spectrum auction

The congressman grills FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski and isn’t satisfied with the chairman’s answers on just how voluntary FCC’s proposed spectrum auction plan for broadcasters is.  “I have dark suspicions,” he says.

The CTIA-The Wireless Association and Consumer Electronics Association submitted a white paper to the FCC that says the commission’s proposed TV spectrum auction will help balance the federal budget by contributing more than $33 billion.

As far as the commission’s concerned, it’s apparently all systems go and full speed ahead with the effort to encourage TV broadcasters to relinquish their spectrum so that it can be used to further the National Broadband Plan. The latest evidence of this is the commission’s plan to offer webinars for stations to explain, it says, “the financial opportunities offered by voluntary incentive auctions” and answer questions, including ones on “the need to repack the remaining television channels following the auction.”

Veteran politician,businessman and now the top evangelist for broadcasters, Gordon Smith, the president of the National Association of Broadcasters, is telling his former Capitol Hill colleagues that the federal government’s plan to bolster wireless networks could end up darkening signals for hundreds of stations around the country.

Reaction poured in Thursday following delivery of President Obama’s speech in Michigan promoting his national wireless plan, which aims to reclaim enough spectrum from broadcasters and others to get 4G wireless broadband service to 98% of America within five years. NAB won’t oppose, but says broadcasters and viewers should be “held harmless.”

President Obama is to unveil a plan today to bring wireless high-speed Internet access to all Americans, a goal the administration says is key to the country’s ability to compete globally in the years to come.

the former FCC commissioner says that “incentive auctions are little different from expropriation of property, far worse than the usual government condemnation of property under eminent domain.” He goes on to say “There is a better way: Simply rezone broadcast spectrum to permit other uses, and let anyone buy and sell it.”

While the FCC under Julius Genachowski is actively moving to take spectrum away from TV stations, which the chairman calls an “obstacle” to America’s broadband future, its conditions placed on the Comcast-NBCU deal indicate just the opposite. The commission has decreed that NBC and Telemundo stations must produce an additional 1,000 hours of “original, local news and information programming” as groups. To me that shows that the FCC is implicitly recognizing the continued importance of broadcasting in the media mix.

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski voiced some doubts that Congress will approve spectrum auctions to open up more broadband airspace. Genachowski said at a Brookings Institution panel Wednesday that he won’t make bets on Congress passing legislation on incentive spectrum auctions, a top priority of the FCC and a proposal that has bipartisan support on the Hill.

House Energy & Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) said Wednesday that finding more spectrum to auction for broadband use will be “priority.” He also said that it will “likely include voluntary incentive auctions,” which will require Congress to authorize paying broadcasters and others to give up their spectrum.

The broadcasting lobbyist says that Consumer Electronics Association President Gary Shapiro’s opening speech accusing TV broadcasters of “squatting now on our broadband future” misses the mark. “He simply sees a world of wireless broadband, and that’s just not what the future holds,” Smith said. And the NAB chief also accused Shapiro of being out of touch: “He apparently was writing a book and missed the cord-cutting phenomenon.”