Members of Congress' deficit reducing Super Committee tell Obama that he needs to find more government spectrum that can be auction to wireless broadband operators. The spectrum that Obama has already identified, including portions of the TV band, is not enough, they say.
Budget Panel Seeks More Gov’t Spectrum
Four of the 12 members of Congress’ so-called Super Committee charged with reducing the federal budget by $1.5 trillion is asking President Obama to find more government spectrum for the auction block.
“You identified voluntary incentive auctions of spectrum currently allocated, for example, to broadcast television as one potential source,” the foursome say in a letter to the president. “We certainly support such voluntary incentive auctions. But we believe that those auctions will not produce all the spectrum we need to meet our country’s growing demand for broadband.”
The letter writers include Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Patrick J. Toomey (R-Pa.) and Reps. Xavier Becerra (D-Calif.) and Fred Upton (R-Mich.)
“[W]e should put every effort into making available paired, internationally-harmonized spectrum below 3 GHz in sufficient block sizes to support mobile broadband services within the next 10 years,” they write.
“The Digital Television Transition and Public Safety Act of 2005 yielded spectrum now being used to deploy 4G wireless services and gave the United States an international edge in the growing wireless economy. Let’s build on that momentum.”
Comments (1)
len Kubas says:
October 7, 2011 at 5:11 pm
the government needs to waste more spectrum, and they need their own private internet delivered wirelessly, too. This is the “$800 hammer”: (sold by Boeing to the U.S. government) of this decade.