million homes 100 Mbps Internet access by 2020, to give the U.S. the world’s largest market of ultra-broadband users.
The NTIA and the FCC would work together on a plan to make more spectrum available, under President Obama’s proposed budget for fiscal 2011. A big surprise in the budget, released Monday, was its call for the elimination of the Telecommunications Development Fund (TDF), a program that has traditionally had the strong support of important Democratic constituencies including the Congressional Black Caucus. The proposed budget also would cut two programs that helped support public broadcasters’ transition to digital.
Carrier wireless networks are growing rapidly and technological advances are not a substitute for allocating more spectrum for commercial use, Rajiv Laroia, Qualcomm senior vice president of technology, warned at an FCC workshop on spectrum Thursday. FCC staff heard the same message from other panelists as they explored what’s expected to be a key focus of the FCC over the next year, especially with no major spectrum auctions on the FCC horizon.
Small businesses suffered from FCC decisions that lacked proper Regulatory Flexibility Act analyses, said Teletruth and the New Networks Institute. In comments filed Monday at the commission, they asked it to open a rulemaking to revamp the FCC’s “methodology, process, data collection and analysis” regarding the act. The commission hurt telecom, broadband, Internet, wireless and media competition by not taking the act’s obligations “seriously” for more than a decade, the groups said. “It has cost America trillions of dollars in potential economic growth, harmed innovation and slowed America’s technological edge, not to mention closing down thousands of competitors. It also resulted in higher prices, slower broadband speeds, and a lack of choice for customers.” The groups cited several decisions they said violated the law, including a 2004 order on incumbent unbundling rules and a 2005 order that dropped a requirement that incumbents share wireline broadband Internet services. The groups also urged the FCC to open a rulemaking to investigate fraudulent small-entity discounts in wireless- spectrum auctions.
Eliminating telephone excise and Universal Service Fund taxes are options that the Congressional Budget Office suggests lawmakers consider as they works on future federal budgets, a new report said. The options are two of 188 in a report sent to the House and Senate Budget Committees last week to help Congress set priorities in its annual budgets, said CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf. The ideas in the report aren’t recommendations and they aren’t given in order of priority, he said in the report’s preface.
Three members of the House, including the chairman of the telecom subcommittee, introduced legislation (H.R. 3019) late Wednesday designed to speed up the transfer of spectrum from the government to commercial users. The bill is informed in part, industry sources said Thursday, by the difficulty T-Mobile and other buyers of AWS-1 spectrum have had clearing the spectrum so they can use it in their networks.
The FCC asked the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to reject a case brought against it by designated entity Council Tree, seeking to overturn the 700 MHz auction. Council Tree argued that the designated entity rules approved for the 700 MHz auction nearly guaranteed that the largest carriers won almost all licenses for sale in the auction. “Council Tree asks the court to nullify the 700 MHz auction, a step that would require the return of $19 billion from the U.S. Treasury and the cancellation of numerous spectrum licenses just as the innocent third parties that won them are planning to deploy wireless broadband service to the public,” the FCC said. The commission said the court should reject the appeal because it’s an “untimely challenge” to the FCC’s 700 MHz report and order “rather than a challenge to any action taken in the Order that is the nominal subject of Council Tree’s petition.” Council Tree challenges to the order “are insubstantial in any event” since designated entities are not guaranteed any “particular level of… success in wireless auctions,” the regulator said.
FCC Commissioner Deborah Tate has left the commission, as required with the end of the last Congress. Tate said in a statement that the FCC posted Monday that she’s returning full time to Nashville and plans to launch a mediation practice. “In cooperation with my fellow Commissioners, we have made history: implementing successful spectrum auctions, creating a new homeland security bureau, providing broadband grants for rural healthcare and overseeing the digital transition for television,” she said. “I am extremely proud of our work on behalf of children and families, for persons with disabilities and for spurring new investment and innovation.” Tate, a former Tennessee regulator, was sworn in as a commissioner Jan. 3, 2006.
Gerald Vaughan, 64, former deputy chief of the FCC Common Carrier Bureau and Wireless Bureau, died Saturday in Pennsylvania after an apparent heart attack. Before retiring in 2004, he led the team that developed the FCC spectrum auctions program. His wife and daughter survive. A funeral is scheduled for Dec. 13 in Scranton, Pa.
The FCC should impose a wireless spectrum aggregation cap to curb consolidation and top national carriers’ dominance, regional carriers said in Tuesday comments. The small, rural companies backed a Rural Telecommunications Group proposal to impose a 110 MHz limit county-by-county on all commercial terrestrial wireless spectrum below 2.3 GHz. But big carriers and others warned that a cap could stunt the growth of the wireless broadband industry.