WASHINGTON-The Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association on Wednesday asked the U.S. Senate “to return the billions of dollars the wireless industry has paid to the U.S. government for auctioned spectrum.”
In a three-page letter to the leadership of the Senate Commerce Committee, CTIA President Thomas Wheeler complained about unfunded mandates and fired his most rhetorical rants at suggestions made at an Oct. 1 hearing on broadband that the government allocate more spectrum for unlicensed services.
“It is particularly disturbing when the competitive wireless industry-that has funded its activities without government subsidy-is told it must compete with subsidized wireline carriers (as is the case in rural America) and now the [Senate] Commerce Committee considers new subsidies for other commercial wireless activities (such as commercial use of unlicensed spectrum). Requiring one commercial entity to pay billions for spectrum when another commercial entity receives its spectrum under the chimera of being ‘unlicensed’ is a formula with an obvious and self-fulfilling outcome for both the company that pays for new spectrum and the government that relies on those payments to ease the burden on taxpayers,” said Wheeler.
