WASHINGTON-Congress is studying different approaches to spectrum reform in light of the $14 billion that lawmakers and the Clinton administration hope to extract from the airwaves during the next seven years.
The Federal Communications Commission has raised $9 billion to date from selling licenses for narrowband and broadband personal communications services and interactive TV. Congress authorized such spectrum auctions two years ago this month.
Up to now, auctions have been limited to commercial, subscriber-based services. Lawmakers and the White House want to broaden auctions to include private wireless spectrum and possibly telephone numbers. There also has been talk of assessing spectrum fees on firms. Legislation likely will be passed this year to expand auction authority.
The sale of existing spectrum and frequencies transferred from the federal government to the private sector will go toward meeting the $14 billion revenue goal.
Lately, there has been sentiment for selling excess TV broadcast spectrum. Broadcasters oppose the idea, claiming it will kill the development of next-generation digital TV.
For large wireless telecommunications firms, the current regime works well. “The people who value the spectrum are those who are ending up with the spectrum and the federal government-not private speculators-are the ones who are ending up with the funds,” said Wayne Perry, vice chairman of the McCaw Cellular unit that AT&T Corp. bought last year for $11.5 billion.
But he cautioned that market forces alone should not determine how spectrum is managed. Perry said the FCC should continue to allocate spectrum in order to prevent different wireless services from interfering with one another.
Business executives, like Perry, academics and former policy-makers provided the Senate Commerce Committee last month with a mix of views on spectrum policy.
Conservative think tanks, notably The Progress & Freedom Foundation and the Heritage Foundation, believe government spectrum allocations should be scrapped and replaced with a system that gives individuals freedom to employ frequencies as they see fit so long as the rights of other spectrum users aren’t violated.
By privatizing spectrum, federal regulators would be stripped of the public interest obligations that currently govern spectrum management.
