WASHINGTON-The Bush administration has proposed to delay key spectrum auctions and to phase out past Internet programs, as components of the president’s US$1.96 trillion budget that signals the White House’s desire to improve spectrum management and its intention to end corporate telecom subsidies.
Bush’s spectrum plan, which would force U.S. television (TV) broadcasters to pay US$200 million in annual lease fees and employ other band-clearing incentives, indicates the new president is serious about forcing TV broadcasters to relinquish frequencies that mobile-phone carriers need for third-generation (3G) wireless systems.
In previous years, similar TV spectrum fee proposals have been snuffed out with ease by the powerful broadcast lobby. But all that could change. The political and economic grounds have begun to shift. The sharp focus on digital TV by policy-makers during the 1980s has given way to an intense emphasis on Internet and wireless technologies in the new century. The spotlight is now on a 3G mobile-phone model that promises to combine the best of Internet and wireless technological breakthroughs.
“A Blueprint for New Beginnings,” a 207-page Bush budget summary, is to be followed by a more detailed spending package in April. At that time, the Bush administration will send Congress legislative spectrum-auction and TV-band-clearing proposals.
The immediate impact of Bush’s plan would be to give the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) the option to postpone the 700 MHz auction from this September to 2004 and to delay the auction of additional broadcast spectrum-TV channels 52 to 59-from 2002 to 2006.
In the past, the FCC has been hamstrung by congressionally mandated auction deadlines that have undermined spectrum management and budgetary goals.
As such, according to administration and congressional sources, the Bush administration wants to give the FCC more flexibility in conducting spectrum auctions. The delays, they said, recognize that Congress needs time to write new spectrum-auction legislation and the FCC needs time to implement it.
A policy designed to reclaim broadcast frequencies and to give the FCC more leeway in scheduling auctions may not only result in better spectrum management-a top wireless industry issue-but likely will lead to higher auction receipts for the U.S. Treasury.
“While we never like to see spectrum auctions postponed for budget purposes, this proposal is steeped in an overriding telecommunications policy,” said Steven Berry, senior vice president of government affairs at the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association (CTIA).
The date for the 700 MHz auction was rescheduled a fourth time last month to start 12 September.
Broadcasters, which today occupy valuable spectrum the government wants to sell to mobile-phone firms and others, are struggling to move from analog to digital technology. Congress gave broadcasters an extra channel of six megahertz for that transition to ease the financial burden on consumers who have not purchased digital TVs. While the digital TV transition limps along, mobile-phone carriers are denied additional frequencies they say they need for 3G services.
Bush’s budget foresees raising US$7.5 billion from spectrum auctions between 2002 and 2011 and generating $1.4 billion in broadcast lease fees during the digital TV transition.
Elsewhere, the Bush administration received strong criticism for cutting programs aimed at putting new information technology in the hands of low-income, minority and rural citizens-segments of the U.S. population that have tended to be left behind in the digital revolution.
