WASHINGTON-The Senate Commerce Committee is expected to consider legislation Thursday afternoon that will earmark $1 billion for public-safety interoperability and $250 million for implementing the enhanced 911 bill that passed last year from digital TV auction revenues, said the chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee Wednesday.
A draft bill released last week that set the hard date for the DTV transition at April 7, 2009, did not include the specific earmarks. Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, gave a rundown of the details at a luncheon sponsored by the Free Enterprise Fund.
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said Tuesday morning he plans to offer an amendment to set the hard date for completing the digital TV transition at the end of 2006 or early 2007-not April 7, 2009. McCain offered legislation earlier this year setting the hard date at Jan. 1, 2009, but after Hurricane Katrina, he said he is going back to his original date of Jan. 1, 2007.
In 1997, Congress said that in 2007 broadcasters would have to return the extra 6 megahertz of spectrum in the 700 MHz band that was given to TV broadcasters to facilitate the DTV transition. But TV broadcasters could keep the spectrum if more than 15 percent of the homes in their viewing areas could not receive digital signals. Removing the caveat has become known as establishing a hard date and has been encouraged widely by the wireless industry, which wants access to some of the spectrum.
Congress is considering a hard date for the DTV transition as part of the 2006 budget reconciliation process. Due to the focus on Hurricane Katrina, the budget reconciliation process, which usually occurs in September, was delayed by a month. The Senate Commerce Committee is scheduled to begin its process Thursday afternoon at a markup that also will include an emergency alert bill. Stevens said there will be $250 million set aside for this initiative.
The House Commerce Committee is expected to consider its proposal, which currently sets the hard date at Jan. 1, 2009, next week.
Congress likely will pass two bills dealing with the DTV transition, one that establishes a hard date and sets a timetable for auctioning the spectrum and one that deals with related issues not specifically tied to the budget.
One of those other issues may be what to do with the white space around TV channels 2 to 51. After the digital conversion, there still will be unused spectrum in many areas, so advocates for unlicensed spectrum are calling for using this white space for those operations. TV broadcasters are opposed to this idea, fearing interference, and have been fighting it at the Federal Communications Commission since former FCC Chairman Michael Powell first proposed it.
“The broadcasters are trying to shut this down either on Capitol Hill with a clause in the bill prohibiting the FCC from acting or by convincing FCC Chairman Kevin Martin to let the unlicensed white space proceeding sit on his desk,” said Jim Snider, senior research fellow of New America Foundation’s Wireless Futures Program.
