Genachowski Calls Incentive Spectrum Auctions ‘Key Test’ for Digital Economy
LAS VEGAS -- Incentive auctions to free up spectrum for wireless broadband “are a test of whether the U.S. can make the right strategic choices in a complex and fast-moving digital economy,” said FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski in the text of speech to have been delivered after our deadline Friday at the Consumer Electronics Show. He said freeing up spectrum “is not just a real issue for the future of gadgets; it’s a vital strategic issue for the future of our economy and job creation."
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
If your job depends on informed compliance, you need International Trade Today. Delivered every business day and available any time online, only International Trade Today helps you stay current on the increasingly complex international trade regulatory environment.
The FCC is continuing to prepare to start incentive auctions quickly if Congress authorizes them, Genachowski said. He expressed confidence that that can happen, since bipartisan bills to do that were introduced in the last Congress, and President Obama has endorsed it. There should be support, he said, because they would generate billions of dollars for the Treasury, as well as provide a capital infusion into mobile satellite operators, TV broadcasters and others who voluntarily provide the spectrum. “Especially given the need for mobile broadband, how can we justify shielding broadcast spectrum from market forces?” he asked.
The FCC also has an amount of spectrum “in the pipeline” equal to a threefold increase over what was available a few years ago, Genachowski said. That’s not nearly enough, because there are forecasts of a 35-fold increase in mobile broadband traffic over the next five years, he said. Genachowski said the commission is also continuing to move on dynamic spectrum sharing, secondary markets for spectrum and freeing up white spaces.
Broadcasters have “no quarrel” with a “truly voluntary” incentive auction, an NAB spokesman said. TV stations “have already returned 108 MHz of spectrum to the government, a position that makes us the only user of airwaves that has returned spectrum to the government,” he added. “Broadcast television is far and away the most efficient user of spectrum.”